Were there a House Menzies in Game of Thrones, its sigil would be an old man in his bathrobe muttering at a bus stop. Were it a house at Hogwarts, it would be a kind of Slytherin/Hufflepuff hybrid, represented by a snake trying to eat a badger but falling asleep in the process. If we wanted to get all biblical about it, it would be like the house in Matthew 7, rarely mentioned, built as it was on a foundation of bullshit. The rains came down, the streams rose, and the man in the house refused to pay the flood levy on the argument that it would kill jobs and destroy the economy.

Were it a website, which it is, it would describe itself as ‘Australia’s leading online community for conservative, centre-right and libertarian thinking’. In reality, the only adjective here that’s not a complete fantasy is ‘online’. For my money, it is in the main a bunch of very unpleasant people being very unpleasant – online. To be clear, their unpleasantness doesn’t stem from the fact that they are conservative; it stems from the prevailing attitude on the site that conservatism can only manifest itself in behaving like a pack of sneering arseholes. Now of course, far be it from me to criticise someone for snark, but if you’re going to do it, at least show a level of competence beyond just being dumb and nasty then shouting ‘satire!’

Fairfax reported on a piece published on MH this week written Toby Ralph. The article was called ‘Kill The Poor’ and it advocated the culling of  a percentage of the poorest Australians for economic gain. It was obvious to anyone reading it that Ralph was not seriously suggesting this, nor was MH by publishing it. (That said, MH did once, completely bereft of irony, run an op-ed advocating child labour under the headline ‘Work will set you free’ – the words emblazoned above the gates of Auschwitz.)

After Fairfax ran the article, a couple of people, including Treasurer Wayne Swan, questioned the wisdom of publishing it in the first place, to which Menzies House Editor in Chief Tim Andrews responded:

‘It’s a satire in the tradition of Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ and, as such, I do not see any cause for persons to be offended.’

I want to preface the next bit by saying that I don’t give a solitary toss what gets shouted in the conservative echo chamber. Better there than on the bus, I say. I don’t think the site should be boycotted, or regulated, I don’t think apologies need be issued nor joints destroyed. I’m quite happy for this wonderfully crazy hot air balloon of a website to continue to soar ever skyward, with the occupants hurling their faeces over the edge to maintain altitude. I’d have completely ignored this had Andrews not declared the article a piece of Swiftian satire. But he did so here we go.

When Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, he did so to make a point about the exploitation of the Irish under English rule and the ineptitude of the Irish politicians to do anything about it. These were the targets of Swift’s pamphlet, these are the people and ideas with whom and which he disagrees, not, and this should seem obvious, people who eat babies. Not to say Swift agrees with eating babies, but statesmen, not cannibals are the group being called out in the pamphlet.

Now the difference between A Modest Proposal and Kill The Poor is that the targets of Ralph’s piece – the beliefs or kinds of people who hold these beliefs – are roughly in line with the beliefs of the author and publisher. Not the satirical end-point, of course, but the starting place, the True Thing Behind The Silly Thing.

To put it another way, Kill The Poor would be in the tradition of A Modest Proposal if Swift had published several other, non-satirical articles about how much he disliked babies and what a drain they were on society –lazy as they are rolling around and being fed by their hard working parents – and then written a silly piece about eating them. People would ask Mr Swift, and rightly so, what point exactly he was trying to make.

So what we’re left with is an article on a site that’s frequently and openly nasty about welfare and the disadvantaged, laughing at the idea we’d be better off if we culled poor people and then calling it satire. And to be very clear here, I’m not saying it’s offensive, I’m saying that it’s stupid.

Over at Menzies House, people are getting themselves into quite the lather about the Fairfax article. There are battle-cries around the preservation of freedom of speech, and moreover the smug disbelief that no-one is taking the article in the satirical tone intended. This is not, Menzies House, because everyone is dumber than you or a squealing pack of sensitive lefties, this is because the article does not read like satire, nor does it read like sincerity. It sits in an uncomfortable purgatory between the two.

And more than that, freedom of speech is not freedom from being called a choir of mean-spirited, myopic, deeply unpleasant and cowardly dicks. And to that end, may I just say that you are, in the main, that thing I just said.

Paul Sheehan just blew his chance of a knighthood. Picking a fight with a conscientious octogenarian constitutional monarch by telling her to piss off because she’s boring and old and boring will make you some dutiful, largely ceremonial enemies. If Sheehan ever wanted to be invited to David Flint’s Christmas Pageant, I suspect he’s missed his chance.

The queen for whom Sheehan is grinding his guillotine and running a whip-around for a retirement watch is, of course, Elizabeth II. If aliens visit the blasted remains of our civilisation in 1000 years’ time, they’ll assume she was some sort of universal goddess, given hers is the most reproduced face in history. Being on all the coins and stamps and portraits in Scout Halls of sixteen countries will give you a leg-up in the Guinness Book of Records that way. Perhaps the greatest honour of all is the image on our $5 note; when properly folded, she looks like a sad whale fellating a meaty penis (ask any schoolboy if you are unfamiliar with this trick). When she’s not being an orca’s chewtoy from the chin down, Her Majesty carries out her constitutional role thoroughly and competently, and even the most grudging critics always begin their attack with a perfunctory recognition that she has been relentlessly conscientious in her duties: cutting ribbons, smiling at bores, plodding wearily through the annual ceremonial round until the merciful release of death.

