Shunning the servants of the great Satan ...

(Above: the pond invites everyone to enjoy a can or three of Rumspringa).

You have to hand it to the servants of the great Satan.

The Daily Terror, for example, has gone into a righteous meltdown, a full frothing and foaming worthy of a Puritan, or at least an angry Sydney Anglican - there's the door Jensenists, let Daviesism rule the town - about Albo being caught having a beer with Craig Thomson.

Happily for them Warren Mundine has chipped in with a blast - though it has to be said that it seems odd for an indigenous leader to be in the business of shunning, as if he'd suddenly turned Amish and decided to live in Intercourse (ah, Intercourse, Pennsylvania, the pond once visited you, so long ago).

Naturally the Terror was also appalled, and shared Mundine's view that it was completely indefensible:

Voters may be inclined towards a similar view. The government's earlier attempts to distance itself from Thomson's dire controversies now appear to be less than convincing. And the timing of the meeting, during the white-hot pressure of an election campaign, indicates a remarkable lack of political awareness on the part of the Deputy PM. 
Do enjoy an after-work beer, Albo. There's nothing wrong with that. But perhaps apply some thought about it next time. (Think before next drink, Albo)

In turn the indefatigable scribbler of the editorials had taken their cue from a short blast yesterday by Tory Maguire, under the header Is it 'Albo' or 'Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese'?

Maguire was even more up herself than the editorialist, and was dead keen on a shunning

Perhaps it's time for "Albo" to stop being "Albo" and start acting like the Deputy Prime Minister. "Albo" goes for a beer in a highly public place with the disgraced Member for Dobell Craig Thomson. Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Norman Albanese would see "Thommo" across the bar and make haste for the door. 
DPMANA would be better prepared for questions about it than he was just now when he err, um, well, errrrr said "it's no big deal". 
It might not be a big deal but it sure is a bad look. 
Then again, what would I know? As Albo once famously said: "I like fighting Tories. That's what I do".

As if making a feeble, pitiful joke somehow allowed Maguire to go Amish.

Now a stray reader of the pond might not be aware that 'Albo' is the pond's local member, and as a local member he has practised the art of invisibility to perfection, such that a Harry Potter cloak is not necessary.

Nor would they necessarily be aware that the pond routinely abuses Albo as the Minister for Useless Reports, the man who has done nothing about a second airport for Sydney, bar reports, and raised the spectre of VFT, via reports, while the actual prospect of having a second Sydney airport in Canberra, connected by VFT, is about as remote as Tony Abbott being able to deliver a surplus, to the point where even agrarian socialist Barners, good old Barners, is moaning about his baby bonus for rich city women ...

No one, no one, not even the Murdochian satanists, can claim the abuse level the pond dishes out to Albo.

But here's the thing.

If Tory Maguire, or the anonymous editorialist, met the pond in a pub, and offered to buy the pond a beer, the pond would naturally decline. The beer, that is, the pond much prefers chardonnay, so it can maintain its inner city elite chardonnay swilling status, the one that so offends everybody, until Peter Costello style, they're caught with their tongue in too many glasses of red wine ...

So we'd agree to sit down in a public place, and have a drink of alcohol, of whatever preferred brew was to hand.

Now the pond is aware that immediately there are urgent voices out there, warning the pond:

Do enjoy an after-work chardonnay, Pondo. There's nothing wrong with that. But perhaps apply some thought about it next time. You'd be better off a derelict bum in the gutter than caught drinking with Tory Maguire,

But what would be the alternative?

Explain to Maguire that because she works for the great Satanist, because she's a toady who follows the Terror line, because she values a job and cash in the paw above a saintly approach to life, suddenly she's an Untouchable, an Untalkable to, someone who should be spurned and silenced and sent to a corner, and have no human contact, no - if you will - actual human Intercourse? From where the pond sits, she'd be better of as an untouchable street sweeper and sanitary worker in India?

Now it would be a terrible look for the pond to be caught with a News Corp journalist, it wouldn't be a big deal but it sure would be a bad look. Being caught in a highly public place with disgraced, disgraceful members of a profession which more and more comes to resemble a form of prostitution, and which these days demands a credit card for swift, immediate online access and instant satisfaction and gratification ...

But in a long and varied career, the pond has come across all sorts of people, and wandered into all sorts of fields of pig shit - each day reading the Murdoch press provides plenty of examples - and at one time journalists, often pissed as a parrot, would sit down and have a drink with anyone who came their way, from crim to criminal politician, and without all this high-minded pompousness about "looks".

It reminded the pond of the comical absurdity of Tony Abbott's race for the door, followed by the poodle Pyne - Abbott sprints for door to avoid Thomson's tainted vote. (forced advertisement at end of link)

Was there ever a more childish or pathetic sight?

