Janet Albrechtsen, Compassionate Conservatives, Wanker secular liberals and mincing poodles

Julia Gillard calling Christopher Pyne a mincing poodle sets a standard, I guess, for parliamentary debate, supported by no less than Tony Abbott when he subsequently hailed her as a vigorous contributor to the fine art of cheap shots.

It does however make it a little harder to care much about it when Bill Heffernan gives her a serve. Funny that at this moment SBS should serve up that fine, now venerable documentary about Harvey Milk, presumably as a warm up to the theatrical release in the antipodes of Sean Penn's Oscar winning ways. Not much seems to have changed over the years.

But as a poodle is to a pit bull, so Gillard's coarse wit sags up against Janet Albrechtsen, who in her latest column, Tough love a hard sell, sets new standards of snarly gnarly rhetoric, as she reaches across the aisle to discuss with David Williamson just how compassionate conservatives really are.

Dame Slap really cares!

To get things going, she makes sure the terrain is carefully defined - any criticism of conservatives lacking compassion is based on lazy and crude logic. The real problem is the way the Left promote a monopoly on the stuff, and conservatives fail to articulate their compassion.

I guess the 'fuck you, greed is good', never mind about the financial meltdown recently articulated by Albrechtsen lacked a little finesse.

Ritually doffing her hat and her arguments to the wonderful John Howard and his wonderful policies, Albrechtsen promises to stay true to the core value of conservatives - namely rationality.

I guess that means Peter Costello's recent flirtation with fundie loon Christians (and John Howard before that) is just a sign of how prayer is a deeply rational form of thinking.

Albrechtsen proposes four filters when considering leftie compassion, so called - the motive filter, the intestinal fortitude filter, the brains filter and the fashion filter - and then demonstrates how hard it is for conservatives to think logically when it comes to matters of emotion.

Firstly the motive filter. She notes that under Howard activists made a big deal about the Howard government keeping children in detention centres. So did the activists have a point? No, because the Rudd government also keeps children in detention centres. "The new-found silence suggests they do not care much about detained migrants ..."

Okay logic time. So comrade Stalin keeps people in gulags, while father of the nation Hitler favors concentration camps. Is silence an indicator that their policies are admirable? Is the silence of communists about Stalin, and their rage against Hitler a piece of fair minded, rational thinking? Or should we rail against the commies, in Nationalist Socialist style, and stay silent about the concentration camps?

Is keeping children in detention centres indefinitely a good policy? Is there any ethical or social consideration here, or is all morality refracted through the looking glass of self-serving politics?

I look forward to Albrechtsen getting out on the street and protesting the cruel, inhumane detention policies of the Rudd government. Now that'd be active conservative compassion. (That's if you think life amounts to more than disguised political ploys, partisanship dressed up as nobility).

Albrechtsen doesn't say much about the fortitude filter, but maybe that's because it takes guts to sink the boot into the poor on a regular basis as dole bludging no goods and neer do wells, as opposed to the average derivatives trader's wonderful dedication to humanity. Whatever, appeasement, sucking up to that sniveling bunch of drongos after a quick and easy buck, is clearly something only Neville Chamberlain would do.

This brings on talk about the brains filter, and how important it is to apply to whingeing lefties, especially given their Howard hating ways and their attitude to indigenous Australians. Unlike conservatives, who've derided the very concept of stolen generations, and derided the notion that blacks have a hard time in this lucky country, and sent the lazy walkabout bludgers out to do a bit of hard yakka as a way to get their minds off petrol sniffing (not that compassionate conservatives are in any way inclined to stereotypes - see Noel Pearson, who also thinks blacks are a mob of sit down bludgers). 

Compassion buffs, it seems, aren't very bright, which no doubt explains why the late breaking, hasty, cynical invasion of the Northern Territory has worked out so well.

Finally it's on to the fashion filter, and those silly rubber bracelets championing every cause under the sun, like that wretched David Hicks and his supporters. Albrechtsen amazingly allows 'legitimate criticisms' - who, what, where? - in relation to something somewhere at some time somehow remotely connected with Hicks, but then she quickly moves right along, because as we all know Abu Ghraib, rendition, torture and Guantanamo Bay turned out to be such jolly good policy wins for Bush and conservatives everywhere.

