In which the pond and the dog botherer have a pitching and a plotting session ...

Is the dog botherer losing his mojo?

It was always going to be an arduous task for a busy reptile - so many fires of hate to light and maintain - and this week the dog botherer has been forced into the lamest format of all, doing a pitch for a mockumentary ...

Now the pond could bite at this point.

After all, what could be funnier than a sitcom set in the bunker in Surry Hills?

The head credits could run over a startled lizard stepping out into the sunlight and running in fear from a nearby hipster ... or perhaps we could do a Maxwell Smart and track the hero reptile heading deep into the bowels of the earth to receive instructions over the patented Murdoch shoe phone ...

The pond knows all about the form and the rules ... like the need for unresolved sexual tension, which could produce a wonderful B strand, featuring the chief stenographer, Sherri, or Dame Slap (or would Mike Baird cast her as the noxious mother-in-law?)

Then there's the bully in charge, and the various feuds, and the petty rivalry and jealousies and a running gag with the kool aid in the water cooler, and all the envy and the bitterness ...

Truth to tell, it's probably that much of an idea. They really haven't done newspapers that well since the original The Front Page, (the Billy Wilder re-make has its moments), or His Girl Friday, and in this digital age,  nobody's that interested in a pack of reptiles snatching and clawing at each other and the world at large, or even the way they look sooh cute when taking a nap on their hot rock ...

You might be better off doing a modern comedy about geeks of the Sheldon kind, or Silicon Valley, or even, heaven help us, Portlandia (the pond's idea for Adelaidea still sits in the out-tray awaiting attention).

Never mind, back to the dog botherer, and it's clear enough from those first three pars and the pars that follow that he doesn't have much material and it's very thin, and he has to try a lot of padding to get the piece up to length:

It is of course a tad sad that a balding angry old white male from Adelaide would see these sorts of characteristics as suitable subjects for a comedy, as opposed to being crass stereotypes of the vulgar kind.

No doubt the dog botherer thinks 'get off my lawn' the height of wit, and shouts it at least once a week, but more to the point, good comedy isn't about bald jokes, or hipsters, it's about empathy. If we were sending a reptile down into the bowels of the bunker in Surry Hills, we'd want them to be as engaging and as amiable as Maxwell Smart ... or at least no dumber than the men in F Troop.

We'd want to share their daily pain as they go about their daily verbal grind.

Everyone has in one way or another stood in a line and been subjected to a humiliation from the soup Nazi, just as anyone who has read a piece by the dog botherer has experienced a rant by a word Nazi. Everyone has at some point visited a hotel that resembles a little Farty Towels or Fatty Owls, and when you get to reading yet again words like "self-loathing", you immediately begin to wonder why the dog botherer himself is so full of fear and loathing ... and might in fact be trying out as a stand-in for John Cleese's hotel management style... and yet we'd need empathy for him as he strutted out valiantly not trying to mention the war.

What the dog botherer sees as a punchline to his piece - the difference between news and satire - was erased long ago when Fox News officially declared entertainment, truth, opinion, prejudice, and right wing ratbaggery all part of one gigantic broadcast stew ... 

... in much the same way as the line between news and opinion was long ago erased by the reptiles of Murdoch la la land, with skew and distortion and outright lies all part of the game ...

But would watching the truth die on a daily basis make good television? Since commercial television already does that quite nicely ... and it's only a few more sleeps to the second episode of The Verdict ...

Here we come back to that problem of empathy.

Fancy trying to make the dog botherer into an empathetic character in a sitcom or a mockumentary or any other form of comedy.

Fancy trying to turn the reptiles into a joke beyond the joke they already are ...

Why even the best jokes would be likely to produce more a groan than a laugh ...

The pond thinks the book that's out this week gets it about right ...

... though it should probably read "headlines from the government and the newspapers and the reptile commentariat that supported the government that broke satire" ...

Speaking of satirical flourishes, and as evidence that satire isn't completely broken, what a wonderful effort there was today by Paul Sheehan, headed Facing the rain deadline, in a world over which we have diminishing control ...

The silly Chicken Little spends his time racing around shouting that the sky is falling in, and ends up sounding like he's doing an impression of a headless chook.

There's the drought and the BoM has given him the willies, and so there's the "we'll all be rooned said Sheehanahan", and there's the El Nino and "we'll all be rooned said  Sheehanahan", and there's the domestic debt and the Chinese and "we'll all be rooned said Sheehanahan", and there's nothing Canberra can do about it, and there's nothing we can do about it ... except maybe pray to the spaghetti monster ... and it's all the fault of Labor and Tony and Joe tried so very very hard, oh they were good little boys, they were ... and so on and so forth ...

And above all? Ssssh, not a word about climate science. No hint that we should be trying to do anything about anything much ...

Well lovers of Lord Monckton should never breach their trust ... and playing Chicken Little is so much more fun than actually having to do tiresome things ...

It turns out that Sheehan went bush for a wedding, and was alerted to the mysteries of the vagaries of land and of rain, and that things have been heating up of late - these days they spray clay on the grapes in some places to keep the sun tan under control - and immediately concluded that the world was shortly to come to an end ...

Reading the headless chook doing his thing - somehow it reminded the pond of the chicken it played tic-tac-toe with on Cannery Row in Monterery - that schtick is explained here - it got the pond to thinking there might be some good plot lines that could be recycled...

As every writer of serials and soaps knows, the unresolved sexual tension must at some point be resolved with a wedding, and after that the show is certain to go to hell in a handbasket (births, deaths and funerals can accomplish the same end- look no further than Maud Flanders) ...

So what if we break the mould, and bung on a wedding in the first season? And all the reptiles have to sit down and lick the envelopes purchased by their stingy boss?

Yes, the pond knows it's been done, but what if Paul Sheehan came along as a guest star ... and was handed a box of the envelopes ...?

Just saying ... by golly, Foxtel might just go for it ... now Mr Kenny, if that mockumentary of yours included a box of envelopes, we could have a comedy of the ages and a lot of Chicken Littles would be put out of their misery ...