Michael Costa, Grocery Choice, Blather, the big two, and bring on the Murdoch paywall

(Above: part of our ongoing celebration of hard hitting, full of integrity News Limited journalism, as celebrated by John Hartigan, and claimed to ensure the future of the trade).

What a frocker is always the first thought that comes to mind when we're dealing with a column by Michael Costa, one time Treasurer of NSW, and now neo con ranter for The Australian.

You know we've already got a contest going to see how many things available on News Limited sites could be stuffed behind a pay wall, with the expectation that fools would pay for the privilege of accessing it and the rest of the world would be sheltered from it.

Bernard Keane cites Six pieces of News Ltd we'd like to see behind a paywall, and who could argue with his choices - after all Christopher Pearson and Angela Shanahan are no brainers, while Andrew Bolt is such an odds on favorite no one could bet against him.

But I have to pick a bone with him. He didn't mention Janet Albrechtsen, or Greg Sheridan or Piers Akerman or Michael Costa.

Keane ducked the far reaching implications of his idea. He really should have called it the top one hundred News Limited features we'd like to see behind a paywall, and then gradually mopped up the thousand or so other features over the next year or so (sob, I'm so sorry, I didn't even list the Colebatchian moments of splendor).

Really a neo Costa like neo Michael should be a hot contender for the top ten, not just the top one hundred. Take today's column - please take it and bury it anywhere you can find a rotting dog's bone - which goes by the header Not so super markets.

It is of course a prerequisite for a commentariat columnist to display humbug and igorance while showing he doesn't know what he's talking about, and as usual Costa delivers in spades.

What can an ostensible free market proponent make of the cosy duopoly that exists in the Australian retail supermarket sector, without resorting to humbug?

Blather. Or rather cherry pick from the 2008 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report into the competitiveness of retail prices for standard groceries, which cited drought, increased international demand and rising farm costs as get out of jail cards. (Try being a farmer and getting blamed for the Coles and Woollies hi jack, but that's another story).

This conclusion sits uncomfortably with other observations within the report that seemed to highlight the clear dominance of the majors in key retail sub-categories, such as dry groceries. The ACCC observed "that gross margins have experienced larger increases in categories where Coles and Woolworths have a relatively larger share of national sales".

The report further observed that the more efficient of the two majors, Woolworths, has earning margins among the highest of all international grocery retailers. Whatever the degree of economic rent flowing to the majors because of the structure of the industry, it is clearly difficult to determine.

Nevertheless there is a problem and a public perception that this is leading to higher grocery prices.

Earning margins amongst the highest in the world leading to higher prices? Where do the public get their perceptions from? The sheep. They should just line up in the check out aisles and get shorn or clipped, as the case may be, on their way out.

So where does Costa see the problem? In a word, all we need to do is build more supermarkets.

And we don't simply because of urban planning restrictions. That's right, blame state government planning departments and local councils. It's all their fault for stopping the world from building more supermarkets, and the results are dire:

Retailers in the urban villages can't compete against the price advantages the large volume retailers have and they are limited in their consumer offerings. Eventually the areas become economically unviable and potentially urban crime zones.

Did I mention blather? From competition to urban crime zones?

And while we're at it, blaming everything under the sun, other than Coles and Woollies, how about dangerous radical community activists, who might even be green:

In states such as NSW where local government areas haven't been properly reformed the problem is even greater for retail consumers, due to the greater influence of small community interest groups, who don't even support the restrictive centres policy and seek to eliminate all retail expansion, even within the designated centres.

Oh no, there are people who think we have enough supermarkets. Surely they must be communists or at least socialists.

So I guess we're left with profound uncertainty:

Until there is a properly functioning competitive market for retail space it is impossible to gauge whether existing retail competition and retail margins are reflective of sound economic factors, or monopolistic rent seeking behaviour.

Come on down cosy mall owners and cosy big two duopolistic retailers, all's well in the world.

Costa has spoken and you can now go off and chortle into your after-work beers, knowing you'll be safe and sound when the likes of Costa get to writing about the retail supermarket situation in Australia.

Oh and as for Choice and the abolition of the Grocery Choice website, which saw the federal government buckle to the demands, and innuendos of the cosy duopolists? Well of course you'd expect neo con Costa to be on the side of the big two.

Has he seen the proposed site in operation, does he know how it might have actually worked before the government killed it five days from launch? Of course not, but never let ignorance get in the way of bliss:

The failure of Grocery Choice will, for political purposes, no doubt be blamed on the major supermarket chains. The reality is that with or without the co-operation of these supermarket chains, this was a ham-fisted way to address retail competition.

Eer for political purposes the blame is being fixed on the site, which no one has seen in actual operation. You know, because they're just a ham fisted bunch of consumerists. Who else to blame but Choice. Definitely not the big two or the federal government:

Despite the claims of Choice, the self-appointed friend of consumers, there was no chance of the website working properly or gaining broad community participation. The problem for consumers has never been information; it has been a real lack of competitive alternatives at the point of the actual retail spends. If Choice wants to bat on with Grocery Choice it should do it at its own expense, not with taxpayers' funds. A subscription-based service will prove whether there is a real public demand for this sort of information.

Self-appointed friend of consumers? Well I guess that makes Michael neo con Costa the self appointed friend of blather or of the big two, Woollies and Coles.

Funny isn't it. In a column where Costa claims that there is no way of working out the implications of current pricing policies by the big two, he decries an attempt to provide transparency in pricing. A transparency the big two stormed down to Canberra to prevent, by emitting a smoke screen of blather about technical difficulties worthy of a Costa.

Yep, the sooner we get Costa behind a paywall the better, and then we'll see if there's a real public demand for this kind of columnist.

Piers Akerman, gay lords, biting bullets, pillow biters, the gay mafia and homophobia alive and well in Sydney

(Above: one for Piers).

It takes a while for the benign mask, the facade of tolerance, to slip from Piers Akerman as he pens his column Gay lords should bite the bullet on Bruno.

The arguments ostensibly over tolerance, and a couple of gays getting upset over Sacha Baron Cohen's character Bruno.