Yep, it's all good. Calls for compassion that fail the four policy filters - like blowing up Iraq to convert it to democracy - it seems will now be assigned to the scrap heap by the fair minded Albrechtsen. 

Which might explain why she's happy in her arguments to revert to catch phrases deriding Howard-haters and bleeding hearts (you know, the kind who rabbit on about human rights, and anti-terror laws, as opposed to the government's right to lock up anyone anytime if they think they're terrorists, given the fine and noble job that Mick Keelty did with Dr Haneef).

But Albrechtsen really is fair, she really is. Margaret Thatcher made a mistake when she declared there was no such thing as society. There is a society, it seems, and a deep sense of care within it. Disability carers and foster parents are just two groups who deserve more help than they get. Sure, but let's hope that sense of care never extends to single mothers - those fornicating sluts deserve all they get, and should be sent off to a matchbox factory forthwith.

Then Albrechtsen gets down to what she probably thinks is the fundamental problem - conservatives need to do a much better job in the spin and hype department. Like it's all about spin and hype. For compassion you just need to tweak a really good wrong 'un Shane Warne style and bowl those stupid lefties out. Compassion, it seems, is best understood as a form of trickery.

Sounds good. Name a minority group, and I'll expose them for the phony, grasping, self serving conservative hating, bleeding heart leeches and blood suckers and assorted vampiric ghouls they are,  pumping the healthy bodily fluids, the warm succulent juices of conservative compassion, out of the body politic ... What's that you say, I need to show I'm caring and sharing and not just abuse the shit out of wankers? Ah fuck it, it's just too hard.

Yeah, you bludging blacks and feminists and gays and weirdo hippies, and you deluded greenies who've burnt down Australia and should be hung from the nearest lamp-post, fact is religious conservatives in nuclear families are far more generous than you great pretenders, you bloody secular liberals and communists and pinkos and perverts. Nah nah.

You see it's okay for a Christian to give, but not a government. Not with my bloody taxes you don't. Piss off. I'm a caring compassionate conservative. You dumb fucker.

Dearie me, will somebody just send along a decent managerial class to run the country, and send these wretched hard core ideologues off to the ghettos where they might learn a thing or two about the real world.

The funny thing is, the sort of conservatism preached in the west - with its attitude to gays, blacks, women and those sort of losers - is actually not too far removed from the kind of intolerance of outsiders and 'others' preached by Islamic fundies on the other side. Ask an Islamic fundie and a Christian fundie about evolution, and they'll agree in spades.

Ask Janet Albrechtsen about compassion, and it sounds alright in theory. If it just didn't mean getting into bed with you bludging tossers and wankers and scumbugs. 

Jeez, Janet, stay the way you are. All this caring compassionate crap is too hard, it's a real mind fuck.  I might be mangling Henry Miller a bit, but didn't he say in the land of fuck, it's fuck or be fucked?

Just go on fucking over the fucked and don't bother rationalising it. Nobody expects conservatives to be compassionate. And nobody expects you to be rational. Now out with the cane. Dame Slap time!

Clive Hamilton, Stephen Conroy and smooth baby bottom smoking

Just thought I'd sneak this in before Clive Hamilton bans the intertubes. Found it while cleaning up some family heirlooms the other day. Must date to before 1938 when Dunhill's purchased the H. L. Savory brand.

Were pipe tobacco smokers kinky or what in the old days? A smoke as smooth as a baby's bottom! What would happen to Bill Henson if he did this sort of thing these days? Lock him up with Lewis Carroll I say. Or have we just become much more childish and knee-jerk reactive these days, whipped up into an hysterical lather by columnists determined to save the children? Should we all settle down and enjoy a good smoke? Sure it kills you. But death is preferable to perversion. Briar or corn cob?

Malcolm Maiden, Fairfax Media, and the decline and fall of an empire

We don't often visit the business pages in search of loons but there was something about Malcolm Maiden's column in The Age - Fairfax moves allow it a little headroom - Media group appears to be weathering the downturn - that was utterly compelling, especially with the news reported in sister paper SMH that Fairfax Media has just taken a half year hit of a $365m loss.

