Piers Akerman, Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the remove, Peter Costello, Malcolm Turnbull and sage advice from reading the Liberal party entrails

Sunday is such a special day, in the way that once upon a time a trip to the newsagents was special for young lads eager to get the latest copy of Magnet and news of Greyfriars, home to Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the remove.

Yes Sunday is the day the fat owl, aka Piers Akerman, turns up in the Sunday Terror aka the Sunday Telegraph. Is there a heart in the land that doesn't beat a little faster knowing that on this day Akerman will smote lefties and greenies, and save the land for conservatives?

I'm sometimes asked what this obsession with the fat owl is all about, and all I can suggest is that you go to the excellent Friardale website for a dose of old fashioned, exotic nostalgia (and remember Frank Richards nee Charles Hamilton was paid by word count, so expect a quantity of 'yarooh garoar roared the fat owl' along with quality evocations of peculiar English educational institutions from a long lost era).

But quickly now, cast your eye from the handsome portrait of Bunter, tuck shop fiend, above, to this little cameo of Akerman, the lefties' curse, below. 

Isn't there a genetic connection, a smidgin of similarity between the Greyfriars' fat owl and our very own fearless fighter for freedom in the Sunday Terror?

And don't they both have similar obsessions - about grub and beasts, especially chaps who won't leave a libertarian freedom fighter in peace?

But what's this? The fat owl has abandoned his battles with greenies and lefties to examine the entrails of the Liberal party, after it spent the last week spilling its guts for benefit of augurers skilled in extispicy.

Cue the fat owl, who after checkin the colors of the Liberal party's kidneys and liver, kindly offers Malcolm Turnbull some sage advice on how to run the Liberal party, in Wrangle exposes Turnbull weakness.

It seems the past week's disruption has been all the fault of Malcolm in the middle, not to mention the treacherous, double dealing, baggage carrying Christopher Pyne and his weak-kneed, opportunistic, spineless, weathervane ways.

Peter Costello of course has had nothing to do with it. 

While these issues were being played out front of stage, former treasurer Peter Costello was ever present in the background, not menacing, not threatening, not plotting a coup or even counting numbers.

That's right, piqued Petie boy just plays tiddlywinks or Scrabble or solitaire with nary a thought of treachery or treason. He's just being an honest representative for the good burghers of Higgins (and pray to the lord you never have to try to park a car in Toorak village when a rich burgher is nearby behind the wheel of a Mercedes or some huge kind of tractor).

Just there, being something of a distraction that the Opposition does not need.

Say what? Is the fat owl making a muted criticism of Costello?

Costello is a different matter and Turnbull would do well not to dwell upon him as  potential threat to his leadership.

His role now is to lead, not to fight off possible contenders.

While Costello remains without doubt the most effective parliamentary performer on the Opposition benches, he is not - by his own choice - on the front bench.

He is thus respected for the job he used to have, but the manner in which he has removed himself from the front line - where he would be a great asset - erodes the great reputation he earned as the nation's longest-serving treasurer.

Oh no, et tu Brute, fat owl? But only a couple of weeks ago, why on February 4th in fact, you were celebrating a revived, even rampant Peter Costello as he battered Rudd, and inspired the likes of those learned ex-Labor men Michael Costa and Mark Latham to do the same about the Ruddster's feeble grasp of economics.

Over the past year, Costello wrote his book, he attended to some non-parliamentary matters and he gave the impression of a man who was content to let others take up the Liberal fight.

That has now changed.

The revived Costello is being watched with keen interest by his colleagues, some of whom are keen to see him return to the front bench and lead the charge, in the Treasury portfolio for now, but in the leadership position should Malcolm Turnbull be seen as terminally unelectable when the Rudd Government goes to the polls.

But don't you worry about any of that Malcolm. We're right behind you, the knives are sheathed, the votes are not being counted. Reminds me, anyone seen my stone, must remember to keep the edge sharp.

Just joking Malcolm. The fat owl has spoken, and suddenly Janus seems as straight as a die, with the past and the future equally clear, or equally muddy, depending how you think the Delphic Oracle is speaking.

Still confused? Really Malcolm! Here it is in words of one syllable. 

Don't worry about any challenges, even if everybody's very excited about a revived Costello challenging you and Rudd and anyone who stands in his revitalised way, because he can't, because he's demeaned himself and his reputation with his refusal to play up and play the game, so remember that Costello's presence and activities are entirely benign - since he's doing nothing and not counting the numbers - except that doing nothing is actually a distraction to the Liberals, and  possibly he should stop it. 