It doesn't happen in the column itself, it comes out in a comment on a comment:

Glenn you’ve given up your own argument. You say the Mardi Gras crowd is camping it up, and I agree but so is Bruno. Let him go. Let people have fun. While I’ve got your attention, I deplore the constant homosexual parade attacks on nuns, particularly; I’ve spent too much time in St Vincent’s Hospice, run by the good Sisters and watched them care for victims of AIDS with the same charity they show all their patients.

Yep, you've got it. The Mardi Gras sticks in Piers' craw. Especially the penguins. So Bruno's fine but gay penguins are bad (especially those naughty gay penguins in the zoo that became parents).

But how to say it, without seeming to be offensive to the gay community (not that you'd ever call them gay, when homosexual will do).

Well natch, that's an easy one. Seize on the couple of gays protesting Sacha Baron Cohen's creation Bruno, exude an abundance of tolerance in the most ingeniously intolerant ways you can imagine, no doubt chortling into the keyboard all the while, and the result's a hell for leather attack on the Mardi Gras:

If it's okay for a couple of hundred men to prance along Oxford St with feather dusters strapped to their backsides during the Mardi Gras, who could be offended by comic Sacha Baron Cohen dressing up like a homosexual fashion designer and camping it up?

Sure, nothing wrong with that. We all love a laugh, and while I don't think much of Cohen's comedy stylings, it's certainly no worse than The Chaser boys sending up dying kids. And the commentariat columnists just loved that routine.

And we all love to dress up as nuns in penguin suits and camp about. Nothing wrong with that. Oops, sorry, forgot that's a tad sensitive. Well how much do we actually like the Mardi Gras?

The Mardi Gras crowd likes to attract attention. For years, Mardi Gras organisers have claimed that their parade draws such a huge audience that, realistically, if everyone they boasted shows up actually did show up they could not fit on Oxford St even if they were jammed cheek-to-cheek, as it were.

Cheek to cheek. Chortle. Not that there's that many cheeks.

The organisers like to proclaim they are proudly out there, sometimes they are offensively out there.

Oh dear, here it comes. Poor sensitive soul Piers has been offended after all, and here I was thinking he was preaching tolerance in the name of comedy stylings.

There is no other display of high-camp behaviour in the homosexual world that matches the Mardi Gras, even if it is getting a little tedious with its tired old attacks on Christianity (but not Islam) and its stereotypical marching boys and dancing queens.

Tedious, tired, stereotypical. Anti-Christian, pro Islamic. And those Islamics are just so tolerant of gay folk.

But don't worry, we all just love poofters, deep down we do, especially when cheek to jowl with Bruno. But aren't the taxpayers involved in this other kind of tedious stereotyping when they should be funded by Hollywood?

The Mardi Gras mob get grants from the NSW Government and the Sydney City Council to fund this display of stereotypes.

Shouldn’t Thompson and Burns be objecting to the expenditure of public money on an event that only reinforces the high-camp image of the gay community?

Yes, it's scandalous, no doubt about it. Public funding for a display of stereotypes. Spending public money on this kind of tomfoolery. But how about getting down and dirty with the agitators?

Burns is a serial litigant. He sued John Laws for using the expression “pillow-biter” during a program and The Footy Show for lampooning Elton John.

The origin of the term “pillow-biter” is interesting. It came to public notoriety when British MP Jeremy Thorpe, a former leader of the UK Liberal Party (not to be in any way confused with the Australian Liberals) was accused of having a homosexual affair with a model, Norman Scott.

During an extraordinary trial, Scott claimed that Thorpe had subjected him to various sex acts during which he had no recourse but to “bite a pillow”. Thorpe was acquitted but the English language embraced a new expression.

Eer, actually not so much the English language doing the embracing, as poofter bashers embracing yet another jolly good expression in their witty armory, along with sundry tabloids of a like mind and kind. 

Why not explain at the same time the origins of such affectionate terms as queer as a three bob note, or shirt lifters or wooly woofters or turd burglars or freckle punchers or jobby jabbers or chutney munchers or arse jesters?

All in the interest of discovering how the English language just loves to embrace new expressions. Which happen by a remarkable coincidence to express contempt for gays (unless of course you happen to use those terms for heterosexual couples not above a bit of cock sucking or arse fucking).

But go on Piers, do tell us about the movie:

I don’t know whether or not Baron Cohen’s new film Bruno promotes a stereotypical view of homosexuals. I haven’t seen it.

WTF. You haven't seen it? You don't have a clue about what you're ostensibly talking about. Then WTF is this column all about? Ah I get it, it really is just an excuse to bash the Mardi Gras:

But I do know that it would have to work hard to beat the Mardi Gras’ record for promoting the stereotypical perspective.

Well damn it, let's ban the thing then. But first show us your own impeccable tolerance:

Homosexuals come in most shapes and sizes.

They are not universally limp-wristed, nor do they all lisp, but nor are they uniformly creative or musical or good dancers. They are just people.

Some of them, clearly, like to prance up Oxford St.

Many of them don’t.

And some of them do, and why should Akkers care? Because it's an inverted double flip parallel entry chance at a bit of fun at the notion that gay people might like to dance in the street. He just wants to stir the pot in his usual way.

If Thompson and Burns don’t like the idea of Bruno, they should be even angrier about the Mardi Gras but I can’t find any evidence that either of them have ever complained about the Mardi Gras’ depiction of their friends.

Baren Cohen has done it again. He has outraged a minority, has exposed a deep vein of hypocrisy and probably attracted more viewers than he thought would ever pay to see Bruno.

Speaking of a deep vein of hypocrisy ...

And as always, having stirred the pot and dog whistled away, Akkerman gets exactly the reaction he wanted:

Always beware of a group that can’t laugh at itself.

Well said in your article Piers these outraged folks are the sort that want to have it all their own way.

Good on “Bruno” I wasn’t going to see the film but now....

I’m not anti gay as long as they don’t go around shoving their lifestyle down your throat!

I note, almost incidentally, Piers, that you steadfastly refuse to use the popular term “gay” in reference to the same-sex oriented.

Good on you.

Well I guess I'm not anti-gay either so long as they don't shove a cock down my throat. I keed, I keed, I'm just so tolerant I frequently bend down and stick my bum up in the air. But what else has Piers' pals got to offer?

