A Question for the Lunar Right: Why so serious?

If there’s one thing I don’t understand about the country’s right-wing complaining column-blog-whinge clique, it’s this:

What the hell soured their whiskey?

To pick a random example, look at Andrew Bolt. In spite of the entire net worth of his TV viewership being somewhat less than a house at Yerranderie with an asbestos ceiling fan, he seems to do okay: the suits, the profile, the income, the News Limited sinecure and so on.

For this, his journalistic output is roughly that of a hobbyist Reddit poster, except without the editorial control.

Bowling leggies on a damp wicket to batsmen with spiked-down feet, this guy is obsessively terrified that he’s being done out of the upgrade from Lexus to Real Mercedes by some academic activist because said activist isn’t black enough. His continual attitude to the world is the bile of entitlement denied, like he hasn't noticed he's rich.

Jesus, Andrew, get a grip. When the repo man comes for the Blu-Ray, come and complain to a world that will ignore you as cheerfully as it ignores anyone else fallen on hard times. We promise not to sympathise, because nobody does. Oh, we'll make noises at the pub, but we'll also bid on your stuff at Grey's.

Or Gerard Henderson. Here, I swear, is the pith and juice and seed and skin of disappointment. In a bottle. With someone pulling a face on the label.

In spite of his obvious privilege, his inside-track to people willing to pay him to write their columns, his long-standing position in the Australian media, and his dignified grey hair …

Gerard has the dog's-bum-lips expression of someone who just found a lemon in his Corona, again! They’ve played this prank since I was in first year at university and I HATE IT! – and nobody ever told him the lemon is the only thing that makes it drinkable, because it’s so much more fun watching him dig with a skewer for the next two hours.

Piers? I really can’t make fun of the preposterous old doughnut. My father died of Alzheimer’s.

Paul Sheehan? Oh, here is a victim worthy. Over the years, he’s worshipped at the alter of magic-water pseudo-science, praised the fake economy of the first dotcom bubble, predicted the collapse of Australian society based solely on the poor rugby teams fielded by GCS schools, encouraged Australia to follow the odious example of oppressive regimes like Singapore, and railed at any and every government that didn’t follow his own insane prescriptions for The Greater Good.

Let me just check, behind that off-milk demeanour. How are you doing, Paul? Okay? Top ten percent? Not left behind with the jetsam of Fairfax’s chronic mismanagement? Haven't flown to London to scratch and whine at the Guardian offices like an ancient Labrador hoping to swap his fleas for food?

Able to command sufficient re-Tweets and complaints to justify your income? So why are you so miserably unhappy with the state of the world?

It’s an enduring mystery, to me. What was, for these and the rest of the vermin brood – whose only prescription, really, is that people below them on the greasy pole of life should sink lower for the Good of The Country – the thing that soured life for them? That made every dissenting opinion evil?

Let's not even start on the country universally acclaimed by these reincarnations of the Whinging Pom: America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of the last damn penny not already claimed by someone offended because they have mere millions while others have billions.

What put the worm in your apple, people?

I don’t earn your income, but life is fun. My wife will die, one day, either horribly or suddenly. But while her tests give us another year, our sons give us another argument, our business gives us another month’s mortgage, we smile and laugh and eat and drink.

Dudes, if I had your life, the biggest problem I’d face in the morning is how to stop laughing. Really. I’d be like a pig with my arse in butter and my face in treacle.

Why. So. Serious?