On Quadrant

There once was a time when reading Quadrant was a worthwhile exercise as it greatly exercised the mind to do battle with the best of conservative and libertarian thinkers. But then Paddy retired.

The June issue includes at the back the most horrendous two pages by Peter Ryan. The first part of it is a weird tirade about Anzac Day and the mini-culture war about its representation in history, but this follows a single paragraph in which he tries to resurrect claims from before the 2007 election that "Rudd is a Dud" and then tells us that "His [Rudd's] government already ranks way below Whitlam's". This is apparently because Rudd has used office "to display all the deficiencies I had noted". I must admit I have no interest in reading the earlier item, and mostly find these kind of articles to be just the same kind of irrational "Rudd haters" as were "Howard haters" - though this lot were previously Howard lovers.

Ryan then decides to tell us that Sarah Palin is clearly a great person because her father brought her up on the poems of Ogden Nash. He then goes on to (mis)quote from one called "The Four Bastards" and pleads with Quadant readers to provide him with the text.

It shouldn't srprise me that neither Ryan nor his editor tried the simple process of Googling "Ogden Nash "The Four Bastards"". They would have found this.

Or even the version supposedly recorded by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

A little harder work would find that it was not a poem but a song.