I think you just “blew” Piers a glowing endoresment. Keep the good work “up” chap.

He’s not denying you to go and flaunt your feather, he’s merely suggesting it’s hypocrisy to want to sue the arse off a straight bloke that’s taking the piss out of you.

On and on they go. Tremendous sport, great fun, slagging off every which way:

Thats actually how the dinosaurs became extinct - one of the Diplodocus’ brought in an early copy of Kylie’s ‘Better the Devil You Know’, and before you knew it there were dinosaurs in mesh shirts and waving glow sticks, grinding up on each other.

And there's more, but really I can't be stuffed trawling through all the half arsed, half cocked comments. Possibly left by rugby  footballers who stick their heads up other boys' bums to show how tough they are? Wait, just one more:

The gay mafia are trying to censor films by trying to ban Bruno. Too many politicians are grovelling and bending over to the gay mafia to get their votes. At least Keating did not, I recall his famous quote that two gays and a cockerspanial do not make a family.

Taxpayers and ratepayers should stop paying the for the Mardi Gras, and it should be banned altogether to stop Aids and drug abuse and voilence by drunken thugs. Sydney should look at how Moscow deals with gays.

And they reckon homophobia is dead in Sydney. In your dreams ...

And John Hartigan thinks quality journalism will save newspapers. In your dreams ...

Akkers hadn't even bothered to see the movie before shooting off at the mouth ... does not knowing what you write about qualify as quality journalism?

(Below: another one for Piers).

Greg Sheridan, the Iranian crisis, the secular humanist crisis and a load of hot air

How's this for a mouthful from Greg Sheridan?

The truth is the language and practice of human rights advocacy in the West has become completely corrupted by the postmodern ideologies of the contemporary Left. In this parallel universe all crimes are a subset of imperialism and the only true villains are the US, Israel and, for us, Australia.

Dearie me, he must have been drinking with Hal G. P. Colebatch.

I guess he knows all about parallel universes, because he must live in one.

I can't recollect the time that being left involved supporting a theocratic state. For that matter I can't recollect the time that the word "postmodern became so corrupted and meaningless it could be applied as a term of abuse to the ideologies of the contemporary left.

The last I looked postmodernism described movements after what had come to be termed the modernist movement. Which means you can have postmodernist Christians, or even - gasp - postmodernist newspaper columnists, not to mention postmodernists artists and postmodernist wankers.

The word is so vague (here) that whenever I read it as a term of abuse I think it might have just been so much more sensible and honest to use a decent, straightforward term of abuse. You know, like "deadshit ideologies of the contemporary left".

Sheridan sounds like a man in his cups, ranting at the world in his column West's hypocrites betray Iranians. So let's keep checking in with the rant:

When Frank Brennan commented that the Victorian human rights charter had been ineffective in its own terms and had little to do with human rights, but had become "a device for the delivery of a soft Left sectarian agenda", he was, perhaps somewhat unconsciously, making a broader point about the debasement and collapse of authentic human rights advocacy in the West.

Perhaps somewhat unconsciously? Choke on the stupidity of those words in a Sheridan bizarro world where a comment about the Victorian human rights charter (by a Catholic priest) is somehow taken to reveal something about the debasement and collapse of authentic human rights advocacy in the West!

Blather, unadulterated blather. Or perhaps I should say postmodernist blather. To use a Jesuit priest to upbraid leftists about theocracy in Iran. Bizarro world has a new superman.

But what about going back to old wounds, clearly still suppurating?

What about The Age's cartoonist Michael Leunig, who once drew a cartoon so morally obtuse, stupid and offensive that it was happily accepted by an Iranian newspaper in a competition for cartoons that would offend Jews (the cartoon was submitted without Leunig's knowledge), but who is apparently unmoved to draw an image in sympathy with young Iranian democrats?

Let's not get back into the cartoon controversy, since even the gratuitous Sheridan has to quickly add the qualification that Leunig did not submit the cartoon in question to the competition, and so did not at the time display sympathy with Iranian posturing.

That's old news, an old controversy and an old slur. What's interesting now is how you can be hung, drawn and quartered for not drawing a cartoon to Greg Sheridan's specifications? Here's an idea. Why not commission a cartoon on the subject? Put your own money where your righteous, indignant, flapping mouth is. Or try doing your own cartoon. Make sure it features a clown.

Personally I blame Leunig for not writing Shakespeare's fortieth play, a transposition of the Romeo and Juliet theme into a Persian setting, but that's now a private matter between us. What conclusion can we draw from his failure to jump through Greg Sheridan's hoop?

The conclusion must be that many Western human rights organisations, and many of the most self-congratulatory and morally vain posturers, are not interested in human rights at all. They are interested in advancing a soft Left sectarian agenda. Except, of course, that the word soft may be wholly misplaced.

Sectarian agenda? WTF. What exactly is that supposed to mean? You know in the old days I understood the word sectarian via the kind of humor in Monty Python's Life of Brian, with its fun about splitters in the left. 

But really when it comes down to it, credit where credit is due. It's religion that showed just how to pursue a relentless bigotry and hatred between groups - think no further than Protestants and Catholics in the good old days, think no further than Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Next step for Sheridan? Why not a hearty lecture on liberal fascism?

And yes perhaps the word "soft" should be applied to soft cock newspaper columnists jumping up and down on the spot in an imitation of Chicken Little while doing fuck all for human rights or world freedom. You know in a self-congratulatory and morally vain way, posturing in prose like a prize gherkin.

You can read the rest of the diatribe for yourself, as Sheridan attempts to maintain the rage. 

Oh and the result of the war in Iraq? Iran's corrupt theocratic regime strengthened, to the obvious discontent of its people, and Iraq slipping ever more closely and dangerously into its slipstream.

And the next time I get abused for being a martial materialist opposed to religion - in whichever guise it comes along - I'll be able to remind people that at the same time I'm supposedly a derelict supporter of a theocratic regime.

That's right: secular humanists in Australia bad; secular humanists in Iran good.

Talk about hypocrites; talk about Greg Sheridan.

If John Hartigan wants a good example why shoddy, shonky, hysterical column writing is worth a pinch of shit when it comes to thinking about buying a newspaper, he should look no further than Greg Sheridan.