Maiden does a lot of fancy toe tapping with numbers to read in the entrails that Fairfax appears to be weathering the downturn. In much the same way that New Orleans weathered Hurricane Katrina?

I look forward to Maiden's next column, explaining how white is black, red ink is an excellent future profit indicator, and just why Chairman Mao and comrade Stalin were good for their countries, in a cyclical sort of way, with an upturn sure to follow, provided costs are contained, and journalists given their marching orders (since the best newspapers run without them, in the way Fawlty Towers was an excellent hotel apart from the pesky guests).

Guys, is this the final result of banning Mike Carlton and publishing loons like Gerard Henderson? Only time will tell. Meantime, we're so happy we sold our shares while they were north of $3.50, as they recently headed to below a dollar for the first time since listing. 

Management has stuffed a couple of papers with a proud history, and as we all know all the market does is say 'told you so'. You can blame short selling if you like, but free CD's and DVD's don't constitute either sensible marketing or good editorial policies. As for online, they still haven't got their refresh functionality working properly. 

If Citigroup and Bank of America go down, or get nationalised for their incompetence in a de facto ersatz American way, we haven't begun to see what it'll be like weathering a storm. Thanks be to Bush.

Gerard Henderson, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Costello and the spirit of the hive

What I want to know is the secret meeting place where the commentariet get together to make sure there's a hegemony of ideas in all their columns. If anybody sees a gaggle of loons in a restaurant on a regular basis, please advise.

Or do the ideas float through the ether, like a collection of spectral ghosts? A kind of ectoplasm of the spirit world transmuted into bodily ideological shape? Or are all the columnists wired together by some kind of wifi communality, deep computer controlled elements waiting for a signal to collectively go barking mad? Or perhaps they're part of a master hive come from deepest space? Yes, maybe that's it, the invasion of the body snatchers has already taken place, but only right wing newspaper columnists were victims of the aliens.

The evidence for some kind of conspiracy is overwhelming. Take our favorite advisor to princes, popes and potentates, that worthy Polonius and desiccated coconut Gerard Henderson, in his column Disunity is death in Opposition.

All the talking points are there, as if learned by rote in some secret, furtive cabal.

First there's the ritual flailing and flensing away at John Hewson for daring to criticise Peter Costello. This isn't just a hatchet job, it's a beheading. For a start the form used by Hewson's missive - an 'open letter' - is a cliche. Wow. Killer point.

And then there's the notorious fact that Hewson appeared three times - three times I tells ya in a year - on the ABC's Lateline Friday forum. Talk about being infested by renegade white ants. Killer point. With splutter. He's just like - hisss - like Malcolm Fraser! Run children, hide under the bed.

But then the reason for all this is terribly clear. "Most journalists prefer Labor to the Coalition". Eer, is that a kind of "most journalists prefer vegemite to marmite" statement Gerard, backed by extensive research and statistical data Gerard, or just your own paranoid personal estimation? 

I have one of the same kind - "Most columnists employed by newspapers prefer loonacy of a coalition kind to sanity by a factor of four". I rest my case on the basis of my huge personal insights undeterred by the need for any substantiation beyond - I say it is so, and amazingly so it is.

Anyhoo, it seems this Labor loving media (you know, the kind owned by sun king Rupert Murdoch just for starters, or the eastern suburbs loving, Henderson employing Fairfax Media) just so loves the vile Hewson that no one in it has bothered to look at his role as chairman in a company that collapsed owing some $200 million. (So that explains why when you google up Hewson and Elderslie Finance Corporation you get dozens of references).

Never mind, what's a little dung throwing in the face - perhaps Hewson's like Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour and really likes it, or perhaps Gerard gets so much pleasure out of doing the throwing, like the servant in the movie, that he doesn't notice the perversity of it all. Whatever. Rule number one, always play the man, never the ball. That's what makes Liberals such a great team.

Then it's back to the future time: Despite Hewson's complaints, Costello is the person best equipped to lead the Liberal party to the next election.

Ergo the Liberal party is being run by a second eleven loser called Malcolm while the king, I mean Prince Charles, is sitting in the wings waiting to ascend the throne. How's that for a thought to help party unity!