Perhaps by organizing a challenge, except he won't because he never had the guts to move on Howard and now he wants it handed to him on a plate. No Malcolm no, don't smash that plate, focus! Tackle Rudd unencumbered by thoughts of Costello. Say om!

With advisors like the fat owl, Malcolm's course is crystal clear. How long before the Ruddster is swept off the cliff and into the raging torrent below, like Holmes did to Moriarty, cleansing the world and making it safe again for mankind?

Let's leave you with this image, which might - or might not - be the fat owl of the remove pointing to the academic record of the beastly boys of Greyfriars, or might - or might not - be Piers Akerman charting the chances of Peter Costello challenging Turnbull before Christmas.

Are you sure you don't see a resemblance to Billy Bunter?

Sacha Molitorisz, Cinema, Art and Nonny No Nonsense

Loons come in all shapes and sizes, and writing a regular column is hard.

Sacha Molitorisz shows just how hard it is to avoid loonery when he scribbles a column for The Sydney Morning Herald under the header Gushing about art is just another act.

Sacha purports a light-hearted examination of acting loons invoking god and art at Oscar time, but suddenly after reading his witty analysis of art and artistry, I'm much more inclined to believe that Nicole Kidman was actually a brain surgeon in days of chunder.

Sacha asks deep questions - what is art? And can the cinema be art? Assuring us that this question has been debated for more than one hundred years.

Well really only by loons who don't know any better and maybe missed out on seeing Battleship Potemkin back when it was released in Moscow in 1925.

Poor Sacha seems not to have heard Andy Warhol's deeply wise quip that art is anything you can get away with.

Well we can say that Sacha's column is definitively not art, because surely he can't get away with such a lame 'rule them in and rule them out' piece of pontification.

One of the academics quoted has the cheek to say that art is something that rewards attention and sustains attention, and then cites Howard Hawks as an artist. Now don't get me wrong, I love some of Hawks' movies, but can the good academic explain just where Hatari! fits in the pantheon of attention grabbers and rewarders? And if Hawks could make that load of steaming African stereotypes, can he be an artist? And should Henry Mancini be shot for the Baby Elephant Walk, despite dozens of fine bits of music?

As usual, after talking of Hawks - dismissed as a Hollywood hack by many until the French came along and discovered the deeper nuances of Land of the Pharaohs - the academic, one David Macarthur, senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney, turns to explaining why most recent Hollywood films don't qualify as art, thereby enrolling himself in a club of loons founded at the dawn of cinema, with a mission statement dedicated to explaining why Hollywood movies in particular, and movies in general could never be works of art for at least a decade after they were made.

Here's how that riff runs. The cinema wasn't an art in the silent days. It flickered and was just a form of vaudeville. In the thirties it wasn't an art because the talkies ruined the pure art of the silents. In the forties it wasn't an art because all the nifty screwball comedy and gangster shows of the thirties ran out of puff, in the fifties it wasn't art because Cinemascope ruined all that lovely black and white Academy photography, in the sixties it wasn't art because the industry tried to compete with television by mis-using the wonderful potential of the big 2.35:1 screen, and in the seventies it wasn't art because it became pretentious, unlike all those wonderfully simple Hollywood movies of the past. 

I think you can get the drift. Fill in your own explanation for why the Bourne movies and In Bruges can't be works of art, since it seems all art might have died some time in the mid nineteen eighties.

It's all so much nonsense of course, Christmas stocking column filler while we're still in February. Sacha claims he's setting the bar high - to qualify as artists, filmmakers should have to be good and actors should have to be great - when really he's just being silly, mutilating aesthetics, sense and sensibility.

And pray tell, just what do good and great mean, and why should we listen for a moment to someone quoting Arthur C. Danto on the end of art, as sublimely absurd an attention-seeking device as Francis Fukuyama's nonsenical title The End of History?

For that kind of inanity, Molitorisz is hereby sentenced to five readings of Shakespeare's King John, and a thousand word essay on why a dull historical play by a master can still be considered a work of art (as can The Taming of the Shrew, whatever W. H. Auden thought of it being Shakespeare's worst play, or Titus Andronicus, which T. S. Eliot called one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written. Second thoughts, make that an essay on why the author of The Waste Land can still be considered an artist after writing Murder in the Cathedral).