On a lighter note, why am I reminded of Monty Python when I read Sheridan? Is he a combination of the Black Knight and John Cleese as Reg in Life of Brian? Whatever, I've run it before, but I felt the need for a cleansing laugh after immersing myself in nonsense:

Judith: I do feel, Reg, that any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
Reg: Agreed. Francis?


Frank:
Yeah. I think Judith's point of view is very valid, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--


Stan:
Or woman.


Francis:
Or woman... to rid himself--


Stan:
Or herself.


Francis:
Or herself.


Reg:
Agreed.


Francis:
Thank you, brother.


Stan:
Or sister.


Francis:
Or sister. Where was I?


Reg:
I think you'd finished.


Francis:
Oh. Right.


Reg:
Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man--


Stan:
Or woman.


Reg:
Why don't you shut up about women, Stan. You're putting us off.


Stan:
Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.


Francis:
Why are you always on about women, Stan?


Stan:
I want to be one.


Reg:
What?

Stan:
I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.

Reg:
What?!

Loretta:
It's my right as a man.


Judith:
Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?


Loretta:
I want to have babies.


Reg:
You want to have babies?!


Loretta:
It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.


Reg:
But... you can't have babies.


Loretta:
Don't you oppress me.


Reg:
I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!


Loretta:
[crying]


Judith:
Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.


Francis:
Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.


Reg:
What's the point?


Francis:
What?


Reg:
What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
Francis:
It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.


Reg:
Symbolic of his struggle against reality.



I wonder how Greg Sheridan would cope with transsexuals for intellectual and sexual freedom in Iran? Or in Australia, for that matter.

John Hartigan, paranoia in the mainstream media, the intertubes and Pollyanna predicts a bright future for newspapers

(Above: John Hartigan).

(Correction: this is not the John Hartigan referred to below).

(Correction: above is the John Hartigan who appears in the graphic novels entitled Sin City. See, finally got it right. Wrong, but not for long).

Dearie me, is John Hartigan feeling the heat or what. 

The poor stressed thing delivered a speech on the future of journalism to the National Press Gallery today (no doubt you'll be able to catch it online at the ABC in due course, and it was full of fear and loathing about the intertubes.

Why he could have been the CEO for Sony.

A few of the lines that caught the eye:

Then there are the bloggers.

In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for - something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

Fuck me dead. Nailed it in one. But I'm not sure whether he's talking about Tim Blair or Andrew Bolt, who by an irony of ironies is on the same page as the faithful Herald Sun's report of the speech boasting about 1 million hits a month. I can't begin to quote the massive ignorance you find there, right under John Hartigan's pious, righteous nose.

Oh yes, from the team that brought you the news that wacko Jacko is still alive.

Pray tell me more:

Andrew Keen, in his book The Cult of the Amateur, cites Hurricane Katrina as an example when:

“reports from people at the scene helped spread unfounded rumours, inflated body counts and erroneous reports of rapes and gang violence in the New Orleans Superdome – all later debunked by mainstream news media”.

Ah yes Andrew Keen, prize dork and intertubes hater. Funny, you could actually turn to the mainstream news media, which in the early days of Katrina were as hopelessly disorganized as the Bush administration, and quote all kinds of facts they got wrong, exaggerated or fed erroneously out into the ether. Fair enough. Shit happens. But the next time I see News Ltd refer to bloggers or run some YouTube video, or proudly announce the launch of a piece of crap like The Punch, I think I might choke on the vomit of hypocrisy.

But wait, there's more, as the poor besieged Hartigan can sense his business model wafting out the window. Let's have a bit more of Keene:

Citizen journalists, he says, simply don’t have the resources to bring us reliable news. They lack not only expertise and training but access to decision makers and reliable sources.

Um actually bloggers aren't citizen journalists in the usual run of things. They're bloggers. They do it as a hobby. There's a few who do it more seriously and make money from it, but they're an extreme minority.

If that's the best straw dog you've got, you really are stuffed (and no, the fact that I once earned a living as a journalist means nothing when you just have fun writing a blog).

But let's have a little more paranoid victimization of the hapless mainsteam media to set the tone of the debate:

The difference, he says (Keene), between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.

Like Keating’s famous “all tip and no iceberg”, it could be said that the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insight.

As Robert Thomsen of The Wall Street Journal says: “The blogs and comment sites are basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of creation. And their cynicism about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting it.”

WTF. Now we're talking about Frank Browne? That was back in the fifties under Ming the Merciless. How many journalists in Australia have lately done a Judith Miller? By golly, has Deep Throat got a lot to answer for when it comes to delusions of grandeur for journalists.

As for the criticism, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. And take your squillions with you.

Oh dear, and then it gets personal, though Hartigan for some reason doesn't even have the guts to name the site in question:

One of the best known comment sites in Australia matches this identikit.

It started as a moralising soapbox; boasting about its lack of standards. Positioned as an underdog, it lectures mainstream media every day.

In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart.

Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification.

What, like Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman?

Or you mean like citing a mysterious site on the basis of 'you all know who I mean' - snigger - but meantime let me indulge in a little vilification of this unnamed site.

Radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence are common.

Dang there you go again defaming Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt.

One Australian blogger who shoots first and checks facts later is proud to boast that his site is “Not wrong for long”.

Mainstream media understands, most of the time, that comment and opinion is legitimised by evidence.

Opinions, however strongly held, draw their legitimacy from the factual accuracy that underpins them.

Many of these sites and bloggers say their radical new approach is a modern form of participatory democracy.

But as Andrew Keen says, amateur journalism trivialises and corrupts serious debate – it degenerates democracy into mob rule and rumour milling.

For the love of god, stop defaming Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, and while you're at it, leave Piers Akerman alone. We love the lads. Surely you have a kind word for the tabloids, just as they've broken the story that wacko Jacko might still be alive and in hiding:

Take this list of important stories of recent years:

- John Howard’s leadership promise to Peter Costello;

- Marcus Einfeld’s downfall;

- Bundaberg Hospital’s trail of death;

- Tougher restrictions on P Plate drivers;

- New laws that mean rape victims don’t have to give evidence in open court.

These stories had two things in common.

First, they had serious impact and influence – on everything from a change of government, to the conviction of criminals to new legislation.

