Not content with entertaining the press gallery with a nifty new white
beard, Alan Ramsey appears to have returned to his part-time job as a
transcript service for his mates.

Today’s SMH column under Ramsay’s byline contains 787 words – precisely 66 of which are his.

The
rest of the verbiage belongs to US public TV stalwart Bill Moyers,
accepting a prize from Harvard. Warns Ramsey: “Moyers’s acceptance
speech should terrify you. If not you deserve everything you get, even
if the rest of us don’t.”

The speech, it turns out, is an attack
on religious fundamentalism in US poltics and society. Check out
Ramsay’s Rapture here, if you dare: Seeing beyond blind faith to a dire revelation

We’ve
had a lot of fun with Ramsey these past five years. You could dip into
the archives and come up with a gem on every page. Remember his tussle with Michael Danby?

And who could forget his unrequited love affair with Mark Latham? Or, before that, with serial letter-writer Paul Keating?

But
time moves on, and we wait for the Lounge Bar Bore to grow his white
beard down to his knees as he prepares to leave Australian political
journalism once and for all.

Maybe he’ll find a comfy cave
close to Werriwa and see out the remaining Howard years enjoying, with
his mates, the quiet echoes of the past?