Seize The Defeat

So, an offensive menu was printed up for a Mal Brough fundraiser. And we are, naturally, in quite a flap about it.

And yes, fair enough. It was gross. It was sexist. It was nasty. It was a shitty joke, and it wasn't even original.

And look, I have no problem with anyone asserting that Mal Brough is a sleazebag. There's the whole James Ashby affair, and oh yeah, that little thing called the NT Intervention. Believe me, I need no convincing that Mal Brough is a first-class dickferret of the very highest purity.

But here's the thing about menugate, or quailgate, or big red boxgate or whatever bullshit it's being called:

Tony Abbott will still win.

It has been blindingly obvious for some time now that the Labor Party is going to go down in flames in September. And yet somehow, the True Believers keep seizing on moments like Brough's menu, claiming that this time,. THIS time, the Coalition's goose is truly cooked. The voters simply won't stand for such appalling misogyny, the True Believers squawk. Women won't be treated like this anymore, they scream. Now that the Liberals have shown their TRUE colours, Julia Gillard's dignity and toughness and determination will win the day and all will be well.

I am sorry, True Believers: all will not be well. And every time you say that THIS will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, a new batch of polls come out and show that the camel is doing a buck-and-wing all over Labor's expiring corpse.

The reason we keep going through this is that the True Believers, justifiably appalled as they are by Tony Abbott's appalling character, cannot conceive of any other explanation for Labor's subterranean popularity than that the electorate simply doesn't UNDERSTAND how bad the Opposition is. Once they do, the story goes, everything will turn around.

Once again, I am sorry to be the one to break it to you: they know. Everyone knows. They've all seen him, they've all heard him, they've all read about him. And they either don't care, or see what you think are character flaws as virtues.

When someone you hate does something you disapprove of, it's seductively easy to assume that this will cause everyone else to hate them too, because you've been hating them all along. It's seductively easy to assume that everyone else thinks the way you do, and the only reason they disagree with you is they don't have all the facts.

Sadly, sometimes people have all the facts and still think you're wrong.

Sadly, sometimes people are bastards, and they like it when other bastards are in charge.

Sadly, Tony Abbott is going to be prime minister, and whatever miracle it might take to prevent that is going to have to be a hell of a lot more volcanic than a shitty sexist joke on a menu of murky antecedents.

And given that fact, why should we keep on making excuses for Julia Gillard's hapless Washington Generals of a government?

The fact is, Gillard ain't all that. Her asylum seeker policy is brutality embraced in the name of expediency. She made a mess of the mining tax in her haste to cave to big business and get the issue off her desk. She is continuing our pal Brough's racist intervention. She gave a nice big smack to single parents the same day she electrified the world by bawling out Abbott in parliament. Her stance on marriage equality enrages pretty much all her staunchest supporters. And her government has done many good and admirable things, she is singularly bad at turning them to her advantage, which, whether it be the media's fault, or Kevin Rudd's, or Abbott's, is nonetheless a fact.

So why should we on the nominally "left" side of politics be as eager as we have been to gloss over all that?

Well obviously it's because, for all her faults, Gillard is better than Abbott. No doubt about that. Though Labor has done some stuff badly, the Coalition will be ten times worse, and we have to fall in behind Gillard to stop Abbott getting in at any cost. Wise words.

But the fact is, Abbott IS going to get in. So what's the point of being "better than Abbott" when you're not going to win anyway?

While Labor had a chance, it made sense to bend our energies to supporting them, to keep the Liberals at bay. But that's failed. The Liberals have stormed the parapet. The shields are down. Labor is dead in the water.

So trying to keep Abbott out is now a lost cause. And any attempt to downplay the failings of Labor in the interests of realpolitik is no longer a brave stab at bringing about the lesser of two evils, but rather an exercise in futility that simply continues the relentless lowering of standards in political discourse.

Consider: if you are backing "crappy" because it's better than "crappier", when "crappy" has no chance of winning, you're not staving off "crappier", you're just ensuring that "crappy" becomes the best we can ever hope for.

So why not stop standing up for "crappy"? Why not starting calling out bad behaviour, bad policy, bad government, no matter which party is engaging in it? The partisan battle is over, let's redirect our energies into demanding better from ALL sides of politics. Let's make it clear that we want to raise standards.