So what’s roused Sheehan from his beanbag of naptime to lay his journalistic kosh across the neck of the national grandmother? Compared to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who abdicated this week after 33 years on the Dutch throne, Queen Elizabeth has apparently been quietly getting on with it for too long, and should also hang up her reigning clogs lest Sheehan be driven to restate his argument again in a larger, more strident font. Sheehan doesn’t touch the valid debate over whether Britain or Australia should be a republic, and confines himself to the proper workings of a monarchy. That’s where I, fully qualified curator of an obscure royal-themed tumblr, come in. Now I know that the Herald’s very own Colonel Blimp is a slow-moving and highly flammable target, but oh, the humanity, Sheehan (himself perhaps incumbent over-long in what’s now largely a ceremonial version of journalism) has been an incompetent human zeppelin this time round.

To get the pedantry out of the way smartly, his irrelevant ad hominem slights on the respective upbringings of Queens Elizabeth and Beatrix do not advance his argument or redound to his credit. Sheehan declared that “Elizabeth had led a sheltered life before becoming queen. she was educated privately at home (like all British royals before Charles), never attended university (like all British royals before Charles), married at 21, a mother at 22 and queen at 25.” Never mind her active service as a mechanic maintaining trucks in the Second World War, or her early and ongoing exposure to all kinds of people and all walks of life that royal touring entails. It is true that “the elevated cocoon of the monarchy” may be “detached from the rhythms of the real world” in that the Queen has never queued at Centrelink, but on the other hand, the otherworldly royal butterfly has met every president since Truman bar Gerald Ford, and anybody of significant profile for the past 65 years, so in her way she knows which side is up on the box of life.

“It’s so different across the Channel,” Sheehan assures us, gravely stroking the false beard he hired for the occasion. The difference is Nazis, Mr. Sheehan. The reason Queen Beatrix’s education in Canada then Holland was less grand than the Queen’s is because her formative years were spent in exile while the Netherlands were under German occupation. Now, after a full reign, Beatrix is following the custom of the Dutch royal family and abdicating to give her son and heir a good run.

Abdication is not a British custom, and, as Sheehan briefly acknowledges, Edward VIII’s famous abdication in 1936 to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson was an aberration and constitutional crisis. The situation is a little more tricky than ‘it’s just not cricket, dammit,’ however.  The Queen has no formal obligation to reign forever and the Coronation Oath she took in 1953 makes no explicit mention of her royal undertaking being for life. For BDSM enthusiasts, however, she did spend most of that memorable day receiving the homage and submission of a lot of lords in fancy dress. Though perpetual rule isn’t in the fine print of her contract with God and us, her coronation speech echoes the promise she made on her 21st Birthday in 1947, where she declared that “through the inventions of science, I can make my solemn act of dedication with the whole Empire listening… I declare before you all, that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” 

It’s turned out her service has been long, and may yet be very long indeed. As a sincere and devout Anglican, abdication would break a solemn undertaking to her people, her God and herself. And for what? Sheehan doesn’t breathe a word of the risk of the Queen becoming incapacitated through age (though the 331 comments to his article seem fixated on the prospect of royal drooling, and largely ignore the correct mechanism of a regency, last employed for the intermittentaly gaga George III, and his faithful wife, Lady Gaga). His reason for the Queen stepping aside would be purely aesthetic, a zhuzhing of the royal brand to keep it “vital.” The Queen has apparently become ossified and stultified, and her speeches “are scripted into corporate caution and are delivered with a woodenness devoid of vivacity.” To be fair, even when a  young darling of the press, the Queen’s style has never been as arresting as Dame Edna’s, and there hasn’t been an appreciable drop in the number of truth- and c-bombs livening her speeches over her long reign. Basically, Sheehan’s argument is that the Queen is old and boring, and that by hanging on she runs the risk of an old and boring Charles ascending the throne when she finally dies.

In fact the refusal to let marketing have its way with a new look reign by Charles, now with more taurine and limited to two cans a day, would in Sheehan’s eyes be “a vote of no-confidence in her eldest son, invite infirmity into the image of the monarchy, and confirm a sense of insecurity around the royal succession.” This is not how anything works. The Queen has painstakingly tended the reputation of the monarchy for 60 years against the endless indiscretions of her family. She doesn’t have a master plan to pass on a lifeless husk just for the vanity of reigning long enough to send herself a telegram on her 100th birthday (“what a lovely surprise!”). She’ll die when she dies. Remaining alive isn’t a mother’s vote of no confidence in her son, and the fact she hasn’t abdicated against a thousand years of custom, or bit the cyanide pill hidden in her cheek to give Charles whatever Sheehan thinks is a fair go is just biology, not selfishness.

To drive the point home, Sheehan indulges in a macabre calculus, juggling the ages of the Queen and the Prince of Wales to prove that if she lives to his arbitrary deadline of 90 (which is likely, given her mother’s 101 years and Queen Victoria’s children Prince Arthur and Princess Louise living exactly  91 years 8 months and 15 days each), Charles will be 68, and really a bit old to be learning new tricks.  So what? Reagan was democratically elected at 69. Gladstone formed his last cabinet at the grand old age of 82. The whole point of tenure, whether it be the queen or the pope or a US supreme court judge is the trade-off of convenience and expediency for certainty.