Second, they were all broken by tabloid newspapers.

Tabloids have also run most of the important campaigns in recent years.

Perhaps the best, was the Sunday Herald Sun’s campaign that led to an incredibly expensive breast cancer drug being listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

It meant the women who needed it could afford it – potentially saving their life.

Great press campaigns shape new laws and change history. They build a bridge between public opinion and public policy.

But, according to some, if the headline type is too big and the page size too small, they don’t qualify as quality journalism.

Great, well you won't have to worry about falling readership and a drop at the box office. People will be lining up to pay to keep tabloids alive.

What a pity you started giving all the content away for free.

Oh I get it now, here's the argument for payment for online content:

Which brings me finally to the future of journalism being the journalism itself.

Demand for news – in print and online – is much larger than it was for print on its own.

In the past year, the Beijing Olympics, Obama’s election, the GFC, the bushfires, the British expenses scandal and Michael Jackson’s death have all shown how large the audience can be for big stories with huge consequences.

I believe the appetite for quality news and information will grow dramatically.

People will pay for it if it is good enough.

Think you can stuff that genie back into the bottle? Good luck.

If I could see a show of hands - is there any journalist in this room who hasn’t heard of The Punch?

The Punch has taken off like a rocket since it was launched in May – our target was to achieve traffic of 80,000 users in the first month. It’s actually achieved almost 200,000.

I know it’s early days. But I think the success of The Punch is because it’s different; it’s surprising, it’s entertaining and it’s relevant.

Er, it's actually just a blog - you know, the kind you just reviled - and for one so heavily financed and promoted by main stream media a pretty feeble one, which relies way too heavily on YouTube and other intertube connections to spice up a motley collection of generally feeble columns. A hit is a hit but isn't a finance plan. And worse, I can't use it to line the bottom of my canary cage.

On and on Hartigan rants, but I lost interest. If you want to read it in detail, you can go here to John Hartigan address to the National Press Club.

For free. Unless of course you watched it for free on the FTA ABC.

If you click through, there you will read an opimistic Pollyanna in full denial mode, full of the joys of News Limited without understanding the form of future things which will replace the current dinosaur model.

And in full scale 'it can't happen here' denial, after running through a litany of newspaper disasters in the UK and the USA:

It has been assumed, without any rigorous scrutiny, that Australian newspapers will go the same way as their US and British peers.

Some say the trends are the same; we are just a year or two behind.

Frankly, I’m dismayed at how many Australian journalists seem to accept this. Some are even willing to stick their byline on this opinion.

I mean, at its most basic, it’s just bad reporting. There’s almost no evidence.

For starters, newspaper ad revenue in Australia has been growing – not declining over the past five years as it has in the US and the UK.

Even in the past year, the decline in ad revenue in Australia is a fraction of what’s been happening overseas.

Good, keep on with the ostrich head in the sand routine Mr. Hartigan. If you don't get it, you don't get it. And when you have to get it, it might well be too late.

And slagging off the online opposition and the bottom feeders won't help you get it either. The more you slag off the opposition while celebrating your own web 2.0 strategies, I wonder which brother is from another planet:

But, what drove readership and web traffic was the content.

Readers embraced the opportunity to sign online condolence books and write tributes to victims.

We set up online forums so readers could search for news of those lost and those rescued.

In the past year, The Wall Street Journal lifted its cover price and circulation went up 3 per cent.

Traffic to the Journal’s website has doubled in 18 months - to 23 million unique visitors a month. A large number of them are paying for customised premium content.

The Journal is not achieving these numbers by sacking journalists. It’s been hiring them.

So, whether its business, travel, food or major news stories I can't subscribe to the view that newspapers don’t have a future.

Ah the hope of the WSJ. Why we even have the AFR here charging for its specialized content. But here's the thing, for all you talk of the wonders of tabloids. Will people pay for the dross of the Daily Telegraph, or the Herald Sun, or even a once proud broadsheet like The Adelaide Advertiser, reduced to tabloid pap in the Murdoch years? When they can hop over to the ABC or the BBC for basic news, minus a lot of the excruciating drivel and trivia, for free. 

Good luck. But now how about a bleat about spongers and leeches and spivs who are sucking the marrow from the trailblazing mainstream media:

So it’s worth examining what’s happening.

Obviously plenty of people are reading journalism online. But is it any good and what will make people pay for it?

The most profitable sites, in fact the only ones making serious money are the sites that aggregate news, like Google and Yahoo.

They pay nothing for content produced by newspaper journalists but make money by supplying it in easily searchable forms online.

The major media outlets have encouraged them to take a free ride on our content. It’s called search engine optimisation.

And when we started our own sites, we didn’t charge anyone to read them, even though the content is produced at massive cost.

The problem is, an online reader generates about 10% of the revenue we can make from a newspaper reader.

So, for every reader we lose from the paper we need to pick up 10 online.

Then there are the news commentary sites, like The Huffington Post, Newser and the Daily Beast and in Australia sites like Crikey and Mumbrella.

Most of the content on these sites is commentary and opinion on media coverage produced by the major outlets.

These sites are covered in links to wire stories or mainstream mastheads. Typically, less than 10% of their content is original reporting.

The sites that produce a high proportion of original content aren’t making a profit. Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications.

Ah the aggregators, who right now no doubt are circulating a short Reader's Digest version of your speech, spreading it out on the intertubes and paying you nothing for your intellectual content. Filthy beasts, but let's see how you go shaking them down to pay for what they get for free.

Meantime, can I be presumptuous and summarize the content in your speech?

News Limited great; initiatives great.

Bloggers bad.

On line aggregators bad.

Commentary and opinion sites bad.

People must pay for content to keep us afloat.

Talk to the hand, or maybe talk to the music and film industries ...

Oh and yes, I did nil research on this piece, and sucked the marrow from the bones of your speech and regurgitated it for free on the intertubes. So it goes ...

The Daily Telegraph editorial team and he's alive

Credit where credit is due.

We know the entire intertubes is full of loons - it's one giant loon pond, full to overflowing some days.

