His "sustaining fantasy" is that he is worth reading

ABC The Drum Unleashed - Sustaining fantasy

Bob Ellis, who always now gives me the impression of writing under the influence of a bottle of red, writes of the "sustaining fantasies" that people use to get through life. It contains pearls such as this:

We are told a priest who buggers choir boys can eat Christ's flesh on our behalf and save us a billion years of fiery torture thereby, though he himself will suffer a trillion of fiery torture for buggering choir boys against God's will though God, who is all powerful, neglected to prevent him from doing this, a God who loves us all. And some of us believe that too.

I'm fairly certain it's been quite a while since he looked into Catholic theology.

And there is a distinct sense of self justification for past behaviour in this section:

We are told there are faithful husbands who spend months each year travelling the world. Who are they? I would like to see a list of ten names. Yet we base our notion of civilised society on this premise and sack our politicians if they don't live up to it. What a fantastical premise it is and how useless it is to believe it.

Adultery has been frequent since the invention of the bicycle and very, very frequent since the invention of the Pill and the universal availability of cheap interstate air travel and we should probably work out how to cope with it, in rules that won't be easy to construct. But denying it happens or saying it won't happen in particular cases is ludicrous fantasy.

It's easier to give up smoking. The wife-swapping parties of the 1950s and '60s (so well evoked in The Ice Storm) seem wiser now than they did then and the destructive, child-smashing divorces of today a moronic alternative.

Yes Bob, but I wonder what your past partners think about this.