Hey ho, and nonny no, is't not fine to dance and sing when the bells of death do ring (and don't go asking what nonny meant in the old days, you ninny, just think 'rosebud' in Citizen Kane).

The standard of thought in Australian newspapers in relation to the arts is generally abysmal. Sacha might think he's setting the bar high, but I don't reckon these tired limbs could limbo under the bar he's set with his scribbles. Heck the world limbo record is six and a half inches and that's too tough.

As Kurt Vonnegut, much abused for writing wretchedly inartistic science fiction might sigh, so it goes. 

Or maybe Chopper said it best? Move along people, here no art, no art here.

Miranda Devine, Caesareans, Scar Mongering, and a Woman's right to choose

Miranda the Devine is in fine fighting form over a woman's right to chose in relation to pregnancy in Caesarian scar mongers should zip it.

She's indignant about a militant minority of midwife activists who demonise obstetric intervention as a patriarchal insult which disempowers mothers. If a woman wants a knife and a scar as a safe way to give birth, she should have it.

Well yes, we believe women should be empowered, should have control over their bodies, and should do what they think is right for them and their child.

We look forward to the Devine's impassioned argument for the right of women to choose when it comes to abortion. 

Don't hold your breath. After a minute or so you start to turn blue and brain damage follows soon after ...

Malcolm Holland, Migrants as Shark Fodder, and croc attack warning for NT migrants

There's nothing like a little gratuitous migrant bashing.

Our migrants come from places, like the UK or China, with no beach culture or knowledge of sharks beyond watching Jaws.

This sage observation from Malcolm Holland in a column Living in a watery jungle in the Daily Terror.

In response no doubt to two recent shark attacks - one on a Dover Heights man (a surfer who works for a surfing magazine) at Bondi beach, the most heavily regulated stretch of beach in the country, and another on a navy clearance diver off Woolloomooloo in Sydney Harbour.

Bloody migrants, time to learn the deep seated skills Aussies have when dealing with the demons of the deep, as shark numbers around the world plunge. 

Okay it doesn't make much sense but neither does Malcolm Holland, though he does win our 'recycling dog bites man' award, which is usually won hands down by the Northern Territory News with its once every week front page croc attack story (and if visiting the News please check out its gallery of monster crocs pics, supplied by croc loving readers). There's also sound advice on how not to attract crocs while treating fish humanely in Croc attack warning for 'catch and release' fish.

Where would the tabloids be without crocs and sharks? Off with Tim Blair? Bring on the crocs and the sharks. At least they just do what comes naturally, while Blair seems to have no idea eating people is wrong ...

Pearson, Turnbull, Costello and Pastor Danny boy, oh Danny boy lovers

Christopher Pearson calls it for Peter Costello - press ganged into the leadership within six months - in his column A mess of Mal's making, which thankfully doesn't mention theology or the holy roman church once.

You see Malcolm there's not much point in being Catholic and bending your knee to the pope when the hard men want a knee capping, a drawing and quartering and a hanging. Oh yes it's get down and dirty time in the Liberal party and amongst right wing loon columnists.

It's all your fault big Mal with your stuck up fancy pants eastern suburbs Sydney ways. I'm with Christopher. Bring on the fundie loving Pastor Danny supporting (well up until that bushfires thingy), prayerful prat Petie boy. We need some entertainment and I've always loved a public hanging. Guy Fawkes, Malcolm Turnbull, whatever. Just make sure there's plenty of blood.

Michael Duffy, Kevin Rudd, Nationalizing the Banks, Ben Chifley, Tim Blair, Monkeys, Murder, Westerns and Sci Fi Mayhem

The New York Post published an online apology for its chimp Obama cartoon, as defiant, vulgar and offensive an apology as it could muster, and all that you'd expect from that buccaneer Col Allan, trained as he was at The Daily Terror in all the news that's fit to wrap fish and chips.

You can read the wretched and churlish piece of dreck under the heading That Cartoon, but a warning - scientific tests have shown that after visiting the Post, computers tend to lose fifty per cent of their ROM and RAM, and their owners some seventy per cent of their brain cells. Repeated visits can result in a complete intellectual melt down and a tendency to repeat over and over Rupert good, Rupert good.

But you can bet that Tim Bleah won't find it in his heart to say anything about this turn of events (plenty of posts since it became news, but no mention to date). 