Most of all, let's rediscover our integrity and commit to standing up, in all circumstances, for what we really believe, for what we think is RIGHT, rather than desperately trying to rationalise support for better-than-Abbott.

And hey, we've got preferential voting. We'll be putting better-than-Abbott ahead of Abbott anyway. Don't worry, as long as better-than-Abbott has a lower number next to it on your ballot paper, you've discharged your responsibilities to the temple of low expectations.

But when we're out in the world, fighting and arguing and debating and lobbying and tweeting and blogging and emailing ministers, let's stop shouting our disapproval of "them" while we whisper our disapproval of "us". Let's make clear that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and while political realities obviously have always to be recognised, we're not going to support any politician who flat-out reverses the two.

Right now, my fellow travellers on the Lost Bus Of The Left, we are down. We're outnumbered and outgunned. But even at this moment we can be heard, and we can make clear what we want. Even with our worst enemy in the Lodge, we can articulate how we want this country to be better.

And when the worm turns and we find ourselves up and about again, we can make sure that those who would represent us know that we want them to fight for what's right, not just for what's slightly less wrong.

We're about to get beaten. But if we can stand up, we don't have to be broken as well.

A True Larrykin

If there is one thing I love, it's a larrikin. Know what I mean? A good old-fashioned, mischievous, good-humoured, larrikinish larrikin, the kind of larrikin that made Australia what it is today: i.e. a country full of larrikins.

The trouble, of course, is that although this country is full of larrikins, we are ruled over by a bunch of decided non-larrikins. Our politicians are all so soft and wishy-washy and feminised they wouldn't know larrikinism if it jumped up and shoved a sugar glider down their pants.

Our media is decidedly non-larrikinish too. Michelle Grattan is a poor excuse for a larrikin. And with the best will in the world, I think you'd have to concede that Ross Gittins is very far from being the intellectual heir of famed SCG wag "Yabba" Gascoigne. In fact, the entire press gallery is not the intellectual heir of famed SCG wag "Yabba" Gascoigne, and it seems a bit of a shame that the media watchdog is so obsessed with so-called "cash for comment", and never gives the slightest thought to redressing the lack of "Yabba"-resemblers in our media landscape.

However, we need not immerse ourselves entirely in gloom, because there is one man willing to stand up for tradition and patriotism and not-climate change left in our great nation, and that man is Larry Pickering.

Pickering has been one of our greatest larrikins for decades, of course, his larrikinish cartoons bringing joy to millions and keeping alive the larrikin flame that has been burning bright since Gallipoli, when the Anzacs staved off the horrors of war with cheeky japes and drawings of Billy Hughes's cock.

It is in that tradition that Pickering continues to hold the "stuffed shirts" to account on his website, and in particular in brave, truthful-yet-larrikiny pieces like this one, in which he exposes the monstrous threat to our democracy that is Anne Summers and her radical femo-socialist agenda, finally pricking that balloon of man-hating, excessive body hair and mandatory lesbianism that has been hovering over the great southern land ever since Paul Keating rammed through legislation that allowed women to exit buildings.

In the best larrikin tradition, of course, Pickering is not a vindictive man. He is slow to anger, but sharp as a tack and full of boisterous and wittily logical argumentation when roused, and this was no exception. As he writes:

I had never heard of a person called Ann Summers (not sure Ann is with or without an "e" and I couldn't care less really) until she said somewhere that my scribblings were responsible for Jill Meagher's murder.

See how he first demonstrates how he is the bigger man - he had not even heard of Summers, because he has better things to do, like defending our democracy. He emphasises how far above the pettiness of the world by indicating that he doesn't even care how Summers's name is spelt. This is a good sign of a lofty mind.

But then we get to the nub: the reason why any man of good conscience would speak up at this point: Summers accused Larry Pickering of being responsible for Jill Meagher's death.

