In which the pond berates and despises all lick spittle fellow travellers who fail to speak up and denounce everyone ...

(Above: the vision, the dream).

A friend kindly delivered me a copy of the the Sunday Herald Sun yesterday, an actual physical copy, which is a bit like finding some petrol in Mad Max 11, and so I sat down to read it.

In the good old days, it would have occupied me for a solid ten minutes, but I have to confess - apart from noting the presence of Campion college fellow, maudlin Miranda Devine's meanderings about royalty, mentioned in the pond's despatches yesterday - that it took me a mere five minutes to scan the hundred plus pages of the rag, and then send it to the recycling bin.

Meanwhile, thanks to the power of the intertubes, I was off watching the comedy stylings of President Obama (as you can here) and the associated comedy stylings of Seth Meyer (as you can here). Talk about the fox-wearing the Donald running as fodder for gags and as a joke ... and they wonder why newspapers are struggling, except in the world of weird Victorians who still worship at the shrunken shrine of the SUN HUN.

By the way, on that list of Campion college fellows is Giles A. Auty, Peter Coleman, and sometime scribbler for The Australian, Greg Melleuish. Say no more, but thanks to the reader for ferreting through the festering free market in education to remind us who "our people" are ...

Well, as the pond isn't one of those people, it's our usual painful duty to troop off to see what the recently promoted Colonel Grumpy is raging about in today's column. Paul Sheehan loves to rage against the machine - he's a right regular latter day Zake de la Rocha, or so he thinks.

Could it be climate change, and the dreadful impact of the tornadoes in the United States, and the usual offensive and absurd sight of fundamentalist Christians explaining the sinful were being punished by god for their wickedness? Talk about a sick machine. (Apparently, God's wrath was directed at those Southern tornado victims).

Could it be another diatribe against climate change, and all those wicked sinners who dare to mention climate change in the presence of a natural disaster? Sssh, whatever you do, don't mention climate change, especially in the presence of the true denialists lurking in the world of Murdoch's machine-like minions. (Is climate change behind those killer storms? Foxheads eagerly denounce such notions).

What about the deluded million plus pilgrims congregating to watch the fix go in as the Catholic church now routinely celebrates superstition by announcing a saint in waiting each week? Now there's a saint-making machine full of mere mortals. (Roman Catholic Church's saint-making process).

What about the remorseless way the RC machine currently rolls over anyone with a faintly forward-looking notion? (Toowoomba Bishop William Morris quits Roman Catholic Church church after row with Vatican over ordination of women - sic, we don't make up the headers, we just faithfully copy them down).

Bishop William Morris's thought crime? To write a letter suggesting the Church consider the ordination of married men and women to counter a shortfall in priests (and incidentally to counter the hideously distorted masculinist culture of celibacy within the church). Sssh, whatever you do, don't mention healthy human relationships within earshot of the Catholic church hierarchy ...

What about the splendid news that in the United States the Catholic Church is dropping like a stone, with one out of every ten Americans an ex-Catholic, and the Church dropping one of three? Not really, because they're just changing camps ...(Catholic Church losing 1 out of 3. Protestants gain).

By the time we got to clicking on Paul Sheehan, we were in a lather of anticipation and frenzy. What would Colonel Grumpy choose as his theme for the week?

Ever seen lather wash away and disappear down the shower drain? What Colonel Grumpy actually offers the world is It's time to rage against the Liberal machine, a tirade about Gabrielle Upton, state Liberal party selection in the seat of Vaucluse, and Sheehan's pet bête noire, Liberal lobbyist and party machine man Michael Photios.

The day you see a Sheehan column raging against David Clarke's insidious role in NSW Liberal party politics is the day we can all sleep soundly at night. Memo to self: prepare for many restless nights.

Mug punters familiar with Sheehan's raillery will be reminded of the long and predictable nature of NSW political machinery and its inevitable corruption, a proud tradition which dates back to the Rum Rebellion, and you can still to this day discover conservative commentariat commentators happy to berate Bligh and celebrate John Macarthur's overthrow of legitimate government authority, as some kind of righteous power struggle with the goodies wanting to turn the colony into a haven for private entrepreneurs ...

Speaking of Australian history, if we can just leave Colonel Grumpy stewing in his Liberal machine juices - oh dear lord now we face four years of Sheehan raging about Liberals rather than Laborites, a switch flung as smoothly as a railway point - it's time to troop off to The Australian, and to the unsavoury sight of Ross Fitzgerald sticking the knife into Manning Clark in Fellow traveller mute on Communist crimes.

