You might want someone to send in the clowns, but don't worry, they're here ...

It was irresistible of course. Sometimes you just have to go with the distracting meme of the week, and play to the crowd.

Of course many great statesmen have shown their human side in the past. Look at this fine moment caught by the Dane Harald Engman:

Dammit, is there a worse law than Godwin's?

Of course the comedy routine is also a clever device to distract from assorted issues doing the rounds.
Today, for example, the pond celebrates, along with the Graudian, the establishment of a truly censored state of affairs, so that no one in the know may talk of the gulags but we now may talk of border forces repelling aliens. And you thought that Hitler joke was a joke:

Well you can read Time to tell the truth before I'm gagged: Australia's detention centres ruin lives, or Detention centre staff speak out in defiance of new asylum secrecy laws, but what's the odds in these hysterical, fear mongering days that any of the clowns in charge will take note or care?

Meanwhile, to do a pivot, things aren't going quite to plan for the coal, coal, coal man.

Oh dear. Adani's Carmichael Mine is unbankable says Queensland Treasury.

Never mind, as is the pond's duty, we have reptile commentariat chattering class columnists to fry, and there's the usual wealth of choices, but today we're wildly excited by a guest speaker who rarely appears on these pages.  Check out these treats:

Oh dear, it's just Dame Slap doing over Bill in a 'by the numbers' number, and James Allan still rabbiting on about the ABC, maintaining the rage, the shock and the horror.

Well the pond has a special treat in store in relation to the ABC, and it's not James Allan, so come on down Gary Johns, warn us about the dangerous, deviant greenies:

Shocking, outrageous. And a feminist too! Won't someone think of the children? These greenies are pretty tricky, and fancy giving a rat's arse about inequality, racism and sexism! Why these are the virtues by which Gary Johns lives, and where's the harm in that? You, the pesky black in the back of the class, settle down at once, or you'll be evicted ...

What's that you say, toots, you sweet little chick you, you doll? 

Surely inequality, racism and sexism are of interest to children who experience same.

Oh why don't you take a powder and lie down you hysterical woman and let's get it on with Johnsie wonsie ...

Indeed, indeed. Poor Lomborg. Run out of town by a posse with not the first clue about how climate change, if it's really happening, is a minor thing of no interest at all, if it actually happens, and all this talk of renewable energy is nonsense when what we want is dense energy, as dense as Gary Johns himself.

But what's even more disturbing is the news that came last night that China had been taken over by rampaging greenies.

It's all here at the Beeb, in China climate change plan unveiled,  and the Fairfaxians also gave it a splash in Global warming: China intensifies carbon reduction and reaffirms 2030 emissions target.

Please, parents, join with the pond in getting your child to send a letter to the relevant minister. It could read something like this:

Dear Julie Bishop, whenever I'm consternated, I click my heels and land in the pages of the reptilian Oz, which is weirder than Arizona, and thanks to Gary Johns and Bjorn Lomborg and all the rest of them I become alarmed at deviant greenie propaganda which is, it seems, part of the Chinese communist government's UN agenda to take over the world. I am only an average student, which is perhaps explained by my parents actually subscribing to the Oz, and so I beg you to save the world from these warmists and their cunning propaganda ways.

Whew, with that out of the way, the pond is ready for the treat of the day.

Now weaklings and fops will at this point fall by the wayside and that's fair enough. The pond only visits the chattering class kool aid swilling commentariat to maintain a mental toughness and a thick hide.

Who wants to wade through a fine example of what can only be construed as a kind of madness, obsessive compulsive behaviour and harping over and over in a way which suggests a mentally unbalanced mind, with strong hints of delusional thinking? Up there with Donald Trump, and now it seems Chris Christie ...

You see, once the reptiles sink their teeth into something, they can't let it go, and today Oz's editorial is a fine, top notch, first class example of not being able to let go.

By the way, did you know the condition was first diagnosed or at least recorded in 1518, when 'harping on' was shortened from 'harping on the same string', meaning to play the same note over and over? Dictionary it here.

Oh sweet Jaysus, a noun used as a verb? Is that what the reptiles can do to an innocent mind?

Oh enough with the delaying tactics, and here's the challenge. In a psychotic rant worthy of a Manson as much as a Murdochian, please explain, dear student, how eventually you may get from mad Mullahs at the ABC to Triggs, climate change and Tim Flannery.

Impossible, you say, it can't be done. But let's take a close look at the inner workings of the reptile mind, and see how easily they achieve this astonishing feat.

First we must wade through endless ranting about the ABC:

I know, I know, it's worrisome isn't it, the reptiles talking about groupthink at work, when there can't be a finer example of group thinking doing the rounds than the Murdochians. And I know that some more sensitive flowers will have wilted and left the scene, but see how skilled the reptiles are, because even at this early stage in the rant we have the bitter and partisan Paul Bongiorno and Fran Kelly and RN acting as a front for the Green Left Weekly.

Now whenever the pond hears Bongiorno he sounds quite cheerful, amused and jolly, but there's the whole point when you're a delusional paranoid, because cheerful is just a snide step away from being bitter.

And at this point, some will see greenies jumping out of the trees to scare them and make off with the children.

Gary Johns' worst nightmare, no thanks to you May Gibbs. Ever since childhood he's been very afraid.

But back to the Oz editorialist, because unbelievably there's more:

Post modernism, and perhaps with a tinge of post ironic thinking! And that wicked witch, Bob Brown's bitch, whining and moaning about misogyny, when everyone knows that she's a wicked bitch witch.

And now, trumpets please, sound the alarums, because the reptiles will demonstrate how easily, when ranting, it is to move on to a rant against the world or at least many sundry objects of fear and loathing:

Yes, children, because secrecy is good, and two years in jail talking about the gulags is well deserved, and no we're not journalists, we're state propagandists, Murdochian sub-contractors to the Abbott government, North Korean style, and by the way did we mention that horror, that wicked witch Gillian Triggs?

Oh well played ranting reptiles, now surely you can work in Tim Flannery? Easy peasy ...

Well played, reptiles of Oz, and an elephant stamp to anyone who actually made it to this point.

Now perhaps you could get your young 'uns to take a look at the whole thing, and explain to them that this is what an unbalanced, unhinged mind looks like in an advanced state of delusional thinking ...

Before they think of sending off a letter to the editor, please point out it only encourages paranoid reptile thinking.

You might also point out to them The Australian's current circulation ... putting the best skew on it, the readership is around 334,000 week days and falling, and about the same on the weekend if you average it out over the two days (if you believe Roy Morgan here), and physical circulation is pitiful, in a population currently going past 23 million, which perhaps explains why the reptiles now plaster airports with throwaway copies.

It also happens that the much more benign and low rent tabloidy site news.com.au is the Murdochian main presence online (here). That site is much more likely to present stories on climate science, and without the skew of a shouting commentariat or a barking mad editorial revealing the barking mad attitudes of the current editorial team, while the Oz is nowhere in sight.

But in a post-modernist way you can explain to your young 'uns the joys of post-ironic comedy, with all the talk of the reptiles connecting with reality and the mainstream a cosmic hoot, as if the lizard Oz was somehow in touch with the zeitgeist and the mainstream and the collective wisdom.

And there's your reward, and theirs. Pure, sublime, irrepressible comedy and mirth.

It comes from hanging around with clowns ...

Show us Mr Moir, and more Moir here: