That hen-hugging squawker is at it again. As reported in today's Feral: '"When you're fighting barbarism and terrorism I think you need to be careful not to descend to barbaric acts yourself," Senator Bartlett told ABC radio.

"In my view the death penalty is a barbaric act that we need to oppose in all circumstances."'

Assorted leftie ear-ring tuggers will be reading Fartlett's words, nodding sagely with this "sophisticated" analysis of the Amrozi verdict. But really it's anything but.

Basically, he's saying that slaughtering hundreds of innocent people merely because they don't share your primitive religious views and had the temerity to have a good time in your presence is no worse than capturing the man who did this, proving guilt, and then finally, after months of deliberation and argument, deciding to top the bastard - and that bastard alone.

What a self-evidently moronic position. Of course there's a friggin' difference!

Put it this way: In the end you may decide that executing mass-murderers is not morally right. But you've gotta concede that it sure as shit ain't barbaric. (Or, if you're gonna say that it is barbaric, then you have to agree that detonating bombs in nightclubs is mega-barbaric.)

Far from being humane and discerning, Fartlett is basically a nihilistic dullard. And his amoral attitude infects all his thinking. Not only can he see no distinction between terrorism and capital punishment, but he also thinks that chooks should have the same rights as people!

Intellectual bantamweight.

Watched Media Watch tonight. Marr had a go at the commercial stations' exploitation of the obesity epidemic.

The old anti-capitalist angle - that those evil drug companies and weight loss gurus use commercial TV to promote their products - was wheeled out yet again. Well, knock me down with a feather! Drug companies trying to make a profit through the teev! Who would have suspected it?

Absent from the analysis was the crucial fact that obesity is undeniably bad for your health and dropping the flab is, in most cases, a very good thing. Which is to say that making money does not necessarily require evil motives and it is actually possible that some of these diet-meisters are sincerely out to improve the quality of fatties' lives - as well as their own credit ratings.

Still, to be fair, the show was entertaining. There were a few observations about the conventions of the typical diet story/advertorial that were quite amusing. One, for instance, was that the former flabster is always interviewed near water. True - and funny. I actually laughed out loud - which was a lot more than I've done while watching any ABC comedy show (except Micallef) over the last few years.

Crikey, you know the ABC's in trouble when their most po-faced, humourless journalistic crusader is actually more amusing than their finest in-house comics. I mean, have you seen that tragic Elle McFeast chick? She's about as funny as SIDS. She should be beaten to death with a rubber chicken for crimes against comedy, I reckon. Whenever her Godawful pouting mug pops up on the screen I immediately want to hurl - and I'm not even bulimic.

There ya go: new diet! Force porky people to watch dreary, witless, politically correct ABC comedy shows until they're moved to lose their lunch. How's that for a sure-fire, drug free weight-loss program? That's something David Marr might actually approve of...