What's worse, she did it "somewhere": if there is anything worse than a woman who calls an innocent man a murderer, it is a woman who calls an innocent man a murderer in an indeterminate and ill-defined location. Luckily, I've sleuthed a tad and found out exactly what Summers said in this disgraceful smear. Her words are as follows (be warned it is fairly strong stuff):

I just saw television footage of thousands of people walking in a peace march along Sydney Road past Hope Street to honour the memory of Jill Meagher. It was a beautiful sight and a powerful reminder that for all the Alan Joneses of this world, most Australians are decent honourable people who are disgusted by this culture of vilification and violence.

I'm sorry I had to put that on the blog, but you had to know how depraved "radical womanhood" (god Pickering has a way with words) can get. Look at that paragraph. "It was a beautiful sight" she writes. "Most Australians are decent honourable people". "I just saw television footage".

VOMIT.

We know what you're saying. You can couch in separatist anarchist neo-Greerist psychobabble all you like, Ann(e), but when you write "disgusted", we can read between the lines: you are saying that Larry Pickering murdered Jill Meagher. We're onto you. What a revolting accusation.

But all good larrikins know how to make freedom-lemonade out of feminazi lemons, and Pickering does so by taking the opportunity to expose the misandry and harridanism at the heart of public life. Having gone to notorious communo-hotbed "The Drum", a website run by the ABC Politburo, Pickering found more of Summers's "work". Like any red-blooded larrikin, Pickering "couldn't bring myself to read it closely", and who could blame him? But reading things is unnecessary to identify radical agendas - indeed it can be counterproductive. The important thing is that in his article he draws, with uncanny plausibility, a direct line between Summers, her big fans Christine Milne and Lee "Uncle Joe" Rhiannon, the plummeting value of Whitehaven Coal shares, Tanya Plibersek's husband-fronted drug operation, child sex, drink-driving, fraud, and prunes. It's a vast conspiracy and it takes a journalistic mind of remarkable acuity to pull it all together so neatly, but that's what Pickering has done, and it's a relief to us all I'm sure that he's manning the parapets as Castle Australia is assaulted by this army of green red pink warmenist homosexual vagina-owning orcs.

And it's those aforementioned prunes, the ones clogging up Summers's reproductive tract, that as Pickering notes, are the whole problem, as they have led to this she-beast breathing fire all over our constitutional rights and causing us to not only have to stand an "elected" prime minister with ill-fitting jackets, but also enabled the violent, financial and sexual crimes of the modern Australian Labor Party. Thanks a lot Anne, you armpit-hair-encouraging, child-molester-enabling, economy-destroying, lipstick-flaunting "writer". You have wrecked Australia and now we may as well live in Afghanistan, if it's not already infested by all the feminists which Larry Pickering's blog commenters wish to send there.

So all power to you, Larry Pickering. You are not only a savvy journalist and a masterful artist, you are a patriot, a freedom fighter, and most improtantly, a larrikin of rare note. Don't listen to those who wish to silence you, who wish to repress the truth. Don't listen when they tag you "sexist" or "misogynist" or "racist" or "insane" or "a bankrupt serial conman" or "a sad old derelict sniggering at his own dick-pictures" or "a rambling maniac who can't even concentrate on one thing for the five minutes it would take to compose a coherent blog post".

Don't listen to any of them, Larry. We TRUE Aussies know what you are, and we salute you for it. As your loyal reader "gungit" notes:

"Why is it all the ugly woman are so prejudiced?"

Exactly. EXACTLY.

HAS FEMINISM GONE TOO FAR????

"Has feminism gone too far?" asks noted intellectual and pantsman Bob Ellis in his latest think-piece. Perhaps you would care to offer your answer on this. But be warned, before you do, your answer is stupid, because you are not as clever as people like Bob and me and possibly Kim Beazley.

It is important to ask whether feminism has gone too far, because if it HAS, we need to take action to prevent good men being ruined by accusations of things they didn't do, and also things they did do, because isn't being accused of something you did the cruellest injustice of all?

As Ellis points out, feminism is out of control when even a good man like Lord Byron is forced to die in Greece just because he was an incestuous pederast - how much longer must we endure these time-travelling feminists destroying the history of Romantic poetry? What's next? Feminists arresting Alexander Pope for raping quokkas? It is only a matter of time and I hope you are happy Naomi Wolf.