If I could briefly add another factor into Sheehan’s royal actuarial tables, he sidesteps the main argument that those who fly in the face of the (admittedly debatable ) hereditary principle put forward; that the monarchy’s facelift requires Charles to abdicate as well and skip straight to the glamour-couple of Kate and Wills, basking in the adulation and topless-scandals of popular women’s magazines. It doesn’t really work like that. Unless all senior royals are annihilated in an instant a la the opening scene of King Ralph, the makeover/solution of skipping a generation isn’t really a solution at all. Suspend your loyal hopes for a moment and imagine the Queen died tomorrow. Grant Charles, currently 64, only a brief reign of say ten years. That still leaves the Duke of Cambridge the wrong side of forty, and Kate Middleton pushing out her 15th kid; the fairy tale couple will doubtless look something like Onslow and Daisy from Keeping Up Appearances.

I imagine things will take their course. The Queen will sail on, happy and glorious, Charles will enjoy an avuncular, transitional reign like Edward VII after Victoria, and in the fullness of time, Mr. Sheehan’s computerised ghost will be writing hand-wringing articles about the dowdiness of a plump and middle-aged William V.

David Cunningham is a PhD student in British History and an occasional comic. He curates a silly royal-themed tumblr and relentlessly puns at @dejcunningham

Which is just as well, because an awful lot of people saw his ban on entry as a violation of even the most basic concept of free speech in Australia. They’re probably right, too. Personally, I welcome Mr Wilders to our shore, if for no other reason than Bob Hawke probably wants his hair back. (BOOM, WILDERS, TASTE MY ZINGER. HOW DO YOU LIKE FREE SPEECH NOW?!)

Fans of the Dutch Windmill of Truth are right to point out that while his views are unpopular and politically incorrect, this does not mean he should be denied an opportunity to espouse them. And so, after some embarrassing to-ing and fro-ing, our Immigration Minister approved his visit.

Which puts the whole thing to rest, right? Now that Wilders can enter the country, he can begin his national tour – like whatever the exact opposite of the freedom rides was.

But it seems that those wanting to be whipped into a frenzy of righteous terror have another hurdle to get over, as chronicled by Paul Sheehan in the SMH. The promoters of his speaking tour have run into a problem – no one wants to touch the controversial politician with a barge pole. They can’t find a venue that will take them, nor can they find an outlet for their ads, or even a bank that will process online ticket sales. One Christian venue said they wouldn’t accept the booking for $4 million. (To be clear, it seems like this venue was speaking figuratively, which makes me wonder why they picked such a weird, specific number.)

This is a complicated issue dealing with freedom of religion, freedom of speech and multiculturalism, so it’s a relief they got Sheehan to write about it.

It’s telling of the sheer amount of mental gymnastics required to maintain the world-view of Paul Sheehan that he describes Wilders in the following way:

‘A supporter of democracy, freedom of religion, feminism and gay rights’

This guy sounds great! It’s a miracle he’s not opening for Ani DiFranco.

Of course, what Sheehan is leaving out is Wilders’ extreme and inflammatory views on Islam. You know, the thing he is known for. This is as disingenuous as describing the Queen as ‘Dog owner and crown enthusiast.’

Paul, it must be dispiriting, having to write a sentence like that and then having to spend the next couple of minutes convincing yourself that it’s not misleading in the absolute extreme, and that such a glaring and startling omission is not, in some major way, indicative that even you find your position on this issue quite appalling and not a little insane. It must be tough to force those thoughts from your mind in the quiet reflective moments, when all the furore and noise has died away and you’re left in the cold glow of a computer screen staring at your own reasoning in a kind of bemused horror. Or you might have become accustomed to it, because you also paint Debbie Robinson, the woman trying to find Wilders a venue, as:

‘A small business operator who describes herself as an ordinary citizen.’

Again, what you have omitted – and this time it’s far more sinister because this, unlike Wilders’ views, is much less readily apparent – is that while Robinson may well describe herself as an ordinary citizen, a better description for her by, say, someone claiming to be a fucking journalist, is that she is the Deputy President of a group called the Q Society. The Q Society is, unfortunately for everyone, an anti-Islamic organisation (rather than, as I’d hoped, a group who provide the lunar right with ingenious hate gadgets.)

Is there anything wrong with the fact that Robinson is Deputy President of such a group? Not really – it’s just powerfully deceptive of Sheehan to omit this fact. For someone so concerned with the freedom of speech, Mr Sheehan seems awfully reluctant to exercise it.

As with a lot of what he writes, it’s difficult to tell precisely what he’s angry about or what his argument actually is – it’s possible that Sheehan is just putting this on paper so he doesn’t have to yell it on the bus. It’s clear that he believes – and believes firmly – that there has been a miscarriage of justice somewhere along the way, that double standards are in play, and that Westpac is in all likelihood a front for the Chinese Commies.

I think what’s happened to Paul Sheehan and the Q Society is that they’ve found themselves in possession of a point of view that is unpopular. You can use whatever euphemism you want for this: it’s politically incorrect, it doesn’t gel with the political class, it’s edgy – but the upshot is the same, a lot of people don’t like it. Only problem is, there’s really nothing you can legitimately complain about on this front – he’s been let into the country, it’s just that no one wants to host the man.

