So many obvious trolls, from Tory Maguire channeling David Flint, to dear leader Rupert and to elderly onanist Bob Ellis ...

(Above: a nice sketch of Professor David Flint, found railing here against inner city republican elites, while simultaneously supporting monarchist elites. Now that's how to troll).

Obvious troll is obvious is one of those irritating intertubes phrases that nonetheless contains a useful truth.

The obvious troll lurks everywhere, especially in the somnolescent holiday month of January.

Naturally Tory Maguire is on the game at The Punch, with Arise Sir John? Who dares bring back the knighthood, wherein she proposes that Australia emulate New Zealand and re-introduce knighthoods.

A key indicator of her trolling ways is that she quotes 'Chief Monarchist' David Flint ... and proposes that the Smirk in the future might be called Sir Peter Costello ...

But if you want to be trolled like this, why not simply go directly to the sauce (that'll be dead horse to you), and read Professor David 'desperately insecure' Flint AM arguing for Return of Knighthoods? and yearning for the day when General Monash was knighted on the battlefield.

Of course 'knighted on the battlefield' requires some flexibility of historical interpretation, since the king, generals, politicians and potentates gathered safely behind the line at Villers-Bretonneux for the knighting. It had been a battlefield, but was at that moment in time not an active battlefield, so much as a nice villa headquarters, and Monash was appointed a K.C.B. (not a mere knighthood, if you follow the line of the Australian Dictionary of Biography), but it allows Flint to run a grand snap:

And an even grander conceit:

Knighthoods should have been restored, as we proposed, after John Howard and General Peter Cosgrove liberated East Timor. General Cosgove should have been the first.

This has been a grand conceit of Flint for some time, with his man love - not that there's anything wrong with man love - for Cosgrove on display in the field for quite some time, as you can discover under the header Sir Peter Cosgrove:

... for their role in the liberation of East Timor, the first such successful liberation of a nation through the military intervention of another nation since the Second World War, INTERFET, Peter Cosgrove and John Howard - or any of them - would have been a worthy recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. (They gave the next ones to the UN, Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter. Al Gore received one; President Obama was barely in office when he was awarded the prize.)

Yes, it might be a worthless trinket, but someone should fling the worthless trinket of a peace prize the way of liberationist Australia.

Prime Ministers Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating all left the East Timorese under a foreign yoke; John Howard, with the support of Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, laboured to obtain the necessary approvals and support, and chose General Cosgrove to lead the liberation force.

Strangely Flint omits the splendid Australian action to liberate Iraq and the ongoing action to liberate Afghanistan, but lives in hope for better times:

And in relation to a knighthood and the Nobel Prize, it is not too late; perhaps it will happen under the 28th Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Arise Sir Tony Abbott, do what is right for Queen, perhaps King, and certainly Empire.

Note to Tory Maguire - now that's how to troll, with a grandiosity and sweep of vision, and certainty of empire ...

Meanwhile, speaking of hope, Chris Berg is happily on hand to assure the punters that The good news is, the news is getting better all the time, transferred from his home at The Age to spread reassurance to Sydney readers of the SMH.

It seems everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, which is just as well, because whoever the Chris Berg was who scribbled back in November of last year that The world will be no safer under Basel III should be sued by the newly confident Chris Berg for spreading false alarums and fear ...

Back then the alarmist Berg was denouncing the false confidence of regulators and politicians, and advising that there is no reason to believe the economic system will be any safer or more stable - and could be a lot poorer - as we gallop into the future ...

Memo to Tory Maguire. Now that's how to troll. First gad about as an IPA heavy, and write any number of columns for The Drum proclaiming doom and gloom and how we'll all be rooned ...

... then treat such hi jinks as a way of clearing the decks for an announcement that doomsayers are useless, and everything is getting better in every way. Catch them coming and going ... why you don't even need external trolling if you troll yourself.

Here's an example Tory. Celebrate technology. Programmed cells, living organisms acting as computers to fight cancer and manage fertility:

Google is testing a self-driving car. Fifty million people now use Twitter every day, forging bonds across the world. E-books have made reading cheaper and easier.

