Tim Blair, a slow Saturday promenade and sundry squawks from the pond

(Above: Fantasia, or the dance of the sugar plum loons).

Saturday should be a proud day of promenading for loons, dressed out in their most splendid regalia, and taking in the spring sun and the pleasant air.

After all, on Sunday, they should be reclusive, in church, humming along with the choir, and - reflecting on their sins - dressed in a pious black.

But things are strangely quiet on loon pond. Oh sure there's always the raucous squawking by Tim Blair, but on Saturday he fancies himself as a humorist. Protesting idiocy of life's agitators is his idea of fun, but it reminds me more of Dave Rudd's gormless dedication to the picking of wings off flies as a way to pass the time.

We've moved a long way from Alexander Pope, and lordy, even further than the likes of Basho, at least if you bothered to mire yourself in Blair's frenzied flock joining in the fun in Friday Haiku Frenzy.

Tragic really, but perhaps not so tragic as Blair's attempt to defend Rush Limbaugh from charges of racism, in Intention Pure. Hah, well let's see if Limbaugh still ends up as a minority shareholder of the Rams, as we all know that the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.

Even an attempt at ABC bashing by Blair, in accordance with standard lickspittle lackey Chairman Rupert requirements, ABC isn't Free, turned a little problematic when one agitator tried to stir the possum:

Did you see these comments by Rupert Murdoch?

”The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price, and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.”

Your boss thinks your kind are aggregators and plagiarists. How do you respond?

No, no, Tim Blair won't do for a Saturday with his sleazy aggregation and plagiaristic ways, and his bower bird kleptomaniac content accumulating lifestyle. It's back to Tim Flannery bashing for him. Better to stay in the shallow water of warminista monomania than to get out into the deeper parts of the pond.

But who's left? Over at The Australian the elusive Christopher Pearson - gorgeous when in full plumage, but often missing of late - is nowhere to be seen, and instead we're left with the likes of the dowdy, dull Paul Kelly, who mistakes tedium and boredom for insight (Rudd's softer stance mugged by reality).

Over at The Punch, they've barely managed to rustle up a couple of contributions, while at the newly badged National Times we have the strange sight of Miranda the Devine trying to be lightly humorous, which is roughly equivalent to watching an elephant or a hippo or a 'gator dance en pointe.

Well we've already looked at the Devine, as usual an offal green bashing experience, so what's left?

Well I'm afraid it might be time to read sensible folk. Like Mike Carlton on the monumental gall of dolts in All hail the shameless neo-cons:

Here at home, the attempts by the Opposition and its cheerleaders to foment panic about the new lot of asylum seekers are no doubt a welcome diversion from the troubles of the Liberal Party but they are equally disingenuous. If Malcolm Turnbull wants to return to the Ruddocky horrors of women and children rotting behind the razor wire or going mad on some god-forsaken lump of guano in the Pacific, he should say so.

Which introduces the person I'd really like to do a Saturday promenade with. Yep, he's a Liberal, by name Petro Georgiou, and here he is in Razor wire returns:

The current bout of chest thumping, of assertions of toughness and accusations of weakness undermine all this. Responsible leadership should not be about using vulnerable people as a political football. The arrival of a small number of people fleeing persecution requires an evidence-based and humane response, not a macho slanging match. We have been there before. It was a dark chapter in our history. We should not turn the page back to it.

My partner is already on notice that should Georgiou ever advertise a vacancy, I might well be tempted to apply. What a loss to the Liberal party he will be, while they work hard to keep the likes of dolts like Wilson Tuckey in the fold, not to mention the brainless cavortings of Bronnie Bishop and the guano-like utterances of Amnesty ruining Philip Ruddock.

But enough of that. Loon pond isn't dedicated to the sane or the sensible, it's dedicated to the squawks of indignation from commentariat columnists, and we won't have long to wait before this quiet Saturday will seem like a dream in a haiku.

As always Sunday won't see the wretches in church confessing their sins, but out in the street verballing what and who ever comes their way, with their motors running, heading out on the highway, chewing up the gas, polluting the air, thinking that they're Hermann Hesse types (or at least capable of singing Steppenwolf lyrics).

Meantime, since haiku seems to be the rage this week, instead of wasting your time with the dolts on Blair's site, here's a couple from Basho:

Nothing in the cry

of cicadas suggests they

are about to die

Summer grasses:

all that remains of great soldiers'

imperial dreams

Sick on my journey,

only my dreams will wander

these desolate moors

How very noble!

One who finds no satori

in the lightning-flash

(more here)

(Below: just to keep that Disney metaphor running, below Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. The commentariat crickets will be chirruping tomorrow, as they always do, in the way that buzzing blowflies and fluttering moths return in force in the spring. Ah the primeval primordial struggle for survival of the leviathans and Chairman Rupert continues apace ...)