Meaning Henderson is doing his own level best to ensure continuing discord in the party as he supports the claims of the fundie loving Costello while that clown sits on the back bench in disruptive pique at not being hailed as the chief by universal acclaim. 

Is Henderson being as perverse and dumb as Costello, who seems to get profound pleasure and a sense of mischief out of fucking over his colleagues, or is he just being dumb?

Sorry folks, but it's hard not to jump to the latter option. Henderson writes off the Liberal party's chances at the next election - forget it boys, you're gone, despite hopeful signs in the polling on the economy and national security.

So what does our Polonius advise Malcolm in the middle to do?

Turnbull should publicly accept that Costello will remain on the back bench for the foreseeable future and praise his role as the member for the seat of Higgins.

Ah Gerard you're always good for a laugh, but I fell about cacking myself and almost had an accident in my panties. "Praise him". Dear lordy lordy, Malcolm should praise Costello? Now I get why you're a columnist and not a politician accustomed to the daily thrust and parry of politics.

But it gets better. According to our Polonius, Julie Bishop should remain as deputy because she displayed a remarkable degree of selflessness in stepping down as shadow treasurer, you know like the way the Terminator allowed himself to be crushed to a pulp and flung into a pot of molten hot metal. But wait Gerard that just means she was a loser who accepted the inevitable. What else have you got for keeping her in the glorious role of sidekick, waiting to be shot in the sixth reel?

Also, answers the sage Henderson, she was one of the few senior Liberals who declined to be interviewed for the ABC1 documentary The Howard Years. "This suggests that she has good judgment." But wait a minute, John Howard allowed himself to be extensively interviewed for The Howard Years. That's right god himself! Or does that mean John Howard showed bad judgment? No, say it ain't so Gerard, not god himself. He's infinite in his mercy and understanding and his judgments.

Gerard allows him one final strategic thought - the key players, the affable team of Abbott, Brandis, Coonan, Hockey, Minchin, Pyne and Robb should all get together in a leadership advisory group in order to co-ordinate the Opposition's message. Great idea. Abbott and Minchin get along so well with Christopher 'Robin' Pyne, what a team they'll make, like Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.

Hidden messages? Well clearly Malcolm is useless as a captain, so you're going to have to do it all yourself team. And also if you want to beat Labor you have to become Labor, and learn how to behave as collectivist Stalinists rather than proud individualists. You must all speak from the same page, like parrots or like members of the hive, vetting statements of party colleagues and introducing authority to constrain Bernardi style self-indulgence. You must all speak slowly like automatons voicing the one message over and over again. Perhaps we should hand around the hat and buy the lads and ladettes Homer Simpon's AT 2000 automatic dialler message machine.

At last it becomes clear. The spirit of the hive is strong Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yes it's clear that among right wing columnists there's a hive mind at work, just like in The X Files, and they want the Liberal party to adopt the same strange, alien mechanism.

The next time you meet a commentariet columnist at a Liberal party shindig, of the kind beloved by the elite Liberal owned media, check them out, and report any signs of alien behavior. The truth is out there people, we just have to find it, and warn the world ... before it's too late.

As for Malcolm Turnbull, who is clearly not the best person to be leading the Liberal party ... if you listen to Gerard Henderson, why not just save yourself and us the trouble, and step down now, singing and praising Peter Costello with a lusty voice ...

Peter, Peter our redeemer

has become our jubilee

sent to proclaim the release

of all held in captivity.

to the blind recovered sight

the release of all oppressed

to proclaim the year of the liberal party

hallelujah jubilee.

Clive Hamilton, Stephen Conroy, Thomas Bowdler, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman star in "A Gaggle of Loons"

The other day I was refreshing my memory of Thomas Bowdler, a noble physician who published an expurgated Billy Shakespeare suitable for women and children.

Bowdler, an expert on the country matters so coarsely outlined by Billy in Hamlet, made Ophelia's death an accidental drowning (none of that suicide nonsense), changed Lady Macbeth's cry to "Out, crimson spot" (forget damned), replaced god with heavens (but left off the 'to betsy' bit), dropped the hooker character entirely from Henry IV part 2, ripped out all the sexual innuendo (there's plenty of it if you know where to look, by cock there is) and dropped any hint of piss or shit in the texts (as well as putting a note up the front of Measure for Measure saying it was totally indecent and beyond his help. Now don't go running off to read the play, you'll only wonder what the fuss was about).