At the time Tony Wright proposed Mad dash shows deplorable state of political debate:

Whole families lie slaughtered in Syria, rape and pillage continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 5.5 million have died, the world averting its face since a war began in 1998, millions are suddenly unemployed in Europe, manufacturing jobs are collapsing in Australia … and what has us riveted in our Federal Parliament? 
The Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues all but fall over themselves in a risible rush to escape voting in the House of Representatives. 
Was there an Australian who could still bear to watch what passes for the national political debate who did not throw up their hands in despair at the televised revelation of this unprecedented spectacle

And yet that's the sight Maguire and the Daily Terror proposes for Albo, confronted by Thomson, a mad dash for the pub door to avoid being caught anywhere near the man ...

It's a measure of how the mad Monk's behaviour has infected the national debate, soiled it, shamed and abused it, and worse still, how the Daily Terror - the most feral of the Murdoch pack - has become an indignant Victorian era Mother Grundy of the most pathetic, prohibitionist kind ...

Now if Thomson has done wrong, he'll be found out and punished in due course, and likely as not, and if what he's alleged to have done turns out to be to warrant a large penalty, then only friends and family will be able to visit him, and having a beer with him will be a tad difficult. 

Over the years, the pond has visited a number of people in prison, and that's the way it sometimes goes ...

But right now, there's no need for a mad dash out of any pub, even if - please dear absent lord make it extremely unlikely - the pond stumbles across Albo, Tory Maguire, Akker Dakker, the Bolter, or Satan himself, or heaven help us, is caught in the cross-hairs like a startled deer, as a Liberal politician in the guise of a lycra-clad lout hares across the mall demanding to shake hands with the pond ...

Meanwhile, it would be remiss of the pond not to note the ongoing anxiety attacks about Tony Abbott in the minds of the commentariat, as the reptiles at the lizard Oz go about the business of polishing and buffing their candidate.

The trouble of course is that the populist, and - for reasons only the long absent lord understands - popular Ruddster has reminded everyone how deeply disliked, and deeply unpopular Tony Abbott is as a politician ...

But then who could love someone inclined to mad dashes, as if he were still in the seminary, and the great Satan was at hand to tempt him into polluting his hand ... (sorry, the pond has just been watching Fred Schepisi's study of seminarians, The Devil's Playground, and the mood is infectious)

So Niki Savva in Rudd cuddles Abbott on policy (behind the paywall so you don't have to fling down the computer and race from the room) feels compelled to scribble:

Just because Abbott is unpopular it does not mean he is unelectable.

The rest reads as if Savva has soaked up the neuroses and paranoia of Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen, as she rehearses the arguments, feebly attempts to purport a balance, and then reveals that naturally she reads from the very same song sheet:

Who cares if highly embarrassing photos of your highly enthusiastic deputy having a friendly beer with a disgraced backbencher appear in News Corp papers?

Put it another way:

Who cares if highly embarrassing photos of your highly enthusiastic pond blogger having a friendly chardonnay with a disgraced, disgraceful Niki Savva, alleged journalist, appear in News Corp papers?

By journey's end - truth to tell, time with Savva is inclined to be tedious, and the pond might well end up quaffing the chardonnay and fleeing the pub with a tight, taut, polite smile long before social politeness would allow - Savva offers some sage advice:

Some gratuitous advice to both candidates. Kevin, get a haircut or get some hairspray. Tony, stop the slogans and treat all the folk out there like adults.

Oh they think bold, they think deep, they think visionary in Murdoch la la land, but the pond thinks that Savva doesn't really understand the true meaning of the advice she's offering Tony Abbott.

Keep racing for the door, Mr Abbott, keep shunning and shaming and shouting slogans, and abusing the Bernie Bantons of the world (as a correspondent reminded the pond), and show us the way to Amish and Murdochian bliss ...

Remember hate and fear and loathing should infest every institution in the land, right down to having a beer in a pub ...

Waiter, another chardonnay, please, oh please, and make it quick, for the love of the long absent lord ...

UPDATE: It was of course remiss of the pond not to include key examples of the Terror's sensahuma. They should go on the record:

The question is, and never mind the breach of Godwin's Law - after all, if the pond can compare chairman Rupert to the great Satan, where's the harm in referencing an American sitcom - what will the rag's readers make of this boots and all, fuckwitted, low brow, deadshit sensahuma? 

Will they find it funny, or will they find it the sort of blowhard Col Pot style fuckwitted humour you find in the worst American rags, and react against it?

Others might ask whether Tory Maguire still manages to sleep straight in bed at night. Can she work in a reference to Bewitched in her next column? How about I dream of Tory and Jeannie ? Is there room for a reference to My Favourite Murdoch and other Martians? How about Murdoch's Island, featuring Gilligan?

Who knows, but in a stroke, an American citizen has reduced political campaigning in Australia to the pathetic snide level of a really bad sitcom writer, all with the aim of getting Tony Abbott and his neo-Nazis into power.

Oops, it's sooh catching, so subtle, so refined, so elegant ...

Waiter, another chardonnay, please, oh please, and make it quick, for the love of the long absent lord ... Oh fuck it, just bring the fucking bottle and make it a fucking magnum ...

(Below: and now back to our regular, quite mild cartooning).