He just cranks up more monkey jokes. Any connection between Obama, monkeys and blacks? No siree Bob, no more than a Klu Klux Klan costume has to a burqah. Bet Tim's favorite T-shirt during the campaign was the one above - just joking, only joking.

Blair is of the old-fashioned, never give an inch school:

As long as there is injustice, as long as there are lefties and greenies and global warming trendinistas, whenever a Targathian baby cries out, wherever a distress signal sounds among the stars, we'll be there. This fine ship, this fine crew. Never give up ... and never surrender. (Apologies to David Howard).

Next up from Tim? A vivid, evocative, horrified re-telling of the sordid social implications of a Queensland murder in which a man was stabbed 133 times, and had his head decapitated - for it then to be used as a puppet and a bowling ball. (You know, like Tim's obsessive compulsive interest in that Islamic beheading in New York).

What? There wasn't an Islamic involved? Feergit it, you git. Get out of here. Only Islamic murders done by Islamics foretell the decline of western civilization  and the impending rapture. These Queensland killers were ideologically sound - one of them talked about the other's soul being condemned to hell because he was weak. Nothing there for Tim, not that Tim's into selective reporting. He doesn't do reporting at all. He does skew and spin.

I'm thinking of whipping up a quick Ph.D proposal based on the thesis that right wing columnists developed their tendency to perversion as a result of watching too many westerns (or sniffing petrol when they filled up the tank for a new day driving route 66 with Edd 'Kookie' Byrnes and the crew).

So you check for an addiction to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and QED - you have a rugged individualist loon who likes to ride the range six gun in hand from the safety of their big city home. (On the other hand, left leaning loons tend to nerdishness and sci fi, allowing of course for rule-proving exceptions like Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard).

Of course it will be necessary to do a deep brain scan to see what happens when columnists get neurone stimulation, such as a picture of John Howard quickly followed by a picture of a naked woman (never mind the age or the looks or cheap jokes about Penthouse, just think any woman up against John Howard). Righties will surely get excited by Howard's eyebrows - shards of glowing purple light will explode in rapture - while nerds confronted by a woman will swiftly drift back into a reverie about the time William Shatner sucked lips with Nichelle Nichols.

(Stop it Tim, no eyebrow orgasms allowed on a Saturday).

Unfortunately deep brain scanning has often resulted in a total neurone wipe. I guess the up side is that right wing columnists will be able to resume their scribbling without any discernible alteration in their relationship to reality.

On the subject of never giving up, never surrendering, and swearing on Grabthar's hammer and by the Sons of Warvan to wreak vengeance on lefties everywhere, you have to admire the esteemed Michael Duffy, a chip off the old Blair block.

The Duffster, in a hard hitting, penetrating column, The rubbish PMs love to peddle, discovers Kevin Rudd's column in The Monthly weeks after everybody else, and via John Howard's speech at the Menzies Research Centre.

The Duffster takes a few swipes at Howard in order to look balanced and fair, and then offers Rudd's "baroque", rambling essay a fail mark in most any undergraduate course.

The Duffster is outraged at Rudd's claim that markets were pretty much unfettered when it's clear from America just how well financial regulation worked, how tight and effective it was (oh sorry the Duffster skips all that nonsense about the USA, he just wants to dwell on the much more globally significant, Howard-run Australian economy).

Through the fog, the Duffster does seem to understand Rudd was engaging in a political exercise, but thinks by talking of Hayek and Keynes, Rudd's talking to a smaller and better educated audience. You know like right wing loons. Who can tell Rudd's arguments are embarrassingly incoherent. Like, you know, like the Duffster.

It's all so late breaking and sad it's hard to go on, so we'll skip over the Duffster's celebration of our wonderful banking system, and cut to the chase.

The Duffster gives a wonderful quote from a really profound and insightful expert: Rudd's speech was perhaps the strongest attack on the ideals and purpose of private enterprise by a national leader since Ben Chifley's attempt to nationalise the banks in 1947.

And who is this expert? Why none other than loon Mark Latham, now resident at The Australian Financial Review, in much the same way as Michael Costa, that other featherduster, now graces the pages of The Australian. 

Talk about free enterprise. Isn't it great how, in Latham's case, you can go from a meteoric flame out on every level to becoming the 'go to' expert for any and every right wing loon in the country looking for a damning commentary on the Labor party. Personally I preferred it when he was smashing cameras and breaking a taxi driver's arm - all this theoretical stuff at such a high economic level is terribly hard to read and understand for a poor possum like me.

