In which the pond, thanks to Pope and Pussyfoot, enters the tent of death, and just loves the show ...

The blizzard of words isn't going away, the thunderers keep thundering.

Editorials have been offered up:

Oh dear, poor tortured public servants, which helps explain why David Pope should be much loved in Canberra.

His cartoon this day is rich in exquisite understanding of the terrorised, caught between the peace they desire and the truth they must obfuscate (and more Pope here):

Yes, we've reached that point:

Needless to say, the Fairfaxians continue to make a meal of it:

Why just look at the feast of reading in this very special tag:

So much reading, so little time. Even the AFR felt the need for a discreet editorial.

But it's not just the Fairfaxians canvassing the sack or new names for the job of speaker.

True, Bishop has once again disappeared from the front page of the Murdochian rags, but not from some tabloid hearts and minds:

And Laurie Oakes conjured up a splendid vision of a dysfunctional parliament with Labor rampant and difficult:

Oh there were a couple of anonymous comments tut-tutting and blaming Laurie for talking about Bronnie - sheesh, it must be hard working in Bronnie's office and attending to all the correspondence. Or perhaps it was the hard-working Murdochians?

But as well as the vision of parliament grinding to a halt - no big deal really - there was this:

Bishop was kidding herself if she thought her apology on Thursday would get her out of trouble over that $5000 chartered helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong and her other questionable claims on the public purse. 
Apart from anything else it was several weeks too late. 
Bishop forgot the political maxim that an embarrassing issue is best dealt with quickly because “no matter how smelly it seems to be at first, it always gets worse as it ages”. 
Her delivery of the apology, in any case, was considerably less convincing than her performances in the Nine Network TV drama Divorce Court during a brief professional acting career in the 1960s.

And this:

No one should doubt the resentment government MPs feel over Bishop’s behaviour. 
They can’t talk to constituents anywhere without the matter being raised. 
“They’re angry,” a Liberal backbencher said yesterday. “The ones who aren’t angry are making helicopter jokes.” 
In a desperate bid for support, the Speaker’s office sent out to all ministers, Liberal backbenchers and government staffers the transcripts of the radio interview and subsequent news conference in which Bishop offered her belated plea for public forgiveness. 
But there is no reservoir of goodwill towards the Speaker among her colleagues. 
She has alienated too many of them over the years. 
Former Labor senator Stephen Loosley, in his book Machine Rules published this week, recalls a dinner attended by Bishop in the 1980s when she was being touted by some as possible leadership material. 
According to Loosley, Peter Costello leaned across the table and said: “I bet you’re thinking it would take you only 10 minutes to demolish Bronwyn as Liberal leader. Well, you’re not going to get the chance. It will take me only five minutes.” 
In the affection they display for Bishop, Tony Abbott and Pyne are oddities. 
But Abbott’s affection was not so great he was prepared to have her in his ministry. 
When the Coalition won the last election she fought hard for a portfolio but had to make do with the Speakership as a consolation prize. 
Pyne made clear what he most admires about Bishop during a commercial break before a recent TV interview, saying: “If you dropped the Empire State Building on her, you couldn’t kill her.”

Oh dear, is there a nuke in the house?

By the time the pond got to the Graudian, exhaustion was setting in:

Even the Oscillator was firm for once in the lizard Oz, and the illustration piquant:

What would stop this endless babbling, this barbed blathering, this forensic fossicking?

Which all amounts to two simple notions: Bronnie should go, and the system reformed.

And there was one other matter.

Tony Abbott, to quote a wise man, forgot the political maxim that an embarrassing issue is best dealt with quickly because “no matter how smelly it seems to be at first, it always gets worse as it ages”.

That's what it all comes down to, the chance of a simple move missed, and acres of trees tragically lost to the world.

A headline summed it up:

That was on another disgraceful matter where Abbott failed the test, but it was also the general mood of the week.

Pussyfooter! The sort of figure you'd find in a Chuck Jones cartoon:

Well the pond is outraged at these intemperate calls for Bronnie to go.

She must stay. We must be able to experience all the fun of the fair and a chaotic week in parliament.

It's getting closer and closer, when everyone gathers to witness the performance, better than an old TV show, more like that trip to the show to ride the octopus, or long lost memories of cracker night and the big bang of a rocket going off, until it falls back to the muddy earth ...

The alternative? Bloggers and journalists and cartoonists out of business.

Too painful to contemplate, eh Mr Moir? (and more Moir and other Fairfax cartoonists here).