General Hayden's enthusiastic endorsement of metadata as the digital equivalent of strapping nitrous tanks to your state-sanctioned murder program was short, simple and direct. It popped, in marketing speak. Everything George's rambling interview with David Speers on Sky News didn't. Maybe he was still hurting from the hits he took after speaking up for the rights of Nazi sympathisers and YouTube trolls. "People do have a right to be bigots, you know." The Speers interview went viral and a perfectly reasonable plan to snoop on the private lives of 20 million or so law-abiding citizens suddenly seemed ... well, not very reasonable at all. Perhaps quoting another NSA old boy, General Counsel Stewart Baker, might have helped to sell the government's massive expansion of everyday spying on everyone and everything. Explaining the mysterious properties of metadata, Baker didn't resort to misleading or tortured analogies with stealing and reading old-fashioned paper envelopes. He simply said: "Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody's life." That's how simple it is, Senator. You could have saved yourself all that trouble and embarrassment. Next time Speersy asks one of those awkward, embarrassing questions about your awkward, embarrassing habit of rifling through our online unmentionables, just tell him: "We need to know everything. So we can kill you." Funny to think the whole fiasco was supposed to distract from the bigots-have-rights-too botch-up. Just as Canberra was promising to record everything you ever do or say online, it was also stamping out your precious, precious freedom to say the dumbest, most hurtful thing you can think of. Here was the hapless inefficiency of Big Guv on display; spending hundreds of millions of dollars to put our milquetoast spies on steroids at the very same moment it crushed the hopes and dreams of bigots and terrorists everywhere that they'd be able to say something worth spying on.

★★★ Of course bigots and terrorists are always worthy spying on, but so is Andrew Bolt. My dear friend and colleague found himself in unlikely company this week when changes to the Racial Discrimination Act which should have protected him, and bigots and terrorists – hell, all of us – from saying whatever they or we damned well like were unceremoniously squashed in cabinet. Apparently 5000 submissions flooded in and only one-tenth of one per cent of bugger all of them agreed that people do have a right to be bigots, you know. Still, as I tried to explain to Andrew over lunch at our club (a thrice-baked souffle of endangered native bird eggs; with chilled monkey brains for dessert), it wasn't all bad. If the so-called "Bolt amendment" had gone through, those dreadful beardy nutters would have had exactly the same right to spout their dangerous lunacy as decent fellows like us. Surely he wouldn't wish to be thought a hypocrite for demanding a right to spout dangerous lunacy that he denied others. He did not reply directly, instead frowning and aggressively shovelling more than his fair share of chilled monkey brains out of Bonzo's head. It was not at all seemly or becoming. There was an upside to all this inept social engineering, however. Deltra Goodrem can now live free of the debilitating fear that Marlon Wayans will trash her dance moves on the internet. And if he does, ASIO will be all over the metadata.

The clock ticked down Wayans' 15 minutes of fame long before it started on Delta's, but he got a few minutes of overtime after sharing a photo of her dancing at a Beyonce/Jay Z gig in LA. "Man I got the most UNRHYTHMIC WHITE WOMAN dancing next to me at the jay and bay concert," Wayans announced on Instagram, with a picture of the star of no movies anyone recalls in the past 10 years giving Goodrem a scorching side-eye. "This bitch dancing to AC/DC." The sexism, the racism, the criminal lack of respect for the hardest-rocking aged pensioners in the world, that was never going to fly, Mr Wayans. Not now that the federal government has broken another election promise and confirmed people don't have a right to be bigots. Even as an ASIS wetworks team was despatched to LA, Wayans struck back, tweeting that "all these sensitive ass people" calling him a racist woman hater could "suck it long, hard and till y'all mouths hurt". One day people would understand, he protested. "I simply don't give a f---. And I refuse to succumb to this new world order." It is understood neither Beyonce nor Mr Z were aware of the controversy, nor of the existence of Mr Wayans.

★★★ Finally, was there ever a moment you felt prouder to be Australian? How my heart swelled to see that tangle-footed train passenger in Perth fall into the gap between the platform and his ride, only to be saved by dozens of commuters who leaned in and pushed all those immense tonnages of steel off him. They were such great photos. Blokes in high vis gear. Suits. Shorts. Office casual. Men and women. Mullets, shaved heads, tattoos, boots and sensible shoes. Possibly even a pair of leg warmers. The great Australian tribe all putting their shoulders in. I can only hope that as they heaved and strained to shift the massive weight they chanted "Straya-Straya-Straya" and roared "You bloody beauty!" as the steel behemoth rocked and the trapped punter was set free. Twitter: @JohnBirmingham