Sheehan and Q argue that this is because of fear of violent reprisal from the Islamic community, which is an awfully convenient position to take – given that it at once make you seem less like a pack of unstable fringe-dwellers and your opposition seem more like, well, a pack of unstable fringe-dwellers.

And of course, following the violent demonstrations in September of last year in the Sydney CBD, venues may well be wary of hosting something with the potential to inflame the more extreme edges of the Islamic community – but is it fair to blame, as Sheehan and Robinson do, the lack of enthusiasm solely on this fear?

Of course it isn’t. Is it so inconceivable that a venue would wish to distance itself from a man like Wilders? Are these people so blind to the unpopularity of their views that they cannot allow for the possibility that media sellers, venues and financial institutions might just not want to associate itself with this movement for any other reason than fear of violent Muslims?

Sheehan puts it pretty well when he says:

‘People are entitled to loathe Wilders, or shun him. They’re also entitled to support him or hear him’.

So where’s the problem? How’s this for a solution – find somewhere that’ll host him, you go hear him, have a lovely time with your crazy friends and if you need me I’ll be somewhere else entirely eating a delicious sandwich. I’m unclear as to what, precisely you’re asking people to do. Freedom of speech, obviously, cuts both ways – if it’s fine by you, I – and the overwhelming majority of the Australians you and the Q Society believe you’re defending – will go for the shun and loathe option.

If I had to pick an overriding memory of 2012, it was the sense that we as a nation were in a more or less constant state of being offended by things. Whether it was a megalomaniac lunatic grappling for relevance in the autumn of his life by making comments about the Prime Minister’s family, or sweaty and gross overtures to a political aide from the Speaker of The House, or sociopaths on Twitter behaving like sociopaths, or a comedian making a tasteless and cheap crack at a union dinner, or a tabloid elevating a horse to sportswoman of the year – any way you slice it, the past 12 months have provided no shortage of reasons for Australia to shake its collective fist at a thing, slap it with a glove and demand satisfaction.

Monocles were shattered as they popped from our eyes in surprise and disgust, pearls were clutched so hard they choked us, cries of ‘well I never!’ echoed through the cities and towns. Though, if we were totally honest with ourselves, it wasn’t a case of ‘well I never’ at all, we went through this a week ago, and the week before that.

The only thing we liked talking about more than being offended in 2012 was why we shouldn’t be offended. And at the risk of adding to this tedium, let’s look at the anatomy of an outrage story in 2012.

Specifically, the kind of story where someone says or does an offensive thing, parts of the public get offended at that offensive thing, and the offensive person has to make some kind of recompense for being offensive. It often looks like this:

Stage one: someone – usually someone who makes their living being controversial and offensive – says something controversial and offensive. They do this because they’re sad. The inciting incident is then blown wildly out of proportion by a bored and hungry press in the morning, fuelled by social media in the afternoon and perpetuated by panel shows in the evening – kind of an unremittingly vapid riddle of the Sphinx.

Stage two: Once the initial outrage has died down after everyone has had a kip, two new kinds of articles are published: The outrage-about-the-initial-outrage column and the outrage-about-the-lack-of-outrage column. Neither of these articles are happy with how the press – that amorphous blob of fedoras with cards in the bands – has handled the incident. The former believes that it’s a beat-up, an attack on free speech, political correctness gone mad, and proof that you ‘just can’t say anything these days’; while the latter will cobble together petitions, call for boycotts, and accuse the other side of being insensitive dipshits. This will continue until stage three.

Stage three: The offensive person issues an apology or more often just sits in front of a microphone and tries to be humble, a task they then fail at. This does nothing to quell the outrage from either side, who either think that the apology was disingenuous or think that it was ridiculous that it needed to be issued in the first place. At the end of stage three there emerges a third group of people who, like bower birds, begin frantically searching for shiny, sharp objects so they can, unlike bower birds, stab their own eyes out to avoid the continued coverage.

Stage four: The cause of the initial outrage has been lost to history, and now the discussion centres around lofty, philosophical notions of the freedom to offend versus the individual’s responsibility to create a civil society. This is mainly played out by people calling each other ‘faggets’ on message boards. By this stage, the press is actually starting to cover its own coverage of the event, giving you the uneasy feeling that the news is now being written by Charlie Kaufman. More soul searching results in either the conclusion that it’s our right, nay, sacred duty to be offensive; or that people who came to the first conclusion make an already shitty world just that little bit shittier and should probably shut up.

Stage five: The whole thing runs out of puff, we all return to our homes, slightly embarrassed about the whole affair.

If it sounds like I’m irked by these episodes, it’s because I am. They’re annoying and distract from more important issues like education, poverty and where Edmund Barton’s gold is hidden. After all, no one, as it is often pointed out, has the right to go through life never being offended, and occasionally it seems like that has been forgotten.

However. And this is a big however -

It’s also worth pointing out that no one has the right to go through life behaving like an unthinking dipshit without being called an unthinking dipshit. More than that, it’s possible to be offended by something and object to it without claiming that your rights have been infringed. The overwhelming majority of people do so.

