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Ancient leftie scribe Mungo McCallum pleads with Crikey for equal time in the abuse hour, suggesting that if Crikey refers to the likes of him as a Howard-hater, it should call PM supporters Howard-huggers.
Stupid Mungo must be sitting too close to the bongs up in Byron Bay. The hatred displayed by the irrelevant left can’t plausibly be balanced by terms such as “Howard-hugger”, unless PM supporters start likening him to the messiah or calling for his canonisation.
I don’t think much of lefty commentators like McCallum, Ramsey or Adams, but I don’t hate them. Likewise, leaders from the other side of politics like Beazley, Brown or whoever’s in charge of the Democrats this week might be inept and philosophically on the wrong tram, but I don’t hate them.
But revealingly, Mungo and comrades revel in their hatred. Yet, hatred by a supposedly learned commentator in Australian politics for a liberal democrat, albeit a conservative one like Howard, is simply irrational. If Howard acted like Saddam Hussein, Joe Stalin or Mao Tse Tung and had personally harmed them or theirs, one could perhaps understand hatred; although revenge would be more useful. But this is John Howard for Christ’s sake, he holds elections. He’s won four.
Yet his supporters are not as obsessive as those opponents who delight in their hatred. That’s irrationality bordering on madness.

Almost everyone has fantasies. That’s why advertising works. Who hasn’t taken a wander from reality and imagined winning the lottery, opening the batting for Australia, telling John Howard to leave the keys in the top drawer? But except for the truly touched, fantasy has no lasting power and we’re soon back dealing with grim, sordid reality.
Advertising reminds us that nearly all of us have fantasies. And the best fantasies in advertising are funny, clever and, even to tots, clearly unattainable.
Those who don’t have fantasies — or won’t admit to them — are geriatric intellectuals like Germaine Greer.
The whiney old bag has hit the headlines again — and ensured a few more sales for the General — by getting her bloomers in a twist over a Holden ute ad.
Greer, who would like to “shoot” 4WD drivers, began her speech by attacking Holden over ads for the new Rodeo ute, in which a woman asks a man what his ultimate fantasy is, only to have him imagine driving off-road with a younger, slimmer and “entirely servile” woman.
“My question to you women is, why have you allowed this to happen?” Greer said. “Why haven’t plate-glass windows on Holden showrooms been exploding all over Australia? How much humiliation are you up for? I promise you, they wouldn’t dare do it in Europe. They would not dare.”
Greer, who said Holden would have based the ad on market research, said it demonstrated the problem of Australians, regardless of sex, not speaking out.
“Australians are naturally egalitarian, direct, honest, not eaten out by envy, but lazy and too slow to anger,” Greer told a crowd of 300 women at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre.
“Please get annoyed about this (Holden ad) because it shames us all.”

Fergawdzakes, the ordinary bloke imagining himself with an unattainable goddess has been around since Ugggg discovered his fist was for more than punching. It doesn’t usually transport to reality.
Maybe Greer was practising self-parody. Launching a jihad against the Holden ute from the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre seems a tad ironic. If not unhinged.