The point is, all the famous people who have ever raped anyone are GOOD MEN. Why do feminists hate GOOD MEN? Why do feminists prefer bad men, just because they bad men are not pederasts or rapists or Bill Clinton? It's like, "Oh yeah, John is a good man, but he raped me, so I'm going to get all thingy about it and destroy his excellent political career. Because I hate good men!"

Is that really feminism? Wouldn't a TRUE feminist, a decent, honest, dedicated feminist, LIKE good men? Wouldn't they want to build a better world and realise the occasional sexual assault is a small price to pay for economic stability? Wouldn't a TRUE feminist spend her time working to make women less nasty and evil, rather than constantly destroying Greece's economy in sympathy with stupid prostitutes making outrageous claims in inverted commas?

Yes that's right, Germaine: you ruined Greece. Thanks a LOT.

Let us not forget the original meaning of "feminism", from the Greek "femi" meaning "women" and "nism" meaning "should shut up and be grateful".

Hasn't feminism gone too far when not only Oscar Wilde, but also Winston Churchill, are accused of being big gay people? Why are feminists so anti-gay? And so anti-left-wing? Winston Churchill, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger - the list of progressive left-wing warriors who have been ruined by feminists' insistence on being total dicks is literally endless. And by literally I mean not literally. It's a literary device, idiot, look it up!

I remember when feminists knew their place. I remember when you could have a decent conversation with a feminist without being accused of raping her ears and being smuggled into the Hague with not even enough time to pop your ears. I remember when feminists knew the value of a good scone. I remember when feminists were happy to stay in the kitchen, incubating their eggs. I remember when feminists took a threat to ruin their careers if they wouldn't get on their knees in the jocular spirit in which it was intended.

What happened, feminists? Did you get bitter because you couldn't find a man? I understand. It's hard being ugly, isn't it? But just because you're ugly doesn't mean you should persecute GOOD MEN just because they are GOOD MEN! It is getting to the point where a man can't even squeeze his secretary's breasts at a Christmas party without being dubbed a "predator". It is getting to the point where a man can't even indulge in a good-natured bit of spiking a girl's drink and then having sex with her while unconscious and filming it and broadcasting it on a public website and then writing "HA HA HA" in black artliner on her boobs and then stealing her handbag and then masturbating into her fridge without being labelled a "pervert". Even if he is a GOOD MAN, he must wear this tag forever. Even if he is a poet. Even if he is Shakespeare. Even if he is a promising junior minister in a Labor government. Why do feminists hate promising junior ministers?

Is it because feminists don't have penises? Do they hate penises?? I think they're jealous. I was in a bunch of feminists the other day, and I showed them all my penis, and I could tell by their looks of disgust that they had an innate hatred of penises. Penises are a natural thing, feminists! Love them! After all I don't hate vaginas - I like them even though they're gross and they scare me.

Feminists, I don't want to fight. I don't want hostility. I think we can reach a mutual understanding between the women of this world, and the actual human beings. All we need is for feminists to imagine a world without poetry. A world without literature. A world without progressive politics. A world without media-friendly Labor politicians. A world without right-wing conservatives who are actually left-wing if you know them like we do. A world without good men.

This is the world we are in for if we continue down this path of accusing every single famous left-wing man ever of raping women and liking little boys. Right now, 90% of good men are in jail for rape, while Bill O'Reilly and Hitler run around free.

Here is the deal, feminists: If you can stop accusing us of sexual misdeeds, stop trying to ruin our careers just because we have strong passions and enormous physical magnetism, stop attempting to have us thrown into jail for no better reason than the fact we have committed a crime, stop suing us for every petty little grope and trivial assault we might commit in the course of good old-fashioned horseplay - if you can do all these things...

Then we will continue advancing society, ensuring economic and political stability, producing wonderful art, and being nice to women most of the time unless we're drunk or feeling a bit frisky.

Is it a deal feminists? Can't we go back to how things used to be, when men were men, and women were women, and it was only you who had to be ashamed of that fact?

Hasn't feminism gone too far? Can't we roll it back a bit? Isn't it time to admit that basically, men are pretty good, no matter what they do?

Look into your hearts, feminists - assuming you have any - and try to find it within yourselves to stop bitching.

Because seriously, it is REALLY killing the mood.