What's the bet that prattling Polonius can be even more tedious than Malcolm Fraser?

(Above: is that Gerard Henderson with a pitchfork in Ward O'Neill's portrait of head prefect Mal on the run?)


The pond is going to miss prattling Polonius on a Tuesday as the new strict non-Fairfax diet begins to take a grip on the bowels ...

There he is, leading off Fraser's green spin won't stop with Abbott win, with this:

Until the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, there was no clear role for former political leaders, including prime ministers.

It's nonsense of course. There was a clear role for Malcolm Fraser. He was put on this earth to torment and irritate and eventually drive poor Polonius into a prattling frenzy.

It's also meaningless blather about other former political leaders, but that should go without saying where Henderson is concerned.

In the past, some politicians chose to stay invisible in retirement - some were too embarrassed to do otherwise - and some tended to get involved in assorted ventures, some in the business world and some in the media. It's true there was no clear role for Harold Holt after his unexpected retirement, except to star in a variety of conspiracy theories, and it's also true that some were packed off, like Peacock, to foreign adventures, but quite a few didn't choose to ffffade away ...

The idle chatter about the advent of the 24/7 news cycle is a rhetorical device, unsupported by compare and contrast examples .... it's merely a way of leading in to Henderson's latest bout of wishing that Malcolm Fraser would just ffffade away ...

The mere existence of Fraser is a constant irritation to Hendo, and therefore a great source of chortling joy for those who want to maintain the rage.

Last Friday, former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser sent out a tweet calling on Australians to "vote Green in Senate" since he does not want either Labor or the Coalition to get a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives. 
Fraser has gone one step beyond Latham in that he is advancing the cause of the Greens, once a rival party, in the Senate. On the same day, Labor MP Chris Bowen wrote in his column in The Spectator Australia that these days Fraser "sounds like a Greens candidate for the Senate". 
When Fraser resigned from Parliament after losing the 1983 election, he said that he did not propose to become a commentator on Australian politics. 
Yet, over the past three decades, he has become precisely this.

The cad, the rogue, the wildebeest, how dare he speak out of turn, how dare he become a commentator.

(Pam Debenham, here)

But at least we know have a scientific, forensic dating of when the 24/7 news cycle begain.

It was some three decades ago ... Wet your finger, hold it in the air, and you too can confirm this ...

Now I know what you're betting on. How long will it take Henderson to get around to mentioning the "factual errors" in Fraser's memoirs?

He does it seemingly every time he writes about Fraser.

Henderson has a very small noggin, and the bees buzzing around in it are remarkably repetitive, droning on in a familiar way.

You might also take out a punt with Tom Waterhouse - oh never mind the children, let them learn that gambling is the Australian way - on whether Henderson will mention literary festivals.

After all, if you've got a monotonous chip on your shoulder, wear that tedious simple-minded giant-sized envy-laden chip with pride ...

Okay, the bets are on the table, but first you have to sit through a dismissal of Mark Lathan ("little standing", "erratic"), and then you have to endure a pumping up of the significance of Fraser:

He led the Coalition to victories in 1975, 1977 and 1980 and is a significant figure in Australian political history. As a former prime minister, Fraser has - and deserves - standing. This is why his stance in recent years on foreign policy and national security - which is to the left of Labor and close to the Greens - deserves scrutiny.

Actually Fraser's years in government were dismal years, with dismal policies and many policy failures,  and Liberals repaid Fraser by bemoaning the "missed opportunities" as the reason Fraser dropped the ball and got rolled by Hawke. If SBS is the best you have in your policy closet, you don't have much ...

Never mind, it turns out Fraser's greatest crime is to have changed his mind about the United States.

No doubt prattling Polonius is all in favour of Droney, and Droney going about his business in secret, and the persecution of Edward Snowden for revealing that there's bugger all difference between the Chinese spying apparatus and the spying apparatus deployed by the United States ...

Poor bugger, but don't expect anything to be said about that, not when we're reporting the "four legs good, two legs bad" literary scribbles of our prattling Polonius,  which unsurprisingly produce little interest or find any favour at literary festivals.

Now it's time for you to collect your odds-on favourite, can't lose bets ...

His autobiography Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs (which he co-wrote with left-wing academic Margaret Simons) is replete with factual errors and convenient omissions. Yet, it is telling, nevertheless. Towards the end of the book, it is recorded that, these days, Fraser receives applause at literary festivals "by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him". 

Yep you can almost feel the bile, the seething resentment, the fear and loathing, and see the chip on the shoulder ...

Fraser, who resigned from the Liberal Party in 2009, has offered to counsel Abbott if he becomes prime minister. He claims he "never had any cross words" with the Liberal Party leader. Yet, in October 2011, when interviewed by Robyn Eckersley for The Conversation, Fraser agreed with the proposition that Abbott is dangerous, criticised his unpredictability and declared that "the whole party is very much to the extreme right". 

Uh huh. Well any statement of the bleeding obvious is likely to get you in trouble with the prattling Polonius, and sure enough there's time for one more thrust through the arras:

If the Coalition defeats Labor, it seems likely that Fraser will remain a Liberal Party critic. This will keep him in the media and will delight the green-left types who frequent taxpayer subsidised literary festivals.

Oh yes! The literary festivals for a second time ...

What? You didn't bet?

But if you had, you could have used your winnings to buy yourself a nice snuff box, and then glared  into the mirror practising a supercilious, superior, lofty, condescending sneer ...

You know  ...
... those greenie-leftie types ...
... that latte-swilling inner city elite crowd ...
... those bloody chardonnay-swillers that ruin everything ...
... that taxpayer-subsidised literary festival crowd wearing green carnations and sporting a cane like the pinko perverts they are ...

And so on and so forth, for ever and a day ... and be given exposure of your art in Fairfax what's more, and Fairfax expecting you to pay for the pleasure ...

Well sadly this is one taxpayer who won't be subsidising a literary festival at Fairfax featuring the dull, monotonous, repetitive, insular, ever so predictable literary works of our prattling Polonius ... why it's almost enough to make the pond have some sympathy for Malcolm Fraser. Almost ...

(Below: speaking of Droney, have you kept up with Tom Tomorrow here?)

And speaking of Edward Snowden, a thoughtful friend sent this to the pond explaining how to maintain a Facebook page in this new and modern 24/7 news cycle. Hmm maybe it's time to explore social media ...)