As a result, Bowdler now lives on in the language through the fine active verb, to bowdlerise. (You can put a 'zee' in place of the 's' if you come from the good ol' USA).

Now I'm torn. As we live through a new age of Bowdler and the planned censorship of the tubes in Orrstralia, what's the best term to describe the phenomenon? 

Hamiltonize has a nice ring to it, but there's a downside, because the preening prat and professor of Public Ethics at Charles Stuart University might enjoy the notoriety, as a sign he's done noble work (Bowdler never took a backward step or experienced a moment's doubt). 

So immortalized, Clive Hamilton might fancy himself as a kind of antipodean intellectual and upbeat version of Mary Whitehouse (see the Wikipedia on that fascinating old biddy, and The Goodies desperate but futile attempts to get her upset, here). 

Sadly the impulse is the same. Hamilton is really just Whitehouse in drag, and with about as much intellectual justification and weight behind him in his fetishistic fear of perversion and pornography. What Hamilton wants to do is reduce the internet to a standard where it's safe for children to cruise, thereby reducing and infantilizing all adults to the same level, and never you mind about responsible parenting or home filtering. It's one in, all in, for Clive and if you disagree, you have to be a paedophile. No opting out, no voluntary filtering. And the fact that it won't work is neither here nor there.

You do have to wonder what happens when someone becomes obsessed with researching pornography. Does it show a certain tendency, in the same way that in the end Whitehouse really needed vile deeds to get on to her noble steed and tilt at windmills?

To Conroyise is an unfortunate and ugly way to turn a name to verb, but on the upside it sounds a bit like the act Conroy is proposing to perform on the intertubes. Ugly.

And let's face it, Conroy is the main man - responsible, in a Janus-like way for all that's going down, dressing his experiments up as a noble concern for children when really it's a shabby concern for Steve Fielding's vote, mixed with a passing tip of the hat to the wonderful way China manages to shut down dissidents.

When I hear the word censorship, I reach for my libertarian gun, but what really startles me is how conservatives have folded on this issue. Barely a cheep from them as they beep beep around all kinds of other issues. Yet here's the Labor party acting in a way that would make North Korea and Islamic fundies around the world cheer and dance with glee.

I'm thinking maybe Conroystirpate or maybe Conroyminate might be better, but I'm not sure whether hair pullling from the roots Terminator style, as in extirpate, is as good as exterminate, which does conjure up Conroy as a battered, electronic-voiced Dalek shouting "exterminate".

I've searched for words of wisdom from Tim Blair and assorted other loons, and found out that Blair's blog was once blocked by the Howard government's voluntary filtering system. It'd be terrible if the loon and his followers somehow ended up on Conroy's new filter list because he tried to speak on adult subjects in a childish way. But does Blair rush to speak up about Conroy and his Dr Frankenstein routine? Not in what I read.

Why this side-track? Well today Tim Blair is back on his monomaniacal hobby horse of climate change. The only fun is that he's in a state of toxic shock in Malcolm in the merits. 

Malcolm Turnbull has said that the Coalition believes Labor's aim to cut greenhouse emissions  by between 5 per cent and 15 per cent is too little!!

TOO LITTLE? For an issue that's completely bogus? Well no that was yesterday. Today Tim's language is softer. It's a problem - even if it's real - that Australia can do nothing about. And how's this for graspng at straws? There's enough in the Coalition and their Labor opponents who don't believe in global warming at all, maybe enough to build a viable political force, maybe enough to take over the government, maybe to take over the world. And from there, Mars after the planet here becomes uninhabitable.

A loon in full cry is a fine sight.

Also in the Daily Terror is our regular dose of Piers Akerman, aka the fat owl, more welcome than a dose of cod liver oil, but not by much. Thank god it's not breakfast in your part of the world, because you might just choke on your Cheerios. 