While we’re here, the phrase ‘taking offence’ is more than a little misleading because it suggests that offence is something you choose to take, as you would the last Tim Tam or a mistress. Setting aside the kind of people who lay in wait, complaint-scribbling pens at the ready, being offended is something you very rarely have any agency in, it’s something that happens to you.

And that’s why when people complain that these flare-ups are indicative of an odious culture of over-sensitivity, it’s more than a little galling and not really their call to make.

It’s worth noting that these protestations of persecution on their right to free speech almost always come from people in a position of power –  which is to say that the people who are most likely to tell someone to take an offensive joke in the spirit intended are statistically the sorts of people least likely to find themselves on the receiving-end of such a barb.

‘It’s just a joke’ does absolutely nothing to absolve you of responsibility. It’s a cowardly response to the accusation that you’ve behaved in a cruel or unthinking way. No one likes being called either of those things, and for some reason people have it in their heads that a joke can’t be cruel or unthinking – far better to be called ‘edgy’ or ‘totally un-PC’.

I’ve been involved in comedy since I realised I wasn’t qualified to do much else about a decade ago, and of course jokes can be cruel, and a person can be called cruel for making them. You want to make offensive your schtick? You want to be known as the person who’s totally outrageous? That’s cool, if that’s the way you want to go, no problem here, but don’t behave like a pussy if people call you a dick. Don’t get all precious if people call you out on doing exactly what you set out to do.

Most of these complaints are framed in the context of a freedom of speech argument, and if the Attorney General’s exposure draft legislation gets passed in its current form, then it may well be such an argument. But for now, freedom of speech has got bugger all to do with it.

This is all by way of saying that the cry of ‘you just can’t say that anymore!’ should actually end with ‘ – without being called a prick’, which is fair enough really.

So by all means find the anatomy of an outrage story tedious. By all means acknowledge that the media loves themselves a beat up. You can even complain that there are an awful lot of precious people who seem to be laying in wait to get their hackles up. But don’t pretend that this is tantamount to persecution in any way. It’s an outrageous claim to make.

It’s better for me to leave Sheehan’s article alone, if for no other reason than I feel like I’m in danger of entering into something like a symbiotic relationship with the man, but you can read it here if you feel like treating yourself to a dazzling display of curmudgeonly nonsense. But while the publication of Sheehan’s piece is forgivable, or at least understandable, (I’m beginning to suspect with some conviction that he has to have some dirt on one of the editors) the fact that Vanstone’s piece was published in a thing at least shaped like a newspaper is pretty inexcusable.

To be clear, the piece isn’t offensive, nor is there anything in it that’s notably inaccurate. It’s difficult to find fault in her argument because it’s difficult to find her argument. The article is edifying only in the sense that after reading it you know with a terrifying clarity what it would be like to be stuck next to Amanda Vanstone on a bus. The main problem is with this opinion article is that it’s only an ‘opinion article’ if you extend an incredible amount of semantic generosity to both of those words.

The first section is a pep-talk of sorts:

One of the 52 weeks of 2013 has already gone. With only 51 to go you need to get cracking if you want it to be a great year. You may kid yourself that we are still in the holiday season, which is fine so long as you realise your competition might not think that way and winners certainly do not.

I don’t know what you did to piss of former Liberal senator Amanda Vanstone, but she’s not fucking around anymore – lift your game, shithead. If the one-time ambassador to Italy comes by and discovers your diem is in any way un-carped at any point in 2013, so help her God, she will straight up kick you in the mouth. She’s not sorry, it needed to be said.

The next bit is a continuation of the pep-talk, but sprinkled with some political analysis. Maybe, she suggests, that you’re finding it difficult to achieve your maximum actuallity because 2012 was such a shitty year in politics. Perhaps, she continues, you tune into Question Time and see the parade of relentless mediocrity and cynicism and think to yourself, why bother?

Why bother? Why bother?! That sounds suspiciously like loser-talk to the former Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, and like you might be buying a one-way ticket aboard the mouth-kick express. Because there’s inspiring things all around you, an ocean of them in fact. Don’t look to politicians, look to cops, or volunteers or Deb or Angella or Jeannette.

Who are these people? Why, they are some people that Amanda Vanstone knows and has put in a nationally syndicated op-ed. One of them cuts her hair and has kids that aren’t brats. Another person had cancer but wasn’t a massive pussy about it. Another of them once short-changed her and then made things right seven months later. That person was wise to do so. Amanda Vanstone is to being short-changed what the guy from Taken is to having his daughter kidnapped.

Also poor people are great, elites. So stop being such dicks about them, elites.

The result of all of these disparate parts is a sweaty hymn to the virtues of self-reliance and the perils of a culture of entitlement. But even when translated from the original Bullshit, it still doesn’t stack up.

Vanstone leaves out that she was part of the government responsible in no small way for the very culture of entitlement that she so sanctimoniously lambasts, nor does she mention that her own party has spent the better part of the last two years telling Australians how upset they should be with their lot. It’s a tired, pointless and cynical argument, made worse by being found nestled amongst a bizarre stream of conciousness. .

Thing is, though, this isn’t really Amanda Vanstone’s fault. It’s not surprising that she wrote a lengthy tirade on the things that were making her cross. It’s not surprising that it’s barely coherent and barely stops short of telling everyone to get off her lawn. Nor is it surprising that she thought it was worthy of publication. What is surprising is that it went to print. We don’t need to demand that all op-eds are dour and intellectual, but I do not think it unreasonable to ask that our newspapers print things that, if it’s not a huge bother, make a lick of fucking sense.

