Piers Akerman, Clare Werbeloff, President Obama, Chairman Rudd and a boom time had by all

(Above: President Obama and Chairman Rudd. Our very own Chairman Rudd is on the right cheering on the brave Oz lads as they battle the infidels).

You have to admire - even if it's in a perverse way - the sheer monomaniacal cheekiness of Piers Akerman, as exemplified by Our cocked-up and loaded leadership.

Like a Napoleonic general turning up to check out the state of the Russian campaign, Akerman is a late arrival on the storm in the teacup world of Clare Werbeloff - a nineteen year old woman who achieved her allotted fifteen minutes of fame by lying to camera about witnessing a shooting involving a couple of 'wogs', skinny and fat.

She instantly became the cover girl for conservatives anxious to relive the glories of the Cronulla riots with a bit of verbal wog bashing, and as a crowning glory for her kind of media junkie show boating, she even earned herself an outing on Network Nine's A Current Affair. Never mind all her intertubes exposure, that's like getting a private audience with the Pope.

Akerman, our very own fat owl of the remove, a scholar worthy of the tradition of study celebrated in Billy Bunter schoolday stories, sagely observes that this matter is now a moment deserving of deeply scholarly study:

Media students will study this incident for years and argue whether Werbeloff exploited the media in her desire for fame, or whether the media exploited her in its desire to bring as many eyeballs as possible to a particular website.

I guess that's so he and his colleagues can - down the track - berate media students and cultural studies students for wasting their time and taxpayers' money on studying such foolishness, while the rest of the caravan has moved on. But there's a downside:

The finer point of her telling a major untruth will be permitted to slip away because fame for fame’s sake fascinates.

Hmm, do I detect a moral to the tale coming on? A sting like a sharp scorpion? Is there some way - meretricious and fatuous - that Clare can be linked to others? And the intertubes be included as the last resort of infamy? Perhaps with the kind of gigantic throw - a leap from one story to another - beloved of television current affairs comperes, and sent up by The Chaser team on a regular basis.

Why surely for a past master like Akerman, old hand at concocting silly metaphors and irrelevant distractions, it's a doddle:

That the chk-chk BOOM phenomenon has played out on the national political scene here and in America and is continuing to affect the political direction of both nations seems to have escaped most media commentators, possibly because they support the aims of these left-leaning leaders.

Yet Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President Barack Obama are as much creations of the connected world as Werbeloff - and their agendas are far more destructive than a teenager’s desire for fame.

Yep, you probably hadn't realized up to this moment that there is an intricate, deep, nay profound link between the president of the United States and a boofhead bogan girl (with a tattoo of the Southern Cross on her foot) telling porkies about seeing a street shooting. They're creations of the intertubes. Oh damn you intertubes, is there nothing you're not responsible for, no crime in the streets, no scurrilous leader. Why even North Korea's atomic bomb is probably your fault. If only we knew how or why you do these things.

Rudd and Obama used activists behind the political agencies GetUp and MoveOn to sign up supporters and publicise their propaganda before their elections. Having snowed their audiences, it is now chk-chk BOOM time.

Like Werbeloff a week ago, Rudd and Obama were busily saying anything and everything to get their heads on TV and their words into the blogosphere before their respective elections. That their claims were often as false as Werbeloff’s shooting account is only now becoming apparent to many. Chk-chk BOOM.

Ah these devious creatures of the intertubes, snowing their audiences. But wait a second Akerman himself is regularly on the intertubes snowing his audience? Does this mean that his claims are as often as false as Werbeloff's shooting account? Or that perhaps there's a sinister link between him and Obama and Chairman Rudd?

Who knows? Could be. Meantime, Akerman is so compelled by Werbeloff's creation of the term chk-chk boom to describe the shooting that he goes into a belabored count down of all that's offended him about Obama and Rudd. Well not so much about Obama as Akerman's noir hatred for his bete noir in this sin city of ours, Kevin Rudd:

Remember the computers for schoolchildren? Chk-chk BOOM.

Rudd’s claim that “I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist?” Chk-chk BOOM.

And so on. I counted some fifteen chk-chk booms deployed at this point in Akerman's column, detailing lies and calumnies. I guess when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. But you know all of them already so let's cut to the chase:

It would probably be possible to fill these pages with more examples of Rudd’s untruths, fairytales, spin, call it what you will, but as he has not delivered the transparency in Government he promised in Opposition, the above should be sufficient to demonstrate his embrace of Werbeloff’s chk-chk BOOM principle.

Eureka! The chk-chk boom principle. Science at work in a tabloid.

Somewhere along the line Akerman seems to have forgotten about the disgraceful Obama - the poor socialist lad doesn't score even one chk-chk boom - and instead to round out the column, he settles for what passes as Akerman humor:

If Werbeloff’s publicity campaign had not imploded so demonstratively, she would have provided an ideal candidate for one of Rudd’s “look at moi, look at moi” moments. This would have been a couple made in heaven.

While YouTubers have now driven more than 800,000 viewings of the Kings Cross fibber and variations of her narrative, they will unfortunately have to wait for the ultimate duet, Clare Werbeloff and Kevin Rudd rapping together.

Chk-chk BOOM.

But hang on a minute, shouldn't it be Werbeloff and Akerman, seeing as how she's surfed in to town to save a tabloid columnist with a tired need for a passing gag to fill up the fish and chips wrapping? Especially as they both love the flag, and hate to see what Chairman Rudd is doing to it and the country (why he's probably a patron of the rugby league referees club).

Well I guess as a tabloid rant, it passes muster, but it sometimes feels these days as if Akerman is on cruise control, phoning it in, and now happy to descend to the most obvious levels of carpentry to cobble together a column. It's always been thus, you say? Well maybe, but to link Obama to Werbeloff and then forget to include him in the chk-chk boom rant suggests signs of vagueness in the Akerman.

I guess age gets to us all. 

Now never mind what you've learned by reading this - you already knew about Akerman hated chairman Rudd, and you quite likely had heard of Clare - and it would be possible to fill these pages with many more examples of Akerman's relentless monomania, but enough already, so how about you go about the day with a song which also features the word 'boom':

I got a girl named Daisy She almost drives me crazy
Got a girl named Daisy She almost drives me crazy
She knows how to love me, yes indeed
Boy, you don't know what she's doin' to me

Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam bam

I got a girl named Sue I said, she knows just what to do
I got a girl named Sue She knows just what to do
She rocks to the East, she rocks to the West
But she's the girl that I love best

Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti, tutti frutti, oh rutti
Tutti frutti, oh rutti
A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom

(Below: Clare Werbeloff showing off what motivates President Obama and Chairman Rudd).

* Correction: the photos at the top of this item apparently show Clare Werbeloff and a friend, not President Obama and Chairman Rudd, as incorrectly alleged by the caption. But hey, what's good enough for Akerman is surely good enough for all of us. After all, patriotism and wrapping yourself in the flag is the last refuge for politicians and tabloid newspaper columnists, as likely a set of scoundrels as you'll encounter since the days of transportation to Botany Bay.