I mean Ben Chifley nationalising the banks! Come on Duffster come on. You are such a complete and comprehensive loon. What about since we abandoned the gold standard, surely the cause of all our misery today? (Sssh, no, no don't say it, it was George W. Bush who nationalised the banks. Or was it the banks who nationalised themselves because they fucked up so bad? Whatever, it seems more likely that George W. was channeling Ben Chifley than the Ruddster. By Grabthar's hammer say it ain't so).

Anyhoo, the Duffster thinks the future looks gloomy. No, not because of the global financial crisis. No that's easy to fix, it's because Kevin Rudd might believe what he's saying.

The insightful Duffster talks about governments like they're James Packer in the Packer family. You know Sir Frank gets the fortune together, Kerry builds it up, and James pisses the family fortune against the wall.

Actually, a better parallel for the Ruddster's folly is the the downward path of the right wing commentariet:

The first generation (William Buckley) establishes the insights and the intellectual substance with style and elan. The second generation (David Brooks et al) consolidates it in various respectable organs, which proceed to go bankrupt. And the third (the Duffster, Tim Blair, little Billy Kristol) pisses it up against the wall.

Gold standard, silver standard and now the age of lead. See. We should never have given up the gold standard.

On to the score:

For biting on the Rudd bait like a cat fish searching for weeks old food in the river mud: 11

For writing a rambling incoherent piece to demonstrate how rambling Rudd was: 11

For using the word 'piss' to show how strong and gutsy the Duffster is in writing school: 11

For taking Mark Latham, class Labor clown, as a quotable expert in anything:  11 to the trillionth

For actually showing any practical interest in solutions to the current economic crisis: 1

For trying to be fair and balanced about John Howard while at the same time indulging in Howard and bank ancestor worship: 1

For thinking it's all about Australia: 0

For being the last right wing commentator to rubbish Rudd's essay in The Monthly, on the basis that the first shall be last, and the last first: 2

A mixed score, and how happy I am to know that very few people seem to know or care about the ranting Duffster and his arcane Mark Latham quoting ways. After all, he's just a harmless public broadcaster and columnist for a failing, disreputable newspaper. Now Tim Blair ... time to get Zorg on the case there.

Tim Blair, Travis the Chimp, Obama, Monkey jokes and yuk yuk

In his usual clever dick way, gadfly and Daily Terror loonatic Tim Blair provides a link to another loon, who lists the top ten reasons why Travis the Chimp is nothing like President Obama. 

We've moved, in the usual Blair style, from undergraduate humor down to primary school ten year old humor. Well I can go there. Sure the jokes are shyte, but that's the point about telling jokes in the playground. You can demean yourself, as well as the butt of your jokes, and in a more general way, denigrate the sense of humor more refined parts of civilization possess. And feel really good about it. Really clever. Really smart arse.

So here we go, and remember we're chortling about a chimp who ripped off a woman's face before being shot by the cops (what a laugh).

Top Ten Reasons Tim Blair Is Nothing Like Travis The Chimp.

10. Travis liked free bananas, but Blair can only chant tax cuts now, over and over.

9. Travis was less likely to foam at the mouth when biting lefties and greenies.

8. Travis looked disturbed when he ripped off people's faces, Blair favors an evil smirk.

7. Travis preferred to attack old women, while Blair attacks anybody and anything on a daily basis. Women? Heh, bring on the babies.

6. Travis could get through the day without spiteful blogging.

5. Travis used his teeth, Blair prefers a kick to the crutch.

4. Travis knew he needed medical help, and liked Xanax, but Blair doesn't have a clue.

3. Travis had a trainer, Blair doesn't even have a walking harness.

2. Travis had a 70 year old widow for a friend, Blair looks everywhere for enemies.

1. Travis rips out your eyes, Blair blogs your eyes out of your head.

Childish? Absolutely. Time spent doing the list? Ten minutes? Point? Bugger all.

Point of Blair and mate? How funny it is to talk about chimps and President Obama, seeing as how there's a long and honorable tradition in America of calling blacks monkeys. 

Ah boy bring me another mint julep, ah is weary from all o' the laughing and the typing. Yessa sir, yessa massa. Now don't get cheeky boy, you knows I'se just being jocular. Sheesh, you negrahs are awfully sensitive. It's a joke boy, a joke. 

Pardon me if I go outside and throw up. No link. Go to Blair on your own, fully aware of the risk it poses to your humanity.