The fat owl has praised ABC local radio! Sure it's just a brief mention in Making sense of loss by words and pictures before berating left wing social engineering educational theorist media teachers, and dishing out unctuous, servile, self-serving praise to The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun, at which point you might well have wished you'd choked on the Cheerios rather than throwing up into them.

A special treat: " ... the press has the capacity to expose the Left's penchant for profligate spending on unnecessary, even damaging, programs ..."

Like the ABC, you self-absorbed, contradictory fat owl!

A loon in full cry, chest puffed up with the finery of self importance and delusions, is a glorious sight.

Bring it on Conroy. Smote the intertubes, block obscenity, slam the lid on loonery. After all the democratic right of loons to speak their minds is driving us all mad, makes us rush off to look at nubile young men in Playgirl poses. Or is it only boys who do that?

Conroystirpate them all.

Tim Blair and bogus climate change versus risk management

Over at Tim Blair-sville, small pond to many loons, there's still no news about the New York Post's monkey apology. Guess it's old news, no need to bother now. Phew. That balance stuff is for dumb softie liberals. Never give an inch, to infinity and beyond.

And not a hint about that Queensland murder victim's head being used as a bowling ball. Funny, given the way Blair just loves to report in slobbering detail on an Islamic beheading.

No, it's back to the future again. In his latest scribble, Tim gets very bold under the header Green Wedge. He knows the real demonstrable truth about global warming: It sure isn't an issue that lives outside of politics, on account of it being utterly bogus.

Reminds me of a Christian saying with certainty there's absolutely only one god, his. Proof please. Or an atheist saying with absolute certainty there's no gods at all. Proof please.

Day after day Blair grinds on about global warming like a fundie preacher speaking of sin, in little snippets and gobbets that snipe and cavil and have all the logic and time-keeping skills of a clock with worn-down gears and a hand or two missing.

I guess either a mass of people are in the grip of a bogus hysteria, or Tim Blair is hysterically sure they're all hysterics. But he doesn't have to provide any proof. He's got a set of true believers and they know the truth.

Such certainty, such fervid passionate belief. I wish I had that kind of dumb intensity. With the world scheduled to hit nine billion by 2040, resources finite (I mean we haven't made it to Mars just yet, and the moon doesn't seem like an Aladdin's cave), you'd think risk management might involve taking some sensible precautions, rather than acting like cockroaches out for a mindless good time knowing that in the end they'll be the only ones to survive a nuclear blast. 

Reminds me of the old folk tale about the frog sitting in slowly warming water, but of course we all know that's just Al Gore recycling an old folk myth for his own evil purposes. I mean a frog in slowly boiling water will jump out as soon as it gets unpleasant, right, and sure as heck I intend to jump right off this planet the moment things start to go wrong with it. I'm thinking the Horsehead nebula is a pleasant, picturesque place in which to set up shop.

Meantime, here's a nineteenth century cartoon by the wondrous Grandville showing the trees and the fishies having a little gloat about silly humans.

Janet Albrechtsen, John Hewson, Peter Costello, Malcolm in the middle and a little big endian egg cutting and de-ballsing

(War) began upon the following Occasion. It is allowed on all Hands, that the primitive way of breaking Eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger End: But his present Majesty's Grand-father, while he was a Boy, going to eat an Egg, and breaking it according to the ancient Practice, happened to cut one of his Fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his Father published an Edict, commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penaltys, to break the smaller End of their Eggs. The People so highly resented this Law, that our Histories tell us there have been six Rebellions raised on that account; wherein one Emperor lost his Life, and another his Crown. These civil Commotions were constantly fomented by the Monarchs of Blefuscu; and when they were quelled, the Exiles always fled for Refuge to that Empire. It is computed, that eleven thousand Persons have, at several times, suffered Death, rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End. Many hundred large Volumes have been published upon this Controversy: But the books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, and the whole Party
rendered incapable by Law of holding Employments. During the Course of these Troubles, the Emperors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their Ambassadors, accusing us of making a Schism in Religion, by offending against a fundamental Doctrine of our great Prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth Chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Alcoran.) This, however, is thought to be a meer Strain upon the Text: For the Words are these: That all true Believers shall break their Eggs at the convenient End: and which is the convenient End, seems, in my humble Opinion, to be left to every Man's Conscience, or at least in the power of the Chief Magistrate to determine.  Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels.

