Four Cornered

THERE'S AN OLD joke, funnier, it's true, toward the end of a pleasant evening, about a poor, leprous, reeking wretch who crawls into a magnificent cathedral as a grand wedding is in progress.

"Why, God, why me?" he cries, bringing the ceremony to a halt. "How could you have so wronged me? My wife and family dead, my fortune stripped away, my health ruined. Why, God why?"


So moved is the congregation it takes up the visitor's cry, voices rising as one unto the Great Bunyip, each mouth beneath the stained glass and soaring arches imploring an explanation for such calamity and dread misfortune.  Even the bride and groom fall to their knees to pray for mercy, hearts all but broken by the poor man's sobbing recital of all the many more Divine injustices visited upon him.


As he crawls to the altar rail and suppurating* sores stain the flagstones upon which he comes to rest, the bishop adds his voice to the questioning chorus.


"Why, God, why," is the cry from his and every quivering lip. "Why him, Lord? How could You inflict so much grief on such a pathetic little mouse. How could You, God? How could You?"


There is a rumble in the air and a mighty, swirling cloud of blinding, brilliant light billows beneath the cathedral's dome, whence descends a giant hand with pointing finger that stops but inches from the poor man's tear-stained face.


"Why did I do this?" says The Voice of Ages. The celestial finger points and quivers as the faithful hang upon the answer.


"Why?" booms The Voice as the finger jabs, "because this one just gives Me the absolute shits."

 -----///-----

THERE are few if any moments in life when we can touch, know and quite enjoy the Divine certainty of another's torment, but anyone who watched our PM duck and weave and snap and scold on Four Corners must surely have felt that guilt-free, godlike tingle. Her press gallery congregants can take up Gillard's case, as they do almost every day now, praying for mercy in their columns and pleading for  wisdom's Divine intercession to make voters see, as they all do, the many sterling virtues and wonderful accomplishments of the Labor crew.

Last night as Gillard squirmed and those darting, cornered eyes supplied a candour that her voice dared not, you had to love every miserable second of the creature's unravelling. Finally, the woman who has told so many lies ran out of them. She would not answer because she could not answer. To confirm that she knew her victory speech was drafted two weeks before the knife went into Rudd would have been to validate every suspicion of cynical and predatory ambition she has for so long denied.

It was beautiful to watch her come undone, sweeter than the licorice icecream the Rufous Bird brought with her for dessert.

She's gone, you know, about to be crushed and buried by the mountain of her own deceits. We'll get our chance to play God with the rest of them soon enough, when scandal, happenstance or, if we must wait that long, the passage of  another 18 months brings an election to the nation's rescue. Until then, let us enjoy this moment as a demonstration of that lesson many still teach their kids: a bad end for a bad person.

But most all she's gone because, as she demonstrated so well last night, she shits every adult with an ounce of sense or decency, especially decency.

Enjoy the show. It is going to be fun and very bloody.

*originally mis-spelled, but now correct. It was late. Much licorice icecream had been consumed.