Paul Sheehan, sprouting the usual tripe in his inimitable metallic way ...

(Above: gasp, it's Robbie the Robot, one of the pond's favourite icons, and the metallic bubble headed booby is doing things to that sweet young thing).

After the sordid and unpleasant business know known as the "Affair of the 'Double Agent'", or what came to pass as the "Affair of the 'Inverted Commas'", which we're currently turning in to a most excellent Sherlock Holmes adventure, it was with anticipation that we turned to Paul Sheehan today for a more solid outing.

How dull, predictable and tame is In one month, a good woman has become Labor's latest robot.

In it Sheehan rehearses all the usual moves, in a way that suggests he's been out of country, and now he's come back in country, his insights are somehow novel or interesting.

He trawls back over Gillard's ascent to power, and at the same time, for affectation and a kind of purported balance, he trawls back to Abbott doing over Turnbull.

But then he swiftly nails his colours to the mast. Asserting that Mark Latham's diaries are a bible of bile, what better place for a commentariat commentator to frolic and feast than on said bile?

Sheehan quotes Latham approvingly on Gillard, and disapprovingly on former chairman Rudd, but of course that's only so he can approve of the dumping of Rudd, and then dump on Gillard.

Naturally in the process Sheehan manages a goodly swipe at Rudd:

This is why he was executed by his own party. His Napoleonic compulsions had become overbearing. His mania for centralised government had failed. Once the voting public started coming to the same conclusion, reflected in the polls, an overwhelming majority of Rudd's colleagues wanted him gone. He was a pain in the rectum.

He even manages to ignore the folly of the "Affair of 'Alexander Downer'" to quote him as another nail in Rudd's coffin.

Speaking of metaphors, why was I suddenly in the grip of a vision of Sheehan as a vulture, hovering over the carcass, picking at it and complaining of his rectum? Or if not a vulture, or a skulking howling coyote, perhaps a gravedigger, a clown, at the graveside. You know, enough to make a Hamlet clutch a skull and brood:

That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
might it not?

... Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow,
sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might
be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord
such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

...Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and
knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade:
here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to
see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding,
but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't.

Yes, you've guessed it, we're heading into political metaphor time with Sheehan, and where does he woefully and predictably land, but in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a torture oft inflicted on children in schools, the good interred with the bones, and his target of ire is one Mark Arbib.

Yes the tiresome commentariat columnist returns once more to rehearse the assassination scene, long after its done, the punters home abed and the theatre lights switched off.

He (Arbib) is also straight out of central casting as Marcus Junius Brutus. Surely, therefore, he must become a primary target of the opposition's election campaign.

But hang on, not that here on the pond we approve of political assassinations, but we do get a little agitated by Sheehan's appropriation of Brutus.

You see, Caesar was done over by a bunch of aristocrats, not apparatchiks, and they did so because they feared he was going to be in power for life:

Ancient biographers describe the tension between Caesar and the Senate, and his possible claims to the title of king. These events would be the principal motive for Caesar's assassination by his political opponents in the Senate.

Plutarch records that at one point, Caesar informed the Senate that his honors were more in need of reduction than augmentation, but withdrew this position so as not to appear ungrateful. He was given the title Pater Patriae ("Father of the Fatherland"). He was appointed dictator a third time, and then nominated for nine terms as dictator, effectually making him dictator for ten years. He was also given censorial authority as praefectus morum (prefect of morals) for three years. (here at the wiki, assassination of Julius Caesar).

Yep, as usual the troublemakers were ponces, well off toffs purporting to care about the republic when they only cared about their own power base, and of the kind you can these days find in Paddington furiously scribbling about the joys of fifteen dollar loaves of bread.

You could, if you were determined, and had the same over arching desire for simplification and uglification, build a narrative out of the assassination of Malcolm Turnbull by shadowy far right conspirators lurking in the darkness, or hiding within the billowing tunics of the likes of Nick Minchin. (Ah but you see that vortex was one of Turnbull's own making, and Abbott just a dumbfounded happy recipient of lady luck).

Never mind, hey nonny no, on we go:

Because it was Marcus Junius Brutus Arbib who, with the other members of the Senate, not only knifed Rudd for Gillard but have subsequently encased her in the shell made by the Hawker Britton spin doctors, the party's focus groups, pollsters, lobbyists, factional debt collectors and union kneecappers.

Oh the poor thing, she's had to endure all this plastic wrapping. That must have been a remarkable transformation, and only in a month:

This is why the Julia Gillard of June was so unlike the Julia Gillard of July.

Yes, I knew it, from June to July, and suddenly a Frankenstein roaming the earth, or perhaps since we're in to historical metaphors, one of the rabble of san-culottes, labourers and radical Jacobins, guided and shaped by the evil Robespierre (more at the wiki here).

Surely this is a most remarkable transformation:

The Gillard that people, even Mark Latham, admired, has become the inheritor of a raft of grandiose policy failures, the principle architect of the Building the Education Revolution gold-plated feeding trough, and the sprouter of generic slogans.

Oh dear. Even Mark Latham. Et tu Marcus? But hand on a second, sprouter? Are we thinking of spouter?

–verb (used with object)
1.
to emit or discharge forcibly (a liquid, granulated substance, etc.) in a stream or jet.
2.
Informal . to state or declaim volubly or in an oratorical manner: He spouted his theories on foreign policy for the better part of the night. (here).

Or are we thinking of sprouting?

–verb (used without object)
1.
to begin to grow; shoot forth, as a plant from a seed.
2.
(of a seed or plant) to put forth buds or shoots.
3.
to develop or grow quickly: a boy awkwardly sprouting into manhood. (here).

I think the latter, because it seems Gillard has awkwardly sprouted into a machine:

This creation, this metallic creature of the machine, could not get past the X-ray detectors at the airport, and the public has recoiled from the process.

Um, is it at all unkind, perhaps a tad unsporting to note that back in June, Gillard was still the principle architect of the Building of the Education Revolution, and inclined as like any other politician to be the sprouter of generic slogans, putting forth many buds and shoots (who can forget the generic enthusiasm for the My Schools site amongst the commentariat?)

Amidst all Sheehan's bile and attempts at Frankenstein, or should that be Robbie the Robot building, I suppose that we should be grateful that he fails to note that this metallic creature, this robotic machine, is of course incapable of reproduction, is barren in the way that machines are, and speaks with a peculiar rasping metallic lilt reminiscent of Altona and utterly unlike the way metallic machines speak in North Unley, not so much a postcode as a way of life.

But in the end, in constructing this narrative, with its necessary dip into bilious bile, and the elevation yet again of Mark Latham from maddie to informed insider, would it not have been simpler (and kinder to his readers) for Sheehan to simply adopt the pose of a surly grouch, harumph, clear his throat once or twice for effect, say "I'm going to vote Liberal like I always do, and I hope they win, and you can all bugger off."

There, done and dusted in a few simple words, and none of us having to waste precious time as we crank up on a Monday morn, trying to get a few sparks into the old starter motor and then in to the pistons, as we must, we metallic creatures.

Yep, another day where banal cheerleading of the most simplistic and rhetorical kind replaces informed opinion and insight.

Well you get what you pay for, which is why I'm pleased to pay nothing ...

(Below: look out sweet young Julia, the hideous metallic monster will get you. Or worse still, you might even become his bride!)

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