Two cheers for the paracletes, and the return of Dame Slap ...

(Above: after starring in The Enchanted Wood, Dame Slap returned for another outing in The Folk of the Faraway Tree. Accept no imitations, and certainly no substitutes, especially editions which change Dame Slap's name to Dame Snap, and downplay the spanking which all horrid children and Greens richly deserve).

If ever you wanted definitive proof that travel doesn't broaden the mind, look no further than Janet Albrechtsen's Bob, the sun is shining on you.

Yes, hooray, one of the pond's favourite members of the commentariat is back, and a refreshed Dame Slap is in top Faraway Tree form, and it almost goes without saying, is completely and utterly predictable.

Oh yes, it's great, grand news for followers of the chattering urban elite commentariat, even if this first outing is just a standard rant about the ABC and about Bob Brown and the nasty Greens, and how dare anyone say that the ABC has taken a swerve to the right, and it's full of doozies, like this one:

Had Andrew Bolt's new, high-rating Bolt Report launched an aggressive takeover of ABC1's Insiders?

High rating? According to the invaluable Mumbrella, here, Bolt's debut scored 163,000 in its morning slot and 123,000 in its afternoon slot. Well I suppose it's up there with Video Hits, but it takes a truly deluded fellow traveller to call it high rating (and there's even more fun to be had in reading Advertisers in Bolt revolt).

Perhaps we should consider this first return outing a canter, a warm up for more serious outings down the track.

It almost goes without saying that Chris Uhlmann is righteous and probing (as opposed to being a quavering, wavery interviewer of the second water), Bob Brown is devious (as opposed to the Murdoch hacks who are relentless in their unified indignation), and worse, he's also defamatory and totalitarian:

Last week Brown revealed a more totalitarian tack, labelling News Limited as the "hate media" for failing to accept the Greens climate change policy holus-bolus.

Yes, it's totalitarian to say that the minions of Murdoch run a party line, and we really have to score that a splendid breach of Godwin's Law, since everyone knows that totalitarian = Hitler = Nazi = Bob Brown. (Brush up on Godwin's Law here at its wiki).

What a relief to know that calling someone a totalitarian isn't in any way related to hate speech ... Now back to work horrid children and pixies.

Of course all Dame Slap is doing is educating the public, while shedding a tear for the brutal treatment of Pauline Hanson:

Remember Pauline Hanson? She received a mauling at the hands of the media that loathed her. The media does a better job when it sets aside its loathing and loving, as the case may be, and sticks to non-judgmental, hard-hitting questions about issues aimed at eliciting answers to better educate the voting public.

Dame Slap of course always sets aside questions of loathing and loving, especially when it relates to Bob Brown, as she explains how the Greens are ruining the country, and the public are being woken up, made alert, if not hysterically alarmed, by the minions of Murdoch:

They are finally catching up with the real Bob Brown, who has crafted a carefully modulated voice, aiming to ooze sensibility so that his agenda and method escape scrutiny. Any pretence of moral superiority is being rapidly exposed as just that.

Oh yes, with his smarmy clever dick ways and his oozing out of the primordial sludge, out of the paleozoic mud, there's no question that Dame Slap puts loathing aside, and instead, in a non-judgmental way, simply calls out people with a sense of moral superiority, coming as she does from a position of deep moral inferiority. And nothing wrong with that ... because it's climate science at its most expert and detailed and insightful.

And how to top Marion Rae, Brown's sidekick, calling some newspapers great for soaking up cat urine, and thereby failing to make the point that they're actually much better lining cockys' cages to catch all the shit and the litter? (Though perhaps not as good as specially waxed paper liners of the kind advertised here).

Well enough of all this tommy rot and natter and chatter about a more constructive, mature relationship between the Murdoch press and climate change.

... the sun is now shining on Brown. And the King of Canberra Hypocrisy is wilting.

Oh yes, that's how to do a column while setting aside matters of personal loathing, and instead in a non-judmgental way, concentrating on the fine details of climate science, and possible solutions to issues facing the world.

As always, Dame Slap leads the way ... from the rear. And don't you dare trying being nice to her, you horrid Greens with your oozing totalitarian leader.

Spank that naughty child at once.

Well on such a joyous day - schools should be closed to celebrate the return of Dame Slap - the anonymous editorialist is feeling the heat at The Australian. Soon the spotlight will shift away from him or her permanently, given that he or she is merely a third rate scribbler, much like any other anonymous blogger ...

How to stay in the game, how to compete with Dame Slap for the spotlight and a little attention? Well the anon edit tries hard, but ends up being hardly trying in Spare us the lecture again.

