Is it possible to mount a serious analysis of Ian Wishart's latest sordid fantasies about certain Dunedin-based Labour Cabinet ministers? Yes. To begin with, though, I'd ask Mr Wishart who his primary sources were forthese latest outlandish allegations. Were they Exclusive Brethren-backed private investigators Wayne Idour and Lew Proctor? Let's proceed to a more scholarly frame of reference. In political polemic, it is standard practice to imagine the target of one's political aversion to be capable of "depravity", as can be demonstrated by Marie Antoinette in the eighteenth century. Granted, she was an airheaded dilettante who wouldn't be out of place on Prime's Charlotte's Lists in contemporary New Zealand, but her anti-royalist political opponents distributed lampoons or libelles about the object of their ire, envisioned as a foreign constitutional conservative propping up incompetent absolutist rule at a time of increasing poverty and mass starvation in the countryside and cities of eighteenth century France. These libelles also accused the Austrian consort of Louis XVI of introducing "tribadism" into France, and indulging in it with the Comtesse de Polignac, Princess de Lambelle and others, as well as actresses like Sophie Arnould and Francoise Rancourt. Her modern biographers doubt the historical veracity of any of these allegations. There was even an eighteenth century version of Investigate, Pere Duchesne,which published these scurrilous propagandist myths. As we can see from the above, there has always been an element of sexual fantasy whenever opposition movements get too frustrated with slow political and social change, or, in the case of social conservatives, any social or political change. One final element in this cauldron of seething rhetoric is the fictional genre of conspiracy theories itself. In the claustrophobic realm of the conspiracy theorist, power corrupts, except if it is in the hands of a fellow social conservative, who is apparently infallibly virtuous. Conspiracists believe that "power elite groups" or powerful individuals act to cause social change, and then derail conservative opposition through "suppressing" adverse "information" about aspects of the proposed transformation of law or morality in question. In this worldview, "hidden masters" act to suppress "the truth" which consists of "secret" "knowledge" about particular groups or individuals. Conspiracy theorists like to boast that they have uncovered this 'secret knowledge", which usually is referenced from other conspiracy theorists. This pseudo-"knowledge" is nothing more than rejected falsehoods or outright fabrications. The "truth" is nowhere to be found near there... particularly not out there... Recommended: Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions of Contemporary America: Berkeley: University of California Press: 2003. Terry Castle: The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture: New York: New York University Press: 1993. Alan Dershowitz: Sexual Macarthyism: New York: Basic Books: 1998. Absolutely Unfit for Human Consumption: http://www.investigatemagazine.com Tragic tabloid gutter glossy. Today's equivalent of Pere Duchesne. Craig Young - 23rd May 2007