Naturally enough in the outer reaches of the loonasphere, there would inevitably come conspiracy theories about Michael Jackson faking his death. After all, in a country where an amazing six per cent of Americans believed the moon landings were faked (and a further 5% were undecided), conspiracy theories are as natural as breathing or sliced bread.

Amazingly one poll even suggested that more than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the twin towers attacks, and 16% speculated that secretly planted explosives were the real reason the towers collapses. These loons have clearly never wired a building for detonation, let alone a skyscraper.

Confronted with this kind of outer limits madness (which makes the Twilight Zone seem like a series of television documentaries), what's a respectable newspaper to do? Encourage them, delight in them, print them and mock them, or print them and celebrate them?

Easy peasy.

There's journalism and then there's tabloid newspapers. Come on down to loon pond, the entire editorial team at the Daily Telegraph.

Not only does the tabloid regurgitate the stories taken from half baked websites, feeding off the intertubes like piranha - or rather, like seagulls offering up well chewed fish to their young from their gullet - but the editorial team make hay with the other haymakers. They relish the fun. 

The out of course is to call them all wacky conspiracy theories, as any serious journalist would do. Then join in the folly with gusto.

As well as a lovingly detailed story, they issue an urgent plea - Have you seen Jacko? Send us your pictures - and even offer you a chance to vote in a poll. Naturally they've got 22% of voters saying they believe Jacko is alive.

Really it should have been a full hundred per cent - clearly the seventy seven per cent who said they didn't think he was alive haven't got a sense of humor.

Then they label the decision to put Michael Jackson's body on display as a freak show, when now it looks like it might be the only way to stop the freaks from thinking that Jackson has freakishly survived. Seeing as how the rumor mongers are whipping up paranoid conspiracy theories. You know, the ones asking the world to report Michael Jackson sightings and to send in their photos (it's not bitterness or envy that makes us ask for photos of mermaids, ghosts, aliens, fairies, pixies, and the real Santa Claus, so much as a desire for respect as a serious site dedicated to breaking hard hitting news stories).

I guess it's all part of the game called fish and chips wrappings, but why do I always feel when I'm within ten feet of the Daily Terror at a newstand that it's leaching my mind out of my body and converting it into woodchip with an efficiency even a Tasmanian Gunns mill couldn't manage? 

Time to start wearing the tin hat again? Or should it be made of aluminium?

Speaking of "He's Alive", that's the title of a Twilight Zone episode in which Dennis Hopper plays a bush-league fuhrer who's coached by Adolf Hitler in the art of swaying a crowd by speechifying. The closing narration by Rod Serling runs thus:

Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare - Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami, Florida; Vincennes, Indiana; Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there's hate, where there's prejudice, where there's bigotry. He's alive. He's alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He's alive because through these things we keep him alive.

Golly, maybe it's time for The Daily Terror to write a Michael Jackson episode, where he returns from the grave to coach folk in the art of swaying a crowd by music making. 

But wait, that'd be fiction, and the Terror is a newspaper.

So they say.

(Below: Dennis Hopper in his prime).

Janet Albrechtsen, Barry O'Farrell, the Daily Terror and a confederacy of dunces

(Above: Mt. Druitt Monopoly. Me and the Daily Terror into stereotypes? Not likely).

Way back when possums, likely enough before some of your children were born - should you be lucky enough to have children and seek to give them the best of Australian educational opportunities - the Daily Telegraph published a story full of sage advice about the best place to go to get that education.

Or rather where not to go, which happened to be Mount Druitt High School. Well we all knew that anyway - there be dragons out Druitt way - but it was peculiarly pungent story, with a front page headline "The class we failed" as a way of drawing attention to the fact that no student had scored a TER (Tertiary Entrance Rank) above 50 when the top mark possible was 100.

The angle in the story was that the paper believed the state and its educational facilities had failed the students, but the paper also ran a photo identifying the students. Who somehow thought this also branded them as failures, losers and dropkicks. 

Even better, the students took the Terror to court, won the action, achieved damages settled out of court, and got the paper to publish an apology:

The apology, published November 13, states in part: "In that story The Daily Telegraph suggested, among other things, that the students in the class of 1996 failed their HSC.

"This is wrong and The Daily Telegraph withdraws any such suggestion. The Daily Telegraph also withdraws any suggestion that those students acted without discipline or commitment in their HSC studies.

"The students in the HSC class of 1996 successfully completed their HSC and contrary to the suggestions in the original article many of those students performed very well scoring high marks in the HSC.

"The Daily Telegraph apologises to each student in the class of 1996 at Mt Druitt. It also apologises to their parents and friends for all the hurt, harm and suffering it has caused them." (here)

Not that the Terror was truly sorry, as it maintained a rather truculent recalcitrance, at least if News Limited CEO John Hartigan can be taken as a guide:

The words in the story pointed to deep-seated problems within the education system, but a barrister convinced the jury that, regardless of the words before him, what we really meant to say was that the entire class was too stupid to pass the HSC. (here)

Damn you activist lawyers, damn you all to hell (and to hell with juries too, bet they were educated out Druitt way).

Now you might have thought that this never happened, at least if you happen to read Janet Albrechtsen's NSW Liberals bottom of the class.

Dame Slap soundly spanks the bottom of Barry O'Farrell, leader of the Liberal opposition, for daring to vote with the Greens in the upper house to block NSW Labor party legislation designed to repeal a twelve year old ban on publishing comparisons of schools based on common testing results such as the HSC, the school certificate and national NAPLAN testing of literacy and numeracy.

Just as the Liberals are trying to present themselves as a moderate alternative to an incompetent Labor government - there's been a studious playing down of the fringe right wing loons who used to set policy - they've copped a bucketing from the right wing commentariat, who no doubt prefer to see the incompetent Labor government continue to reign. Hey, it's a fresh round of indignant columns for years to come. 

O'Farrell's doing a delicate balancing act to avoid a stoush with the NSW Teachers' Federation, and given that the state government doesn't have much of signficance to do outside education, health, energy, water, sewerage and transport, you can see why he's sensitive. 

Farrell's also upset Dame Slap by refusing to vote to sell off the state's electricity assets, no doubt thinking that's a job he can tackle when in power, but Dame Slap doesn't seem to worry about winning so much as an unflagging addiction to core Liberal Party principles. It seems she's never heard of core and non-core promises, which suggests she simply fails to understand the teachings of her idol John Howard or the art of politics.