If our papers are concerned about dwindling circulation, they might want to consider publishing the kind of content we can’t get for free by asking an old man at a train station how his day is going.

So, Fairfax, if you’re going to publish articles like this, the least you can do is take the advice therein – be better in 2013.

The past week is a really solid example of this. After Justice Rares handed down his verdict on the Peter Slipper affair, a few things happened. First, once it became apparent how scathing the judgement was, a large group of people on the Internet shat their digital pants or blew their virtual load, or an unseemly combination of both those things. After all, the judgement is so dismissive of Ashby and his colleagues that it’s a minor miracle it didn’t end with the words “Now piss off, ya fucken muppets.”

Slipper, while not exonerated on the charge of being a creepy weirdo, was cleared of all others. That’s pretty bad for James Ashby, who not only comes off as a massive tool but a bit of an idiot to boot, but it’s even worse for his supporters, a lot of them very high profile members of the Coalition.

Members like George Brandis. The Shadow Attorney General said some things in the Senate that, in light of the verdict, make his legal mind seem about as sharp as a knife made of diarrhea. Also not coming out of this looking terrific is former LNP member for Fisher and current fuckwit Mal Brough. The judge went so far as to single Mr Brough out, saying that he’d pushed Ashby along for the sole purpose of political gain. A concocted sexual harassment claim levelled at the Speaker of the House in order to further your shitty career? What a guy.

And that was just the beginning. Next the Coalition refused to disendorse Brough for the upcoming election, and more than that, failed to acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part. Joe Hockey fronted the media and told Labor to ‘stop hyperventilating’. This seemed like a catastrophic PR move for the Opposition. Throw into the mix the not insignificant revelation that it looks very much like Tony Abbott lied to the press about when the Coalition knew about the case against Slipper, and you’ve got a story that is, to put it mildly, spicy. Twitter collectively sat back and waited for the fallout, tripping over itself in an attempt to work out which precise word to affix ‘gate’ to.

And the next thing that happened was precisely fuck all.

Sure, some of the speculation was over the top – but the way that other scandals have gone this year, can you blame anyone for thinking the press might indulge in some of their patented hyperbole on this? Using the AWU affair as a benchmark, the Rares verdict should have caused the entire front bench of the Coalition to burst into flames and then have their charred remains implicated in the murder of Phar Lap. Yes, Brough and Brandis’ positions are not comparable to that of the Prime Minister, but if you want to talk about appalling judgement, an issue that was apparently at the heart of the AWU blow up, then you could do worse to look to the pack of dipshits that just got their arses handed to them by the Federal Court.

But instead we have silence from our journalists or at the very least equivocated nonsense. Particularly galling is the line peddled by Michelle Grattan and others; that the verdict, while certainly decisive, is largely irrelevant because the damage has been done. This argument is especially infuriating because Grattan is glossing over the fact that the damage has been able to be done precisely because of hacks like herself being terrible journalists. It’s also defeatist, hypocritical and not a little bit condescending. And, by the way, it’s one thing to assert that the damage here is irreversible, but quite another to assert it with a breezy nonchalance. Something bizarrely unfair has taken place here, and not everyone shares the practiced cynicism of the press gallery.

Of course this is all bullshit in any case; whether Slipper is damaged beyond repair is basically up to the same journalists who are acting so powerless, and if they were serious about changing perceptions they could. After all, they were the ones who created the initial perception in the first place – this is something that is also conveniently forgotten when stories like this go sour.

The cynicism surrounding the reportage of this scandal has been staggering. From the very beginning, any journalist worth their salt could tell that this story was seriously dodgy. That didn’t matter, they ran with it anyway, and in failing to recognise this fact publicly they gave the story credence. And in giving the story credence, they gave themselves really good reason to be coy about Justice Rares’ judgement. In short – one of the perks of having a media that is complicit in your bullshit is that it’s very difficult for them to report when it’s shown to be just that.

To be completely clear, I don’t think this is a media cover-up – if it were a cover-up it would be, weirdly enough, slightly less irritating. A conspiracy has its own kind of perverse integrity, or at least some kind of concerted effort. What we have here is a media that’s at once completely reckless and gutless – exploiting the public’s fatigue with their relentless peddling of hyperbole and scandal in order to cover their tracks when it’s convenient.

And there’s more at stake here than pissing off the perpetually pissed off folk on Twitter. Not holding politicians to account on things like this is a pretty surefire way to guarantee that they’ll keep behaving in that way.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded gently napping suddenly there came a tapping

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Tis some visitor I muttered, tapping at my chamber door –

Only this and nothing more.

-

Then a thought assailed my peaceful dreaming, a fear of pranks so un-redeeming

Enacted by the neighbour’s kids whose tricks I so abhor.

On the last day this month had remaining, a year ago, a bag containing

Dog shit that was brightly flaming – left at my chamber door.

Like the Greeks inside the horse during the Trojan War.

My shoes ruined evermore.

-

Fearing such a grim reprisal, knowing that those kids devise all

Manner of such prankenings – of this much I was sure.

So I flung the door wide open, heart in my throat now just hoping

In the darkness my hands groping for filth I would deplore.

