(Above: how Goya would have painted Mal Brough if he'd been around to do it?)The pond is always pleased when reference is made to the y'arts.
If nothing else, a tour around an art gallery or museum is a reminder of the preening ponces who've presided over assorted publics, and subsequently been able to afford the price of a pandering portrait.
This is a pleasing result that seems completely unknown to Professor Ian Murray, who dignifies himself with the title of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Latrobe University.
Murray doesn't seem to be aware that the humanities might actually include the arts, and that the history of the arts is an excellent way into all kinds of concepts about the world.
Gone, it seems, are the days when a gallery could promote a riot, and even student protests - worn down by the need to moonlight on other jobs - are muted.
Murray, who published an epic pile of academic twaddle in The Age recently, under the header No 'barbarians', just faculty fine-tuning, managed some fine gems and bon mots, including this one:
Yes, less is more, and cuts increase options, and La Trobe is like the magic pudding, ya just keeps cutting and you end up with greater diversity and choice.
Naturally there were more than a few to see through this facade of humbuggery, including Anthony White, who offered up Renewing the arts: diverse or devalued? to The Drum, prompting a distinct lack of interest in the comments section.
So no doubt in the future, an amusing comparison of Goya's portrait of Charles 111 of Spain to the pettifogging delusions of grandeur displayed by Mal Brough will be lost. Thanks Prof Murray ...
Moving right along, how extraordinary to see Sophie Mirabella at it again in the punch-drunk Punch with Australians won't warm to the carbon tax.
What a pity Chairman Rupert's so tight he won't turf out the redback spiders, and find a little loose change in the purse so that The Punch could pay for some decent content, instead of providing a daily dose of offal and pamphleteering from politicians.
The last time that Mirabella came to the pond's attention, she was recoiling from Simon Sheikh as if he had a touch of the pox or the scurvy.
There was a great to-do at the time, as you can find walking down memory lane in Sophie Mirabella the butt of Twitter jokes after GetUp! director's Q&A collapse. Some thought Mirabella was hard done by - the natural reaction of any politician seeing a human being in a parlous condition is to flinch and do nothing - think of the refugees - but truth to tell, it was Sheikh who was hard done by, if only because he was seated next to Mirabella. (And Greg Combet did help to restore the image of politicians).
Never mind, speaking of simple-minded posturing, a few readers have privately expressed their concern that the pond remains deeply and perversely infatuated with the Lara Bingle bump.
But enough of the easy snidery, let's get on to the substantive matters raised in her piece:
Where the fuck did that come from? Quick throw up another image:
Back to our regular programming, and the thoughts of Sophie Mirabella.
It seems, after a detailed five second reading of her piece, that the carbon tax is deeply unpopular, Tony Abbott is deeply popular, it is deeply likely that there are hidden costs to the tax, and it is deeply likely the unpopular tax will produce deeply unpopular perverse outcomes.
These perverse outcomes will not include Alexander Downer perversely donning stockings again.
The one thought bubble that stuck? Sophie Mirabella perversely seems to love the word "perverse", because not content with using it once to explain how perversely the carbon tax will add to the likelihood of illegal dumping, she uses it to describe her trips across Australia to find perverse outcomes.
And then she perversely uses the word again to wrap things up:
The polls show what is being reflected in the community, that Australians will not “warm” to this tax because they can see how futile and perverse it is.
Let's ignore the hideous pun. It takes real gall and class to make a pun about climate science, and the impact it might have on billions, if indeed the world is warming.
The real futility and perversity is reading Mirabella in the hope that she has more to offer by way of insight than Tony Abbott and four legs good, carbon tax "baaaad".
Will we, for example, instead of copping endless bouts of nattering negativity from Mirabella, ever hear her thoughts on the current state of climate science, and what Mirabella proposes the Liberal party do about it?
The repetition of the word "perverse" perversely provokes the notion that Mirabella is a bumble bee or a sheep capable only of a few simple concepts repeated endlessly, by rote.
Actually grappling with policy and issues seems entirely beyond her and yet there's every chance she'll end up a Minister in an Abbott government. The absent lord better reappear soon to provide spiritual comfort to the hapless bureaucrats at her whim and call.
This sort of simple political pandering by The Punch is interminable, and it gives politicians, in the guise of engagement, a free kick.
Here we have the publication of a political pamphlet which could have been best left on the politician's website, safely out of reach of most readers, or given an outing in question time and reported only by the mighty Wangaratta Chronicle as the thoughts of the local member.
Ah the mighty Wang, and to think that John "Black Jack" McEwen once held the seat of Indi. A Governor General (Sir Isaac Isaacs also held the seat), a giant protectionist, and now the electorate gets the services of a gnat ...
But the real point is this. Routinely, and often on alternate days, depending which way the wind is blowing, The Punch looks like a garbage bin for media hacks spinning both the Liberal and the Labor party.
Talk about dumping which should be illegal ...
Oh sure, they get a flurry of comments at the bottom of these pieces, which always breaks down mindlessly along name-calling party lines, but at what cost to their journalistic pride and integrity?
How can anyone take their thoughts seriously when it's mingled with the addle-brained, simple-minded posturing of a Mirabella?
Never mind, speaking of simple-minded posturing, a few readers have privately expressed their concern that the pond remains deeply and perversely infatuated with the Lara Bingle bump.
And so to a confession. The pond enjoys gaming and spoofing Google images.
It's a childish thing, completely irredeemable, but if you type in the right search words, you might on a given day end up with the sort of motley collection of images sampled below - Clive Palmer draped in a lei jostling up against Bingle, the Sydney Anglicans and composer Maurice Ravel.
Now if that's not a mind fuck right up there with reading Sophie Mirabella, what is?
i had believed for some time,perversely maybe,that close proximity to the mirabella was a health hazard mainly to older males,however this demonstration of her amazing powers over a young male is truly frightening.i think that a young woman carrying a red flag should have to walk in front of her to warn males to keep clear.
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