As the Salem witch trial proceeds, and racism and fear mongering flourishes, the pond wishes Malcolm Turnbull ill and puts in a word for community television ...

The pond, of course, takes Shakespeare's view of all lawyers - which has led to some short, rather abrupt conversations with lawyers, when the pond was only keeding, only keeding - but what's fascinating about the current Gillard matter is the way that members of the conservative commentariat can't leave it alone.

It's their very own bone, and they'll chew and chaw on it until hell freezes over, and just when someone thinks it's finally been laid to rest, some ghastly, unimaginable future Gerard Henderson or Bolter will dig it out, and go over it all again.

Poor old Hedley Thomas, after scouring the interrogation, could only wrap it up this way in Julia Gillard, calm and sure, will hope she's closed AWU slush fund chapter (behind the paywall because using transcripts is expensive work):

If nothing else, Gillard has provided a valuable lesson to lawyers why an affair with a client is a recipe for disaster. An affair with a rogue only makes matters worse. He is in strife. She is highly unlikely to face anything like the consequences of her former boyfriend.

That's it. Fucking a dud man can lead to trouble? Is there something else every other woman on the planet should know Hedders?

What emerged yesterday - from the questions asked - is that the flimsy evidence doing the rounds involve hearsay, rumours, or memories of the 'he said, she said' 'he did, she did' kind which allows prejudice and paranoia to flourish but which are rarely a guide to the truth, and certainly don't carry weight in a court of law.

Yet this is the path down which Abbott chose to go, and should anyone want revenge - such as an inquiry into the Hanson matter, or the Ashby matter or sundry other matters such as the lies that led Australia into the Iraq war - it seems Royal Commissions can now be drummed up to target enemies.

Bring on a Royal Commission into the birthers running the country, the pond says ...

This obsession with Gillard's sex life is right up there with all that right wing stuff about Kenyan socialists, which is why the pond just loves the way Tony Abbott is now the victim of his very own conspiracy theory.

Of course the way it works - pace Gillard - is the more you deny the allegations, the more the story grows, such that it even turned up in the HUN as Tony Abbott becomes target of 'birther' theory, while the denial even hit the toadish Star in PM's office denies claims Tony Abbott British citizen.

And so on. Sow the seeds, reap the wind.

This sort of conspiracy couldn't happen to a nicer man, and while it might be absurd, it's just another way that Abbott has Americanised the country. This is profoundly ironic for a man who wouldn't mind guarding the Cinque ports like his hero Ming the Merciless. Instead, thanks to Abbott and Chairman Rupe, what's left of newspapers in the country is like a feral New York Post on steroids, while the federal government's dear leader's dearest desire is to fuck over education and health in imitation of the fucked models offered by the United States ...

What's awe-inspiring is the hatred Gillard aroused - no wonder people were asking whether this was the final payback by Abbott for being humiliated by Gillard in her speech about his feminist credentials.

The Bolter, for one, yesterday was in a blogging foaming frenzy, before finally moving back to other reliable, comfortable turf:

What a relief. Time out from witch bashing to bash the blacks.

Of course the Bolter doesn't fear being seen as racist. In fact, judging by his writing, the Bolter quite revels in being seen as naughtily, provocatively, offensively, defiantly racist ... you know, on the principle that we all have the right to be bigots ...

Now there's actually very little worth reading in the Bolter kicking the can down the racist road yet again in Our fear of seeming racist hurts Aboriginal children.

It's just another bout of hysteria about blacks and Leftist ideology, and all the problems in black communities, and won't someone think of the women and the children in the caring way of the Bolter, and what a waste of money remote communities are, all presumably because some blacks have some superstitious mumbo jumbo nonsense about being connected to the land, and it all culminates with the Bolter's plea that remote communities be dismantled and Aborigines be assimilated into the great white culture.

Academic Stephanie Jarrett said last year in Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence there was still “a reluctance to scrutinise and address the fundamental cultural generators of Aboriginal violence”. 
For Jarrett one of those root causes was Aboriginal culture itself and Aborigines had to integrate if they wanted to escape it. 
But integration is the great evil and instead we’ve wasted millions trying to save communities that might be better dismantled. 
For instance, taxpayers have lavished an astonishing $100 million over six years on the 3500 people in four Cape York communities in a trial of the ideas of Noel Pearson, yet reported sexual offences in one of the towns is six times the state average, with 29 children under 10 treated for sexually transmitted diseases. 
Black settlements out bush are largely broken. Assimilation, not Aboriginal culture, is the best hope for Aboriginal children. 
Yet we refuse to even debate this, and while great silence continues we risk sentencing hundreds more Aboriginal children to rape.

In short, bring back A. O. Neville. Drag 'em in and set 'em up in missions and in the rougher suburbs and conduct some interbreeding with the coarser whites available, and soon enough we'll have bred out the black culture and blackness itself and all will be well, though strangely, Neville never quite got it to work, and the pesky blacks are still with us, and the Bolter has a bone to chew, which he does over and over again, a bit like Thomas Jefferson's obsession with blacks ...

As always, it's in the comments section that you get the true measure of the Bolter. How about this ? 

