Coming Soon On Q-&-Effing-A

WE all know how the ABC works, if that is the right word for an organisation whose premier talk show operates along such predictable lines that little thought or effort must be required to assemble each week’s guests. An Egyptian gargoyle with a foul mouth and none too strong a hold on logic or consistency? Yep, book her!  After all, Mona Eltahawy says in public what the head-nodding ABC group-thinkers utter off-camera, so she gets a seat, a pulpit and not too many interruptions from compere Tony Jones.

Sometimes it is even easier than that. A scandalously inconsistent and ill-informed climate catastropharian turns up from Canada aboard a carbon-spewing jetliner to preach the gospel of global warming and capitalism-driven megadeath, so of course the producers can’t resist giving him an entire show to himself. Hey, at at a subsequent Newtown dinner party some ABC employee would have been able to boast of shaking David Suzuki’s sainted hand, perhaps even of helping him turn off the…