In which Bolterish introspection mingles with a Caterist parrot. Hint: boil bird and stone until done, throw away the parrot, and eat the stone ...

Oh dear, they refused to confirm.

So when did he stop beating his wife? Or perhaps we should put it another way ...

Yes, for the very few that care, the Graudian has the story that perhaps News Corp has finally decided that pissing a couple of million a year against the wall on a show that doesn't rate might not be the best of business models ...

Of course the Bolter remains defiant ...

Put that another way ...

The pond of course has suspected that the Bolter has been out of sorts, ill-disposed, alienated, withdrawn, emotionally isolated and disaffected.

That line about getting back to reading Enemies of Promise in Arnhem Land merely confirms it.

You can Greg Hunt Enemies of Promise here, to confirm that it is one long Etonian privileged autobiographical whine: 

The overarching theme of the book is the search for understanding why Connolly, though he was idely recognised as a leading man of letters and a highly distinguished critic, failed to produce a major work of literature.

You can see why the opera-loving Bolter might be depressed - waiter, a good red to accompany the soprano, if you please. At some point, it must all pall, even as the Bolter becomes a world recognised climate scientist and highly paid snake-oil salesman for the Chairman, yet as far from a decent major work of any kind as Johann Strauss II was from a decent symphony.

Hitchens ended his piece Arrested Development with this quote:

In spite of the slow conversion of progressive ideas into the fact of history, the Dark Ages have a way of coming back. Civilisation—the world of affection and reason and freedom and justice—is a luxury which must be fought for, as dangerous to possess as an oil-field or an unlucky diamond.

The Bolter has, of course, long been on the dark side, the side of Faux News and the hate machine, where even the mere mention of progressive ideas is likely to produce a conniption ... and yet, despite millions lavished on him, in vain, he now petulantly plans other ways to irritate the world, perhaps in hope of producing a pearl, but much more likely, simply to aid in the ongoing ruination of the oyster.

My will takes aim now at a double target,
Nor is the rebel's head the bigger prize...
Ah, to see the flames of those imperious eyes
Grow faint and languid with passion...
For him, the rope, and for the ABC, my arms ...

Or some such fiendish Scarpia plotting, but enough of idle, vainglorious Bolterish introspection and melancholy gloom, because today is Caterist day ...

... and it has to be said, that up against even the Bolter, the Caterists sound like mendicant twits heavily indebted to the generosity of Australian taxpayers to keep them afloat with generous subsidies and grants to institutes ....

Let us examine the infinite capacity of this bear with very little brain to reduce everything to the most crude, simple-minded binaries ...

It's a typical and revealing effort, not least that the Caterists seem to listen to RN and as usual borrow heavily from secondary sources...

And then there's the splendid irony of the Caterists - wall puncher devotees - talking of closed loops, as if the Caterists stunted capacity for chanting a mindless catechism of stale thoughts isn't a classic example of a closed loop.

And then there's the binaries, the Mercedes vs the Trabant, Walmart v. a toilet paper queue, as if everything in the United States was perfectly keen and peachy for the average working or lumpenproletariat stiff ...

Of such stuff are classic Caterist delusions and columns woven ... and he's just warming to the task ... how soon before the chanting monolith of massive mindlessness sing a song of "cultural elites"?

Because, it seems, it surely goes without saying, we're all better off in a pre-modern, colonial, Victorian industrial world ... where children such as Dickens might be sent off to make a living doing boot blacking, because where's the harm and look at the good it did him ...

Well, if the Caterists can revert to the Jacobins of the French revolution, why not deploy an equally stupid comparison with Victorian industrialism, even if the Caterists are merely parroting the inscrutable Scruton? 

Is it because parroting secondary sources is what a heavily taxpayer subsidised Caterist always does best ..?.

And so to the closer ...

Indeed, indeed. There in a nutshell is a complacent one, nicely subsidised and keen to preserve privileges and hierarchies. Fuck you Jack, I've got my subsidy, go fight for your own ...

Please allow the pond to construct an alternative boast.

"I am a good Capitalist," he boasts. "If you have a good taxpayer subsidised research centre, forget about the theory. Embrace the reality and laugh all the way to the bank."

Alternatively:

"Why is it, that after just a couple of years of the disastrous Tony Abbott, and an intellectual legacy that has, time and again, been exploded, the Caterist position remains, as it were, the default position to which dumbfuck members of the Murdochian commentariat automatically gravitate?"

Now we couldn't work in climate science in that brief quote, nor broadband, so please allow the pond to end with a Turnbullian meme ... which the pond suspects might have been filmed in the pit just outside the pond's home ...

Fuck this idle chatter about the Jacobins ... let's get agile ...