The rag has, in the past few days, been brooding endlessly about Manning Clark, including a further piece of self-serving angst by Fitzgerald in The long history of Manning Clark, and Steve Waterson delivering up a bit of common gossip in Manning Clark's torrid ties with Patrick White, and delivering up History in the making: Manning Clark's life laid bare, about Mark McKenna's biography, and Mark McKenna spinning off in a self-promoting way with his biography Chronicles of a lost soul, and showing the dangers of being honest about yourself and your sexuality and putting it into print, slavering over Manning Clark in Confessing his attraction to boys (also by McKenna).

Well Manning Clark might have been an indifferent historian, inclined to a Dostoyevskian view of Australian history, but he took it seriously and transformed the art, science, call it what you will, and even though his six volume history declined as he continued (how to make meaning out of the mundanity and mendacity of Ming the Merciless), all the current scribbles in the Oz suggest he was a giant amongst gnats ...

And of course all the current scribbles ignore perhaps the most shameful journalistic exercise of all in relation to Manning Clark, involving the current editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, who spent an inordinate amount of time and energy attempting to prove that Manning Clark had received the Order of Lenin, in secret, in the attic, or perhaps in the Soviet basement.

We don't quite know what motivated a site dedicated to Mitchell's sins, but it makes for fun reading in an eccentric way, as you'll didsover if you toddle off to Sick profile of a typical ego-driven News Limited editor, Chris Mitchell. You can also find similar stuff elsewhere, as in Manning Clark, agent of influence?

But back to Ross Fitzgerald, wringing his hands, and announcing that he himself had attempted to become a Commie, before denouncing Manning Clark as a lick spittle Soviet fellow traveller and agent of influence, in the approved commentariat Australian house style. Yes, yes, yes, but did he get the Order of Lenin?

Even though he definitely did not get the Order of Lenin, Clark certainly received, on June 22, 1970, at the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a Lenin Jubilee Medal to celebrate the centenary of Lenin's birth in 1870.

Oh well a medal's a medal, hang the man. Hang him hard, hang him high.

What he's dead already? Never mind, trash his reputation, go on, sink in the boot, kick him, scatter his bones, grind his ashes, burn his books, quote Gerard Henderson and denounce Clark for not denouncing the Soviet Union, while wringing the hands ...

... what would the attitude be to an intellectual and historian who never made up his mind about fascist Italy or Nazi Germany? Such a position would, rightly, be denounced. And would such a person be excused for sitting on the fence? Not on your nelly. It saddens me to say this, because Manning Clark was supportive of me personally and as an historian.

Yes, and as for all those sanctimonious sell-out souls who fellow travelled and joint ventured with the mass murderer Joe Stalin during World War II, hang your bloody heads in shame. Yes, that includes you Winston Churchill and you FDR. It saddens me to say this, because I'm supportive of you personally, and you made for much interesting history, but when the world is so easily divided into black and white, what a pity you chose the black ...

Never mind, since Ross Cameron deplores Manning Clark for the crime of not speaking up about Soviet crimes, let the pond hastily add that we deplore Colonel Gaddafi and his vicious assaults on his citizenry, we also deplore the nasty crusader attacks on brave Colonel Gaddafi, we deplore North Korea, and Burma, and most of Africa, and China and Russia, and lots of nanny states in Europe, and David Cameron's quest for happiness, and New Zealanders for their funny accents, and Malaysia for its obsession with homosexuality, and Christians and Catholics and Mormons and Jews and Buddhists and atheists and Chris Mitchell and Ross Fitzgerald and Miranda the Devine and Paul Sheehan and Gerard Henderson and ... is that enough denials and denunciations to save my soul, or should we keep the show trial running for the next decade or two?

Lordy, if we keep on going this way, we reckon we can easily outdo Manning Clark's six volume history of Australia, denouncing here and there and vigorously speaking up, and mouthing off, and perhaps even proving that Manning Clark received a spiritual Order of Lenin in the after life - who knows, god might be a commie, given the way his son kept blathering socialist thoughts. Sure students of Australian history might be bored, but if they truly want to be bored, they just have to turn to the pages of The Australian.

Such are the days of our commentariat lives, and the chattering of The Australian's chattering class ...

(Below: fortunately, there are no observable resemblances between Chris Mitchell and Glenn Beck).