Chris... The Aboriginal people I've met who were bought up on missions have always been quietly spoken, polite and industrious people. The exact opposite of "town camp" people who would have had shocking childhoods. 
Wayne  @Chris... I agree, I worked on outback cattle stations in the mid 60's where most of our workforce were aboriginal. As you have described, most were polite, quietly spoken decent people. It seems that the mix of white/black blood (of which I am guilty) has brought out the worst in both races/cultures

Yes the Bolter's audience is still back in the days of mixed blood, and bad blood, and the call of the wild and all the other mumbo jumgo - those comments turned up in a discussion about how being stolen was a good thing, not least if it made you deeply religious in the Christian way, instead of running around like a heathen ... and that was before many had clocked in to deliver their daily spew of racist bile.

It took the pond back to the days of Tamworth and Moree in the 1960s, but there's only so much the pond can take of this sort of stuff, even with a peg on the nose.

What's interesting is the way the Murdoch press routinely goes about the business of demonising minorities. Once upon a time, it was the Chinese and the Vietnamese that were going to ruin the country, and this still pops out like a hoppy toad, especially amongst the likes of Paul Sheehan.

But these days blacks and Islamics are the favourite whipping boys, while defending the Catholic church, no matter the behaviour of its agents, seems to be de rigueur.

So how's this business plan working out for them?

Well the pond was intrigued by this item in Crikey yesterday, here

Newspaper freebies. We hear this from a News insider from the Sunshine State: “The Courier-Mail is ramping up its giveaway papers. Staff were stunned a few days ago to get an email from bosses offering $20 home delivery for a year. And family and friends could also take up the offer. The Courier has been giving away plenty of papers for not much. It’s the only reason its circulation numbers have not been the worst. In the last three months the paper doubled its giveaways.” 

So what's up today at the Currish Snail?

Uh huh. Good luck with that. Fear and loathing as a business plan? Let's hope it works out, and we have a community full of fear and loathing ...

Oh and we can join in another war. You know, because the issues are so clear cut, as Nick Possum makes ever so clear in My enemy's enemy is my enemy.

Which brings the pond to a final matter for the day.

Thus far the Abbott government has spent huge sums of money on two politically motivated Royal Commissions. The evidence in the pink batts matter didn't produce anything that hadn't already been turned up in coronial inquiries, but did so at some substantial expense - the initial figure was $25 million. The real test will be whether the Abbott government springs for the families of the victims, and for the families of victims of other industrial accidents around the country - yes Virginia other people die in industrial accidents, and few people in government pause to notice or care, and wash your mouth out before you mention reaching for the cheque book.

Meanwhile, the persecution of Julia Gillard, ostensibly part of a wider inquiry into union matters, has been figured as a lazy $50 million.

And then there's another meanwhile.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Turnbull has killed community television. Stone cold motherless dead. They'll be driven onto the internet, where they will whither and die, and their spectrum will be sold off for a mess of pottage.

It's all there in Community TV gets pushed onto internet.

Now the pond hasn't been a big user of community TV. There's the Six O'Clock Serials, and every so often the pond stumbles across Fletch and his Classic Restos, and every so often a movie turns up (like His Girl Friday), and when the pond's in a channel surfing mood, there's a chance to look at Al Jazeera news at 10. But it's good that it's there, and it's a good community.

However you cut it, there's more interesting stuff on it than the fodder that's stuffed in the cracks between the relentless infomercial shit that makes up most of the multichannel output these days. How appalling is commercial TV? The pond wished it watched enough to measure the depth of the sewer.

The pond has taken to loathing Malcolm Turnbull for the way he's fucking up the super highway in Australia, but now the pond despises big Mal for the peculiar logic that sees community TV stations forced on to an internet which is simply not up to the job of delivering video streaming in any meaningful way.

He's acting in the best interests of community television? What a fucking hypocrite, what a useless tool.

How much would it cost to keep community television alive, up against the cost of a couple of Royal Commissions? Three fifths of fuck all. You see, community television claims they get zero from the federal government. So all big Mal is doing is an auction for the big end of town, as a way of raising some cash in the paw to help pay for those bloody Royal Commissions.

The Labor party isn't innocent in this either, to their eternal shame.

And so community takes another pounding, this time at the hand of an eastern suburbs toff that doesn't have a fucking clue about the world outside the eastern suburbs ...

But at least the comedians can have a laugh.

Yes, you can tweet along with Tony Martin here, where you'll also find this:

That's a screen cap. You can show your support here.

And now many will have guessed it's the day before Friday, which is to say the penultimate day before the weekend, which can't come soon enough for the pond, because by golly it's hard not to get a little tired confronted by fatuous fops like big Mal doing the bidding of a media empire desperately struggling to stay afloat ... 

And now the Chairman suddenly has a crisis of conscience about page 3?

Now? And never mind the years that have flown past in a dream?

Time instead for David Rowe dreaming  of the circus and matters that could be a suitable subject for a Royal Commission, which might come sooner than later if this government continues to alienate as many people as it possibly can.

More Rowe here, and while we're at it, more Pope here. 

Oh yes Mr Pope. Salem, and the pond will accept the mad monk in puritan gear because hey, it's fundamentally not far off the fundamentalist mark ...