Drawing him or herself up to a preening portentous height, the anon edit denounces the current proposal to introduce plain paper packaging, and thereby deny cigarettes their precious branding (won't someone think of the branding, lordy, please, forget the children, someone think of the branding).

The smoking lobby and big tobacco will be mightily pleased, as the anon edit sounds just like a hack seeking a role in the movie Thank you for smoking.

Senator Lothridge: Now as we discussed earlier, these warning labels are not for those who know, but rather for those who don't know. What about the children?
Nick Naylor: Gentleman. It's called education. It doesn't come off the side of a cigarette carton. It comes from our teachers, and more importantly, our parents. It is the job of every parent to warn their children of all the dangers of the world, including cigarettes, so that one day when they get older, they can choose for themselves.

Here's the anon edit singing right from the same song sheet:

Smoking causes heart disease, cancer, emphysema and other illnesses. This is why the proportion of Australians over 14 smoking has almost halved since 1988, and why it is so much lower than in 1945 when 75 per cent of Australian men smoked. But as with other harmful but legal behaviour, responsibility rests with individuals.

Yes, it's completely a matter for personal responsibility, parental responsibility, the responsibility of children and teens to do the right thing.

In much the same way that the sooner we abandon the need to license the driving of motor cars, we can make that too a matter of personal responsibility. And if someone fails to take personal responsibility, and kills someone? Oh what's a crash between chums ...

As for research? Completely irrelevant:

It is beside the point whether market research supports or contradicts the possibility that the world's first plain packaging would cut smoking further.

Let's hear it again from Nick Naylor:

Nick Naylor: Few people on this planet know what it is to be truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organizing that kills one thousand two hundred human beings a day; twelve hundred people. We're talking two jumbo jet plane loads of men, women, and children. I mean there's Attila, Genghis, and me, Nick Naylor the face of cigarettes, the Colonel Sanders of nicotine. This is where I work, the Academy of Tobacco Studies. It was established by seven gentlemen you may recognize from C-Span. These guys realized quick if they were gonna claim cigarettes were not addictive they better have proof. This is the man they rely on, Erhardt Von Grupten Mundt. They found him in Germany. I won't go into the details. He's been testing the link between nicotine and lung cancer for thirty years, and hasn't found any conclusive results. The man's a genius, he could disprove gravity. Then we got our sharks. We draft them out of Ivy League law schools and give them timeshares and sports cars. It's just like a John Grisham novel. Well you know without all the espionage. Most importantly we got spin control. That's where I come in. I get paid to talk. I don't have an MD or law degree. I have a baccalaureate in kicking ass and taking names. You know that guy who can pick up any girl, I'm him on crack.

Well there's none of that ambivalent, confessional guilt on the part of the anon edit doing his Colonel Sanders bit:

In a market economy, the only goods and services that should not be marketed are those that are banned.

So much for all those generic brands all the rage in pharmacies. Not to mention all that generic home brand nonsense.

Which reminds me of one more Nick Naylor exchange, this time with his son about choice, as his son opts for chocolate over vanilla ice cream:

Nick Naylor: Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our ice-cream, and that Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
Joey Naylor: But that's not what we're talking about
Nick Naylor: Ah! But that's what I'm talking about.
Joey Naylor: ...but you didn't prove that vanilla was the best...
Nick Naylor: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong I'm right.

Have a cigarette kid. Heck have a whole pack, and remember to admire the branding, which makes you so kool.

So here's the funny thing. The government has already defaced the packets that contain cigarettes with horrendous images, thereby attempting to ruin the branding.

So all the anon edit is doing is joining in a rearguard action to protect the rights of an industry which peddles death, these days most often to working class families. And in the process, the anon edit is zealously guarding their right to kill themselves with an addictive substance ...

The anon edit asserts that anything else is an interference in the liberties of people ... as opposed to the liberty of big tobacco to go on making a killing.

Next week, the libertarian anon edit argues the Ron Paul case for the legalisation of heroin. At least it might keep them in the ring with Janet Albrechtsen.

But a tip, anon edit. Make sure you use the word "totalitarian" at least three times, and preferably discover a connection to Nazi thinking and mind control ...

(Below: oh yes, bring it on, a return to the old days and personal responsibility and Sherlock Holmes before the interfering busy bodies and nanny staters got in the way of a hit, and still for some reason conservatives oppose a decent shooting gallery where people can exercise freedom to do themselves harm. Contradiction? Moi? No, I just read the nattering minions of Murdoch. Go on Akker Dakker you tell 'em in Shooting Gallery Trial an Overdose of failure. Unlike cigarette packaging and branding, which is surely an overdose of success).