The Cardinal Rule of Port-Canted Justice

Conservatives are now being locked up on the strength of evidence that isn’t, so it’s probably time for all of us on the Right to consider our own situations and make the necessary plans.

Personally, I’m hopeful of only being stitched up for some kind of low-level white-collar offences, since I’m only a journalist and can’t realistically be placed in any historical circumstance that would see me, for example, accused of capturing young people in a cathedral and raping them.

But you never know. I do spend a lot of time in Texas, just about every year, so it is conceivable I might find myself dealing with decades-old chainsaw massacre allegations. Maybe I’ll be accused of breaching the 1836 Treaties of Velasco, or be implicated in the gruesome and unsolved 1965 Houston ice-box murders. (For the record, I was just two months old when Fred and Edwina Rogers were chopped up and refrigerated. Given the way jury verdicts can go, however, my high-powered legal team is busily covering all possibilities.)

Readers are advised to examine their own lives in order to determine the most likely charges to be faced. As the conservative round-up gathers momentum, this sort of planning could mean the difference between a twelve-month suspended sentence, community service with home detention, or life without parole in Goulburn’s Supermax.

As a first step, carefully analyse all of your cultural and professional associations and connections. Is there anything in your background that might offend Guardian, ABC or Sydney Morning Herald reporters?

Like, say, working in the private sector, not believing in the majesty of Muhammad, thinking climate change is stupid, rejecting the primacy of socialism, or being Catholic?

Locate the source of any potential leftist wrath and you’re halfway to discovering for what crime you’ll be framed. Perhaps you work in finance, in which case an embezzlement sentence awaits. Or maybe you’re a former border security employee, and therefore exposed to potential torture charges.

Are you of European background? Lots of royals were offed in Europe back in olden times. Get your alibis in order if you wish to dodge a regicide investigation.

Or you could be a university lecturer, which means … no, wait. If you’re a conservative university lecturer in Australia, you’ve already been fired.

In any case, the way things are going, certain court procedures loom. And please don’t imagine those procedures will only involve offences as they are presently defined. Keep in mind that future laws may find you vulnerable to thoughtcrime or language legislation. We do have a Labor government headed our way, you know.

The last time Labor was in power they attempted to impose hostile anti-liberty media regulations. Even after a Coalition government was elected, my friend Bill Leak was hounded right up until his death by a Human Rights Commission that applied torment as process.

With the rise of social justice warriors in the judiciary, who knows where we’ll end up under Bill Shorten’s Labor rule. Good luck if you happen to appear before Magistrate Tim Soutphommasane, presiding in the court of challenging pronunciations.

So we’re all definitely going to prison. This is where the second step of our planning occurs. To what prison might we be destined, and for how long?

Well, if my theory about a personal low-level white-collar conviction is accurate, I’m probably looking at an eighteen-month term in one of New South Wales’s minimum-security correctional centres. There are quite a few such facilities, from Berrima in the Southern Highlands to Emu Plains west of Sydney.

With luck, I’ll end up in a single-prisoner cell equipped with a few extras above the usual jail level.

From what I understand about prisons, you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands in between beatings and attempting to brew alcohol from food scraps and toilet water. An incarcerated conservative could get through a lot of reading, assuming those beatings do not alter ocular acuity.

Compile a reading list. Some of the classics, things you always meant to read, or in my case always claimed to have read, are helpfully long and probably very complicated. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina alone might absorb a full ninth of an eighteen-month sentence, what with all the revisiting of previous chapters and the bashings from fellow prisoners for reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. (Besides being known for physical violence and toilet-based cocktail concoctions, Australian prisons are notoriously aligned with the Alexander Pushkin school of Russian literature.)

There would also be the opportunity for writing, although I’d encourage inmates to avoid publishing any excessively introspective or biographical works. Some bloke in the 1920s—can’t quite recall the fellow’s name; little chap, very shouty—used the time available to him courtesy of a Bavarian prison sentence to scribble two volumes of memoirs describing his “struggle”. Subsequent sales were brisk, but the whole caper ended badly for all involved.

Maybe there will be a positive outcome. After we conservatives emerge from captivity, we may enter a world of equality, serenity and decency designed during our enforced absence by enlightened leftist overlords.

Alerted to our errors of perception, for which we have been punished, we conservatives may participate in this brilliant new world by contributing in whatever small ways we can to the cause of progress.

This will obviously require ongoing confessions of shame and displays of abasement for earlier transgressions. These rituals might continue for decades. And any lapse in the shame-confessing schedule could result in further confinement.

You know, all things told, in that future world, prison might not be such a bad option after all.

________________

IF politicians are so often said to have received “rock star welcomes”, what sort of welcomes do actual rock stars receive?

From my observations, not much of any welcomes at all. I once saw Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee strolling through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and the only reaction he got was from a few people nudging each other and mentioning that Pamela Anderson’s ex was in town.

My friend Angry Anderson of Rose Tattoo generally receives warm and affectionate welcomes, because you tend to get what you give in this life.

At the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles I rode a crowded elevator in the company of Warren Zevon. Nobody else appeared to recognise the “Werewolves of London” singer, who wore an amused half-smile throughout his three-floor descent. God only knows what that famously twisted individual was thinking. Actually, having read Zevon’s posthumous biography I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, by ex-wife Crystal, I’ve got a fair idea.

Following Zevon’s death from cancer in 2003, son Jordan took charge of cleaning out his father’s apartment. He found a box of videotapes bearing various coded labels, which Jordan could not decipher. So he played one. It was full of shockingly graphic hardcore pornography. Starring his dad.

Anyway, back to rock star welcomes. This is one of my favourite print clichés, being largely redundant in an era when the only people receiving the equivalent of genuine rock star welcomes are reality television performers and others for whom fame is an aim rather than a consequence.

But they’re also sweetly archaic. Here’s a quick sampling of various rock star welcomes, recent and not so recent.

Rock star welcome for Meghan at London university

It’s interesting that there is no hierarchy in these welcomes. A pop star welcome might conceivably come in below a rock star welcome. A rap star welcome would presumably involve gunfire. Nobody wants a rap star welcome.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama receives rock star welcome in Calgary

Calgary isn’t exactly a fame magnet, although it did attract a claimed reincarnated Tibetan named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, who wrote several popular occult-themed books. An investigation found that Rampa was really Cyril Hoskin, a plumber from Devon.

Juan Guaidó gets rock-star welcome, risks arrest in Venezuela

As should most rock stars.

Kim Jong Un Gets “Rock-Star” Welcome in Vietnam

See above.

Putin to receive a rock star welcome in Belgrade

And again.

Jeremy Corbyn gets rock star welcome at Glastonbury Festival

Of course he did. People on ecstasy are hopelessly affectionate, even towards old commies.

Bong Revilla receives “rock star” welcome from the crowd during Hugpong’s slate launch

Sometimes a headline tells the whole story. No need to read on here.

Pope Francis arrives in New York to rock star welcome

It’d have been more entertaining if he arrived to a Tom Jones welcome. Here’s some knickers for you, Frank.

Rock star welcome for Rudd at old high school

That was in 2007. In later years the kids welcomed him with actual rocks.

Endangered kakapo chicks receive rock star welcome

I hope they appreciated it. You know, somebody should compile a book of newspaper clichés. It would sell like hot cakes.