At the heart of it, you wonder how much it's actually to do with educational principles, so much as a chance for Dame Slap to bash the powerful teachers' unions.

Dame Slap dresses it all up as helping the students:

The reforms, depicted by unions as a wicked conservative agenda to shame schools and punish children, were squarely aimed at improving the lives of those who most needed it: the country’s most disadvantaged students. Uncovering schools that were failing them and encouraging best practice among all schools sat at the reformist centre of politics.

Eer actually it's pretty easy to find out which schools are failing, and which have a high percentage of dropkick losers in them already. Doing something about it - which would involve spending money, and not on rich private schools - is what politicians struggle with, as the rich get their school snouts into the public trough. But hey ho, who cares, that just makes me sound like a member of the teachers' union. After all, if reformism means redistribution of wealth, I must be little better than a rabid communist leftie.

Part of the fear at both a national and state level is that the tabloid media - who could believe the Terror has reformed its ways - will trawl through the data and produce simplistic reports on schools, failures and dropkick losers. (Sure we already know the answer - anybody who lives in the west is by definition a bogan and anyone who lives in the country is a hick - but backing up that prejudice with unimpeachable data is surely good for a paper wanting to kick an education minister's head).

Now the federal government while becoming an enthusiastic supporter of accountability and transparency and yadda yadda, has also tried to implement in its legislation mechanisms which will prevent third party exploitation of the data, which is designed supposedly to be of benefit to parents and students.

Co-conspirator with O'Farrell, John Kaye of the Greens, presents this kind of argument:

The Greens, the Coalition, the conservative crossbench of the NSW upper house, the independent Gordon Moyes and principals, parents, teachers and their unions - public and private sector - believed it was only a matter of time before media harvested the data and produced simplistic league tables.

The subsequent ranking of schools would have had unacceptable consequences for education in all schools, would have badly misled parents and would have unnecessarily, unjustly and unproductively stigmatised schools at the bottom of the table.

As you'd expect of this kind of pious holy joe, he proposes an alternative strategy:

These tests were not designed to rank schools. League tables would swamp with false and misleading information the debate about schooling and parental decision-making. This is what happened in New York.

Schools that perform daily miracles would be stigmatised and humiliated by ranking that says they are failing. While many schools are struggling and need help, league tables inevitably traduce the reputations of excellent institutions and their communities. This is what happened in Britain and the US.

For schools not coping - and teachers, parents, politicians and education bureaucrats know which ones - the solution is not public shaming but more resources, more teachers and, in some cases, new directions. (School league tables must be stopped).

Well that's all tosh to bull at a gate Dame Slap, even though the federal Liberals also began to drop the ball when it comes to tackling the real problems surrounding the presentation of educational data.

Against that background of an emerging consensus about commonsense principles of education reform, the blundering NSW Liberal Party reveals itself as a party devoid of both common sense and principles. By siding with the Greens in the Upper House, O’Farrell’s Other Mob amended the state education act to punish newspapers with fines of up to $55,000 if they use new information to publish league tables of schools.

Not only did O’Farrell sell out Liberal Party principles, he did so knowing that he cannot stop the production of tables on the internet. Nelson was right to be disappointed. He told The Australian that he was “not an advocate of government-constructed league tables but if someone wants to construct a league table on the basis of publicly available information, they should be able to do so. The last time I looked, this was a free society.”

Oh, that's all right then, publish away. Roll on more Mt. Druitts. My tip to students - make sure you get a lawyer, a real good one. You might be shown up as dropkick losers, but you could be slightly richer drop kick losers.

And my tip to O'Farrell? Keep on keeping on, and you will reach the holy grail of power. Listen to Dame Slap and you might end up helping elect the seemingly unelectable.

Giles Autry, structuralists, feminists, post colonialists, post modernists, relativists, determinists and the whole damn thing

(Above: problems with structuralists, feminists, gender theorists, post colonialists, determinists, deconstuctionists, relativists, revisionists, communists, and other deviant post modernists sinisterly lurking in deviant fashion in your neighborhood or school? Show them some Christian love).

It's been an exciting week in loon pond, but there was a breathless hush in the close when the fustian tones of Giles Auty filled the air with a cry of despair, in The Left is killing religion.

Dear Giles bravely took as his task acting as a Greek chorus to the doom laden voice of Hal G. P. Colebatch, and his announcement that the infidels had stormed the UK body politic:

By an odd coincidence, Hal G.P. Colebatch's excellent article "UK bill an attack on faith" appeared in yesterday's The Australian about five days after I had the pleasure of delivering the annual St Edmund Campion lecture at Sydney's Campion College.

Colebatch's moving piece explained why it may soon become illegal to hang a cross in any Catholic school in Britain and asks advisedly what sort of intolerant world postmodernist totalitarianism is creating.

Anyone familiar with Elizabethan history in Britain may recall that Campion was tortured and executed in 1581 for trying to keep alive the old faith - Catholicism - in Britain after Henry VIII's historic rift with Rome in 1533.

The substance of my talk, which was called "Are we truly evolving? Reflections on the life of an Elizabethan saint", touched on the creeping influence of postmodernist totalitarianism throughout the Western world rather than only in Britain.

What a splendid yowl of despair, but I'm not quite sure of the point being made, since somehow it seems to equate the rollicking Henry VIII with postmodernist totalitarianism.

Which is a bit tragic for the postmodernist totalitarians because they haven't got a decent set of gear for dealing with troublesome tykes. No rack, no wheel, not a knee splitter, thumbscrew, foot roasting or burning at the stake in sight. Jeez, Henry was so lucky, as well as so advanced in his thinking. Relativism in relation to wives and religion.

Postmodernists lack imagination along with the equipment. But martyrdom is still freely available for the paranoid true believer in these dark, unholy times:

Anyone who has read Evelyn Waugh's biography of Campion will understand something of the extraordinary heroism through which he and scores of other martyred priests - plus thousands of devout laypeople - struggled to keep what they regarded as the true, historic Christian faith alive in Britain.

Now, instead of finding itself persecuted by Elizabethan spies, informers and hangmen, Catholicism finds itself under severe assault from the self-righteous, politically correct social engineers of Britain's political Left.