Too much truth in that one short paragraph for a child to bear or understand when offered Gulliver's Travels and his voyage to Lilliput as a light-hearted fairy tale about a man-mountain dwelling amongst small people.

What's worse, Swift's work was published in 1726 and we still haven't worked it out today (and don't go talking to me with your computer jibber jabber about how big endians can improve hardware logic).

I mean there's that silly Queensland rebel priest Father Peter Kennedy, sacked by the Brisbane Archbishop for  inviting all kinds of trash into his church (gays no less!!) It seems the man wants to be a Christian in the proper sense of the word. Doesn't he understand he's actually a Catholic? Doesn't he realize that all would be well if only he invited anti-semites and Holocaust deniers into his flock, to help diversity and plurality? Silly man.

It's even better when the big endians fight amongst themselves (or are the Liberals little endians? Is it best for a Liberal to seek out the small end of the egg as a stand against big government intervention and as a symbol of the individual liberty of small men? Or should they stand for the big endian bit of town? So hard.)

Anyhoo, the Libs have got themselves into a standard 'in opposition' leadership knot, and the intervention of John Hewson into the Turnbull-Costello debate over the weekend was most amusing. In You missed your chance, Peter, Hewson essentially said Costello was lazy, self-indulgent, disloyal, didn't have the balls and he should bugger off.

It wasn't a subtle message, but from Malcolm Turnbull currently sits it probably sounded fair.

It also made a refreshing change to the pious free market platitudes we've been copping from former Labor party roosters. It's been vaguely nauseating to watch lately the way Labor party feather dusters like Michael Costa - done with ruining NSW - and Mark Latham - done with ruining the Labor party, have recently turned themselves into newspaper columnists quoted with adoration by the right wing commentariet for their refreshingly destructive take on the state of Australia under Kevin Rudd.

Naturally Hewson's outburst has immediately prompted a roast from Dame Slap aka Janet Albrechtsen, in The Australian, under the header Hewson's delusions of grandeur.

Albrechtsen inevitably contrasts the wonderful performance of John Howard at the Menzies Institute, with his measured and dignified talk of gratitude and reform, with the oafish behaviour of Hewson.

It seems Hewson's just an attention seeker, a look at moi type who was a wunderkind failure (now if only they'd told us that when he was elected leader of the Liberal party).

Anyhoo, as a failure, he should shut up. Proving once again that shooting the messenger is always more satisfying than listening to the message.

As for Albrechtsen's solution: "... in the interests of the party, the ongoing duel between the current Liberal leader and the former Treasurer needs to be dealt with behind closed doors."

Impenetrability I always say.

Like as if Janet. You know Hewson actually made a little more sense in his column than you. That must stick in the craw.

No wonder it seems Albrechtsen is still having gender issues: "But, John, just between us girls, we know that helping the Liberal Party was not your real intent was it?"

I don't recollect Hewson identifying as transsexual. Is this Albrechtsen's way of de-ballsing him, of turning him into a girl?

Johnny came from out on the island

In the backroom she was everybody's darling

But she never lost her head

Even when she was givin' head

She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side ...

Oh I get it, Janet's just being funny in a kinda funny way. Just a little bitch slapping. Settle down ho Hewson.

Ah well I guess it passes for political discourse in this country. How quickly Latham's been forgiven and elevated into the pantheon of poseurs, his labeling of Janet Albrechtsen a skanky ho, his attack on Tony Staley as a deformed character and his ridiculing our very own fat owl Piers Akerman as a cocaine user now long gone fish and chips wrapping (not to mention his description of John Howard as an arselicker and the front bench of the Liberal party as a conga line of suckholes).

Hewson will never achieve Latham's apotheosis. Sure, he might have been telling the truth as he sees it (well okay as I see it), but sssh, when arranging a funeral, it's best done behind closed doors.

But who's going to be burying who? Sssh, it'll be done behind closed doors. Just like the mob. Or domestic violence.

Janet always has the best role models to hand for the Liberal party. Fuck it, cut the egg whichever way you want to, just do it in private where no one can see the knife land.