Nothing but a raven, who then flew in through the door.

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’.

-

Well, that’s annoying I concluded, as the knocking had eluded

A person, not a stupid bird, was at my chamber door.

Now you’ve made the room all drafty, I angrily rebuked its crafty

Birdy little face. Then laughed-he, and shat upon the floor.

Flying up to my new curtains which it plucked and ripped and tore

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’.

-

In my frenzy of frustration at-this unseasonal migration

I neglected screaming ‘You just talked, you’re meant to caw!’

But instead I grabbed a broomstick and lunged fast across the room quick

As a lion who will soon stick his teeth into a boar.

He landed on my desk and scattered papers to the floor.

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’.

-

It then came to my attention through my memory retention

That the bird I was pursuing was quothing ‘Nevermore’

Well, it took some tough believing, birds don’t do that of an evening

‘Cept of course that one deceiving cunning parrot from before.

I’d invested all my money in his alpaca furore.

Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’.

-

“Now listen up you sneaky little flapping black and beaky

Bastard raven you can leave now” to the bird I did implore

“Look,” I did continue, tense in muscle and in sinew,

“I do not want to bin you so please show yourself the door”

I pointed to the bin to show the bird what was in store.

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’.

-

“Yes I caught that when you said it”, (or in your case when you read it)

“The four or five times prior to that one from just before.

While it’s impressive that you’re talking, the thing at which I’m baulking

Is that you are right now walking on a desk that isn’t yours.

I like it when birds are outside and do not go indoors”

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’(s)

-

“You’re a pest, I wont deny thee but if you’re trying to spookify me

Then I have to tell you that I’m left now wanting more.

While your black eyes make me wary there is nothing that is scary

Bout a talking bird who’s very keen to take a piss inside my drawer.

Unless you’ve got some bird flu, you’ll never scare, you’ll bore.”

Quoth the raven ‘Nevermore’.

-

I want you to in your mind see me going to retrieve my b-b

Gun from where I leave it in a box beside the door.

“You have left me no solution than a mercy execution

and while your stature’s Lilliputian you are still a fucking chore.

I’ll put up with your bullshit not a second any more.”

Quoth the raven ‘Please don’t shoot me I’m just afraid of being outside tonight.’

-
“I’m just frightened” quoth the raven, “I’m a coward, I’m a craven

Afraid of ghosts and ghasts and werewolves that howl and tear and roar

Your house looked so inviting with the soft electric lighting

And I didn’t find it frighting to knock upon your door.

But I’ll leave if you’d pre-fore

And I’m sorry bout before.”

-

“Now wait here just a second” to the raven I then beckoned

As in my mind I reckoned that I might have acted poor

“Why not stay the night here I can offer you some light beer

There’s no need to take your flight dear, you can spend some time here more

We’ll watch nice relaxing movies and we’ll roast some tasty smores”

Quoth the raven ‘Are you sure?’

-

So once upon a midnight beery, watching Beaches, getting teary

Me and my new birdy friend were sprawled across the floor.

This was the best night ever said my friend lifting a feather

As I sank another bever-idge into my waiting maw.

Qouth the raven ‘Nevermore’

Qouth me ‘You say that an awful lot, you know that?’

Unsurprisingly, Gerard Henderson was the first out of the stable – as he furiously tried to pen as many broadside attacks on the sectarian media before getting himself all tuckered out and needing a rage-nap.

His column published on Wednesday is one that I can’t really go into here, but it suffices to say that it couldn’t decide whether it was about Indigenous kids, Jimmy Saville, Peter Roebuck or the fact that no one sells that bran Gerard likes anymore. Whatever the actual content, the message was clear: brace yourselves, Catholics, not since little Marty Luther ruined a perfectly good church door with his list of quibbles has our institution been so besieged.

I live in more or less perpetual fascination with how institutions of such overwhelming and undeniable power can so successfully cast themselves in the role of victim. But in fairness, to read a lot of the articles appearing since the Royal Commission was announced, it does seem that there’s an awful lot published about the Catholic Church, and none of it very positive. So does this constitute an anti-Catholic bias?

Well, the short answer is nope and the long answer is nooooooooope.

The articles are not biased against Catholicism; they’re biased against kid-fucking. As are the overwhelming majority of people. The jury is well and truly in on this one. And to the Catholic Church I have to say this: you certainly did fuck an awful lot of kids, and at some point, this is going to make you wildly unpopular with the powerful anti-kid-fucking lobby.

Do other people sexually abuse children? For sure they do. Is the Catholic Church the only institution with a problem with systemic child abuse? Of course it’s not, and more than that, no one is saying it is; that’s why the Royal Commission will have terms of reference broader than the Catholic Church alone. But can any of these other institutions hold a Roman Candle to the Catholic Church in terms of the breadth and depth of not only the abuse of children but subsequent cover-ups? Absolutely not.

So, I get that it’s frightening to have people angry with you and not know why – it’s tempting in these situations to feel like everyone’s out to get you just because you are who you are. But the really good news here is that that’s not the case at all. It is, overwhelmingly, and I hate to repeat myself, it’s the sexual abuse of children that people are cross about. That’s the big one. The kid-fucking one.

Because while it’s true that a lot of people just plain don’t like the Catholic Church on historical or personal grounds, it is also true that a great many more people don’t like it when you use your position of moral authority and power to sexually assault their children and then use that same authority and power to protect your own interests. People get thingy about that.