Yea verily, soon the Catholic church will have to go into a kind of underground, a V for believers, a French resistance where they devise methods to take out their relentless post modernist totalitarian foes before their foes can wipe them from the face of the earth. Martyred saints and priests will litter the streets, but they will struggle to keep the true historic Christian  faith alive.

Truly it will be righteous, but not of the self kind, and politically incorrect, because correctness is by definition incorrect.

Already Christianity in all its forms is treated with increasing contempt in societies that basically believe they have evolved and so distanced themselves from what they imagine are the old-world superstitions - and attendant moral constraints - of their past.

No never. Bring back the inquisition and indulgences I say, and as for that Galileo, retract that apology and let's get back to some real science. Discovering the exact location of the Garden of Eden and the whereabouts of Noah's Ark for a start, not to mention the ark of the covenant.

But even if we re-make the world into medieval pre Henry the VIII bliss, never discount the deviant nature of the new foe, because you see it's exclusively human:

Postmodernist ideology is an exclusively man-made - and, of course, woman-made - ideology that finds no basis whatsoever in any traditional human system of belief. Until the advent of postmodernism, communism was Christianity's most persistent and relentless recent foe.

Now postmodernism in all its largely Marxist-inspired guises - political correctness, gender theory, feminism, post-colonialism, determinism, deconstruction, relativism, structuralism, historical revisionism - has become a stealthier and thus even more sinister adversary that flourishes, generally unremarked, in our midst.

Human! Instead of a burning bush carving out ten commandments for Charlton Heston. Or was that a set of golden plates handed over by angels and returned thereto to Joseph Smith? I can get terribly confused in a relativist way when thinking on these things.

How much better the world would be with political incorrectness, and colonialism and undeterminism and constuctionism and unrelativism and destructuralism and revisionism of historical revisionists. 

Oh they're sneaky, sinister and stealthy, no doubt about it, and they lurk in our midst. Pretending they're harmless, like a cancer in the body or the body politic. Doomed to hell every man - and woman - jack of them, preaching the secular heresy.

Why oh why can't we return to the days of Victorian England, when women knew their place and men had their rightful place, and the fuzzy wuzzies did what they were told. You know, I think the fault is most likely all this democratic nonsense. It was so much better in the old days when the working class knew that they had to doff their lid to their lordship, mind their manners, keep their place and not speak out of turn:

Why has Western society, with all its proud history, generally allowed such an abject internal collapse?

American Roger Kimball, who is one of a number of international cultural commentators with whom I have corresponded through the years, explains the whole matter as well as anyone: "In a democratic society like ours, where free elections are guaranteed, political revolution is almost unthinkable in practical terms. Consequently, utopian efforts to transform society have been channelled into cultural and moral life.

Yes, those damned utopian efforts to transform society. Such an irritant. Unlike that utopian effort by Christ to transform society, which was regrettably channelled into cultural and moral life. Damn you, you utopian delusional democrats, damn you all. It was so much better when Christ's message could be hijacked by a church and used to build an empire for, by and of humans.

As for the American Civil War, you might happen to think that had a slight impact on the country. But it was nothing, nothing I tells ya, up against what these fiendish souls and their cultural revolution has wrought on the world. Why up against a hypocritical Elmer Gantry preacher, the Satanists are winning hands down:

"In America, scattered if much-publicised episodes of violence have wrought far less damage than the moral and intellectual assaults that do not destroy buildings but corrupt sensibilities and blight souls. The success of America's recent cultural revolution can be measured not in toppled governments but in shattered values.

"If we often forget what great changes this revolution brought in its wake, that, too, is a sign of its success: having changed ourselves, we no longer perceive the extent of our transformation." These wise words are taken from Kimball's The Long March.

Wise words indeed. The world has changed for the worse, no doubt about it, especially as the last round of crusades hasn't gone so well, not that these isolated episodes of violence can have as much impact as a vile secularist speaking out - like that drunken fool Christopher Hitchens. 

We're doomed, no doubt about it, and it's all because some of these fools no longer believe in counting the number of angels that could fit on a pinhead. But before we go any further, can you please look down and feel your underbelly.

Is it soft? Is it flabby? No, I'm not worried about your exercise level or your intake of Coco Pops, I'm worried about your soul:

Postmodernism corrodes society largely through assaults on its soft underbelly, principally through the effective hegemony it has created in the arts, education and culture generally.

Perhaps its most damaging corrosion has been through the politicisation of public education at the tertiary, secondary and even primary levels.

In Australia, generations of children have effectively been abducted from the influence of their parents, who often have little or no say in what - or how - their children will be taught.

Eek. The children have been abducted, taken to a remote communist camp in the foothills (I have direct evidence of these camps lurking in the Blue Mountains) and re-educated into deviant Marxist post modernist thinking with special feminist training for girls and revolutionary post colonial fervor for boys. And it's all done through the underbelly. No, not the tits on view in the TV show - though that in itself says everything you need to know - but in the flabby thinking of people who don't understand the benefits of wearing a cilice - on body and in mind - on a daily basis. Loved be  pain. Sanctified be pain. Glorified be pain.

Oops, don't know where that came from, the tits and the pain. I can sense the mind parasites are already in my head, the post modernists somehow slipped them in through my ears. Quick someone bring me some aluminium foil.

But back to the wrap up by Giles:

Now, as Colebatch makes clear, the postmodernist Left is intent on wiping out the remaining pockets of resistance that exist in private and religious schools.

I hope I am not alone in regarding this as an insult to the basic principles of democratic life.

No, don't even think it Giles. Of course you're not alone. We here in loon pond are fully supportive. There are any number of us who know the agents of doom walk stealthily amongst with steely hypocritical smiles, as they work to bring down western civilization as we know and love it.

Let's face it: Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Martin Luther, John Calvin, communists, Islamics and post modernist feminist post colonialist structuralists are one and the same.

Now if you'll excuse me, I feel somewhat faint and fearful that might be a feminist knocking at my door. Must draw the curtains and retire to bed while the men have their ports and cigars and worry about the future of the empire ...

(Below: the good old days, when reactionary relativists couldn't mutter about the Geneva convention).