Well forget them, they're nothing, nothing, I tells ya.
Every Tuesday, there's Gerard Henderson in The Sydney Morning Herald, giving us free pearls of wisdom (well sort of free, because a click delivers digital content while sending the foolish SMH broke, providing you don't click on one of their intrusive offensive transition splash ads, though they might call them pop ups just to mollify you. They're getting as bad as a porn site).
Anyhoo, those pearls. Crunchy, deep fried, profound in flavor and wisdom. Oh yes, that Polonius of the printed word, that advisor to princes and potentates, that noble 2020 warrior (just doin' ma duty ma'am), that serial rooter for Sarah Palin, is always to hand to right the ship of state, ever so gently and in tones so dry that desiccated coconut loses whatever water it might have tucked away in a corner of the plastic packet.
Yep, it's like the Goodies - you just know the kitten and the tower are going to fall when Gerard steps into the ring. He's wittier than a Monty Python sketch, stronger than a Bill Maher religious bash, faster than a feeble Robin Williams on speed joke, more righteous than the Incredible Hulk, though prone to bouts of indignation that would make Ed Norton flinch (whatever did happen to Eric Bana?)
Gee, it's like being a junkie, addicted to that pure unadulterated Henderson meth fix on a Tuesday.
Come on down Polonius, give us some of that ice blue flame, what have you got for us this week? Nothing predictable, I'm sure.
But wait a minute, what's this: Rudd neo-liberal with the facts. Groan. Not another piece on PM Ruddster's piece for The Monthly, that peddler of socialistic clap trap for teachers with leather patches on their elbows? (You know, the one established by a wealthy property developer, one Morry Schwartz, not that Gerard or I are into slagging off the wealthy per se, even if they're dirty rotten class traitors).
Okay, let's do a quick run down. Seems Rudd is wrong (well who can argue with that), and that his piece is ahistorical. It fails to mention the wonderful banking and regulatory and currency and prudential system we have, as detailed by Gillard at Davos, and established by John Howard (who did everything for ever and ever amen).
And here - you can almost hear Gerard splutter on the page, and it's bloody hard to splutter silently off stage - whatever that thing called neo liberalism by the Ruddster might happen to be, it certainly didn't prevail in Britain the US or Australia. Let's see, who can we mention in the article - well, there's Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Bob Hawke, and even Therese Rein who made her cash out of privatizing government services (always play the wife card when bashing up the man).
We can even go back to Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan or that peanut farmer Jimmy Carter. We can of course harumph in an even-handed way (where would Polonius be without a harumph or two):
The Prime Minister makes some valuable points in his very detailed essay. Certainly there is reason to attack greed, incompetence and inadequate regulation in the financial markets. The errors that occurred have been acknowledged by Alan Greenspan (the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve) and Sir John Gieve (the deputry governor of the Bank of England).
But of course it was Jimmy Carter that introduced the notion of housing for low income earners way back when. Yes damn you Jimmy Carter. Way back in 1981 it all went wrong. Neo-liberalism had nothing to do with it. Gerard Henderson himself was still in swaddling clothes.
And then a couple of strange admissions: Australia will suffer from the global financial crisis. But thankfully we will survive, and of course we will survive, and be able to go into deficit, and survive, thanks to the wonderful John Howard and the god fearing, god loving Peter Costello, and their strong surpluses, even if they derived them from that atheistic, communistic, mineral devouring China, and were pissed against the wall like a drunken sailor to buy votes and re-election.
This was not achieved by George Bush and the conservatives in the US, nor by the Blair/Brown social democrats in Britain.
Say what? George Who? Guess he was some feller who failed to balance the books, and his wretched body was thrown into a pit and covered with lime and forgotten about a long time ago, like Mozart.
Say what? He was the leader of the free world and ran the United States of America for eight long years, and he and his administration fancied themselves as neo liberals, employing that ultra neo liberal Dick Cheney as Vice President. And around them clustered a set of poo bah neo liberals the likes of which haven't been seen since the time of Nanki Poo in The Mikado (I've got a little list, oh yes I've got a little list).
You know, the reign that ended what, a month ago. Well that's so long ago, and it had bugger all to do with the current meltdown (I mean you might blame George for the dot com bubble, but that'd be ahistorical too, because Bill Gates and pizza caused that to peak in March 2000, way before George came to power).
Blair who? Must have been some kind of feller who acted as lap dog and panting poodle to George Bush, but damn it, don't forget he was never some kind of social conservative, no neo liberal out there fighting the Crusades one more time against the fierce Islamic hordes (and last we heard doing a wonderful job fixing up the Middle East as a devout Catholic would). No Blair was Labor through and through, the thrill he got from screwing workers was all about being pious and righteous in a free market way.
And now? Well everything's the fault of Obama. He's a social democrat. He's been in power a couple of weeks, and everything wrong in the world is his fault, even though faithful Republicans, while hoping he fails, have been doing everything they can to help him. (As for Kevin Rudd, how dare he, how double dare he call John Howard, the saintly John Howard a neo Liberal. No wonder his wife is looting the system, and he's writing gobbledegook).
Gee, reading Henderson is almost like attending a Stalinist show trial, followed by a Stalinist purge. Neo liberal? Not me folks, George Bush backer, nothing to do with me, rooter for Sarah Palin, you must have the wrong feller.
Oh and while you're at it Ruddster, advises our Polonius, go back to John Howard's wonderful labor laws, that Work Choices thingy that got him kicked out of office, and forget about global warming, and get rid of silly notions of taxing carbon.
This would not be a concession to conservatives or neo-liberalism. Just common sense.
What wonderful, thoughtful advice Polonius. Told you it'd be a taste treat. As healthy and as sustaining as the chemicals in diet Coke. Never thought anyone could make the Ruddster sound like an intellectual but Henderson succeeds admirably.
And what have we learned? Well neo liberalism didn't exist, and even if it did, it had nothing to do with anything, and anything you might say to the contrary can't be heard by our Polonius, because he's blocking his ears. Everybody who's ever done anything in the recent past is either a vile social democrat, like Jimmy Carter, the ruination of us all, or a simple humane conservative, like that wonderful John Howard.
Your lesson for the day, not so much ahistorical, as ahysterical. Now go forth in peace and spread the word.
By the way, did you know that the Puritans banned Christmas? Yep, because of its Roman saturnalian connections, they shut it down for twenty years in the seventeenth century. Or that Pope Paul the Second amused the Roman citizenry back in 1466 by forcing Jews to race naked through the streets of the city? And had a hearty laugh while doing it.
Now there's a noble tradition for the Pope a Dope and his cohorts to revive, along with bringing a cheerful batch of anti-Semites back into the fold. Come on Christopher Pearson, sounds like a great idea.
My own thought? Is there some way we can ban Gerard Henderson for twenty years, or at least make him run naked through the streets when he gets things wrong. What fun we could have chortling and laughing at the goose with no feathers.
Whatever, we're heading to easter, must get out that statue of Aphrodite, give her some choccy, and thank her for the bounteous blessing of Gerard.
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