And so on and so forth. Now that's a sure way to pour cold water on the neigh sayers and the sceptics, little people with absolutely no imagination. The wretched pessimists and doubters who might scribble this sort of doomsaying nonsense:

In the 20th century, many economists and politicians thought technocrats were only limited by the amount of data or computing power they could muster. If we could assemble enough information, experts would be able to design perfect policy and run an economy to its maximum efficiency.

But we know better. The technocratic dream has very real limits. No matter how many specialists and experts agree on the way forward, effective policy may still be far out of reach. (Chris Berg in Too many economists in the carbon kitchen).

Yes technology is the way forward, except for the very real limits of the technocratic dream.

Oh Tory, if only you understood that schizophrenia and schizophrenic opinions are the way forward for the expert self-troller ...

Speaking of Twitter and expert trolling, can anyone hold a candle to dear leader Rupert, and his trolling by a false Wendy Deng? (Wendi Murdoch Deng Twitter account exposed as a spoof).

Of course they can't, not when dear leader Rupert lets Twitter opinions fly freely, including his man love for Rick Santorum, not that there's anything wrong with man love:

Ah yes, the genuine big vision for the country. That'd be the one that doesn't involve Santorum so much as hunting gays in the way that foxes used to be hunted before they stopped the incredibly useful and noble sport ...

Santorum would - if he has his way - return the United States to the darkest of dark ages, which is no doubt why he so appeals to dear leader Rupert ... (especially as he's an ex-employee, as detailed in Taking to Twitter, Murdoch Signals Support for Santorum).

Once again Twitter reveals when the twitterati get twittering you quickly learn more than you ever needed to know ... because if the pond had set up a fake Murdoch account, the obvious satirical thrust would have been to have the dear leader come out in support of Santorum (with special bonus gay-bashing fold out). As always, irony and satire get done down by reality ...

As the day's meme or theme is trolling, perhaps it's time to end by noting that the reprehensible Bob Ellis has become a master troller via his blog, and posts like Tall Poppies: David Williamson's Nothing Personal.

Amazingly the disreputable Ellis managed to lure David and Kristin Williamson into responses to his rhetorical jibes - thereby pouring petrol on the Ellis humbug flame - and in the process it became clear that Williamson didn't know what a URL was and Ellis didn't know how to click on a link.

They warn children against the dangers of the internet, and how it all stays up, all the stupidities and nonsense and nude photos for ever and ever, but who can warn old farts?

And worst of all? Surely it's the typos.

The fatuous Ellis always made a pretentious ploy of using a fountain pen for his scribbles - navel gazing clown that he is - so when it comes to actually typing out his screeds, it's typo and correction heaven. But what to make of a leading playwright writing this without pausing to check?

I did thank you privately, perhaps too effusively, but it's been hard to endure the regukarity if your of your savage attacks on myself and Kristin over the years ...

Did Ellis perform the typos while transcribing? Did Williamson in his original missive? Does it matter as they troll away, since the typos are symbolic of a sclerotic hardening of the mental arteries.

Along the way however it seems that Ellis has discovered the power of the delete button, so a link to a comment on the Bob and Kristin and David and Ben affair at Bunyiptude has mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps Ellis took exception to its description of him as an elderly onanist ... after he finally worked out how to make use of the link.

The whole sordid exchange is tragic and alarming - worse than a teenager indulging in sexting - and it's led the pond to switch horses and acknowledge that a free and unfettered intertubes is a danger to the world, at least when old farts are allowed to conduct ancient tribal, sexual and creative wars in public.

Please warn your adolescent children of the dangers of reading blogs. Perhaps they might even stumble across Ellis and the Williamsons on Facebook, or worse Ellis might take to twittering... and there's Chris Berg assuring us that twittering is a way of forging bonds across the world.

Perhaps ... for twits wishing to connect to twits and dear leaders in favour of Rick Santorum ...

Remember the golden rule young people. Obvious troll is obvious ...