And one last thing.

It is one thing to be part of a system that for years covered up some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, but quite another to baulk and cry conspiracy when called on it. Has the church gotten better since Toward Healing in 1996? Yes. They have, as you would bloody-well hope, gotten better. Should this quarantine them from criticism in the present day? Why on earth should it? Setting aside that it’s absurd to think that this behaviour has stopped entirely after just under 20 years, you can’t just call everything before 1996 ‘historical’, as senior members of the church have done recently.

Historical? You know what age the kids abused in the 90s would be now? Roughly my age. Were I a victim of abuse at the hands at the clergy and heard my ordeal described as ‘historical’ I don’t think I’d be quite as willing to put it in the same basket as the gold rush and stove-pipe hats as the church seems to be.

I guess if there’s one take-away from this article for anyone out there who’s concerned about the rampant and ubiquitous anti-Catholic bias in the media (listen in, Gerard) it’s this:

If at times it seems like the Catholic Church is overrepresented in the media coverage of sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups, please know that it is not because you are Catholic; it is because your institution is overrepresented in cases of sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups. That’s all that is.

Beyond that, it would be just excellent if an institution who has made victims of so many in the past would develop a modicum of self-awareness and compassion to understand just how galling and hurtful it is to play the victim yourself when called to account.

Blogging elsewhere this week – you can find my latest over at The Vine.

In the mean time, please enjoy this incredibly funny Tumblr made by my friend David Cunningham (@dejcunningham). It’s about the Queen.

I’m reminded of those kids when I read headlines like this:

After reading that headline, you may well be compelled to ask how such an egregiously offensive sentence managed to find its way onto the website of the Telegraph. In fairness, it’s not like the Tele has in the past been a paragon of tolerance and virtue, but this is extreme to the point that it seems like something went terribly awry during ‘Bring Your Homophobic Grandfather To Work Day’.

And to be clear, it’s not like there’s anything inherently offensive about the words on their own – being gay and being a party boy are two things that I, and the majority of the population, think are pretty swell things to be. It’s that they have been included here apropos of fuck-all. There is no need to have those descriptors in the headline, unless, of course, Andrew Clennell was trying to imply that these are negative things.

(And it’s worth pointing out that this headline and article has since been changed – here’s a screencap of the original)

But maybe this is just an overly emotive headline – that some young sub-editor is trying to grab the attention of Akerman or Devine in the hope that he’ll be invited along to one of their famous ‘wine, cheese and the ritual slaughter of the unclean’ nights. Because surely, surely, in the year of our Lord that we as a species landed a remote controlled robot on another freaking planet – surely the Tele isn’t running a story as bat-shit insane as that headline.

Well, this is what they led with.

The state’s newest MP headed overseas to marry his boyfriend and used to organise risqué beach parties at Bondi to raise cash for gay lifesavers, it has emerged.

 ‘It has emerged?’ It has emerged!? Well, fuck, Woodward, I can only imagine the kind of clandestine meetings in underground car parks with chain-smoking whistle-blowers that afforded you such a scoop. Because, ‘emerged’ implies that this information only came to light recently – so what, exactly, is your bombshell? Every single fact in this article is something that was easily available to the public for months.

And far more importantly, even if these things had come to light after his election to the seat of Sydney, in what possible universe can any of them be construed as bad? What exactly is offending you here? Is it that he had to go overseas to marry his partner overseas instead of here? Because if it’s that I’m willing to get on board – but I have a suspicion, and in fairness this is based solely on every single other word and sentiment in this article, that that’s not what’s upsetting you.

So what about these “risqué beach parties at Bondi to raise cash for gay lifesavers” that have you all riled up?

In what way, precisely, are they risqué? Can it be because of this quote from Greenwich?

“Bondi Boys was launched in October and the venue didn’t know what hit them. Everybody was ordering drinks like crazy, like a Fag Tag situation!”

Because no one who is paid money to write words down for people to read for a living could possibly take offense to people getting well boozed at a fundraiser. That is, after all, how fundraisers work. For better or worse, people need to be tricked into being selfless by plying them with liquor.

So could it be that it was in aid of gay lifesavers? Is it the gay lifesavers that have you angry? Don’t worry gang, there are very few confirmed cases of gay lifesavers deliberately drowning Daily Telegraph readers as an excuse to give them mouth to mouth. Gay lifesavers are, statistically, far more likely to be the kind of people who risk their lives in order to save someone, even if they are bigoted and ignorant enough to have an issue with them.

Or, and I’m going out on a limb here, but is it the inclusion of the phrase ‘Fag Tag’ that is the target of your righteous ire? Hey Andrew Clennell, I understand that in your sweaty masturbatory fantasy, Fag Tag conjures up images of a bacchanalian orgy, but it’s just the name of a queer friendly party in Sydney. I know this because for Christmas, my parents bought me unlimited access to Google.

Sometimes when those kids in the preschool would refuse to calm down, I found it helpful to repeat back to them what they’d said caused their anger. So here we go:

It sounds to me, guys, like you’re upset that a man was democratically elected over the weekend and that he used to hold boozy fundraisers to benefit the surf life saving community.

I think it’s time you had a lie down.