In which the pond contemplates the Menzies' tradition ... vote for the DLP and confirm your feminist credentials by calling women frightbats ... or, another day in the weird and wonderful world of the House of Murdoch ...

It's always good to start the week with a Rowe or a Pope, or if in luck both, and the pond particularly liked this portrait of a sweaty Barners slouching towards Canberra ... and as always, more properly formatted Rowe here ...

For the first time in awhile, the pond also picked this morning as the right moment to drop in on Paul Sheehan, waxing, and frothing and foaming about conspiracist ideation, using The Revenant as a soft way into Distorted universities need a reality check ... (with forced video).

The pond is always delighted when the man who swallowed magic water whole gets agitated about science, and especially when the magic water man makes mention of climate science ...

Back in the day, Sheehan was a card-carrying Monckton man, before the lordly Lord veered off the rails into the Danny Nalliah Catch the Fire ministry camp of the almighty barking mad ... which is why a mere mention of Sheehan's name always sends the pond scurrying back to Facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics ... and Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs  ... and so on and endlessly forth ...

It makes Sheehan's concluding rhetorical flourish - presumably he meant it as a zinger - particularly piquant for the pond ...

One practical by-product of group-think and its ideological enforcement is the growing disconnect between the graduates that universities are turning out and the skills the intellectual marketplace is seeking. This is a reality check. 
Students should be demanding that the concept of objectivity needs to become a revenant, and rise from its presumed death.

The reality check for students is that Sheehan has no understanding of the concept of objectivity and yet he's made a successful career scribbling nonsense and delusional crap in support of Monckton and others, and is splendid evidence that the skills the intellectual marketplace is seeking - or at least the editors of Fairfax are - is a sublime capacity to scribble in support of magic water, the Lord and many other weird follies ...

There's no way Sheehan will ever become a revenant and redeem himself from his previous follies, and his ever-growing disconnect, but don't you worry students, you can still make a decent crust and indeed write lyrical prose about the joys of travelling (thanks to sponsors) and the wonders of a thirteen dollar Paddington loaf of sour dough bread ...

Meanwhile, speaking of conspiracy theorists, the pond must praise the reptiles for publishing this ...

So that today the reptiles might come up with this as an EXCLUSIVE ...

It seems the reptiles are intent on perfecting the art of click bait conspiracy theorist trolling, but given their digital paywall plan, to what avail?

Never mind, that just seemed like an ideal punctuation mark before we move on to the meat of the day, the parade of reptiles at the lizard Oz...

Well indeed, young 'there's a hole in the bucket' Henry, thank the long absent lord, we live in liberal western societies which would never ever embark on cheap wars and military colonial imperial adventurism ... and we would foreswear religious claptrap and we would never ever appoint a wall punching fundamentalist religious bigot to the top job ...

Never mind, that brings the pond to young Troy ... it seems a faction in the reptile camp want that wall-punching religious bigot to be gone, and would even stoop to bringing up the Menzies legacy, the very Menzies featured only so recently on Tony's ABC, in a bid to see the bigot depart... perhaps by shaming him as he spurns the very legacy that decorates his office wall ...

Get thee gone to become a Warden of the Cinque Port, young Troy seems to be saying, but if it's true that Abbott never gave up his British citizenship, why not a word in David Cameron's ear and an appointment to the House of Lords for services rendered in the colonies?

Say what? Even Ming the Merciless did not always vote Liberal ...? 

Steady, steady, it was only so he could vote for the DLP,  perhaps instead of voting for that dreadful, contemptible quaver-voiced squirt Billy, and anyway prattling Polonius is on hand in How Menzies swung against his party to quash heresy and steady the ship of state ...

Why, in any case, a vote for Tony Abbott might be said to be a vote for the DLP and B A Santamaria too ... so it seems the wall-puncher is clearly in the Menzies' tradition.

As for the chance of the wall-puncher making a Menzies-like departure, does that presume a Menzies-like entrance?

Of course all this could be compressed down to "please go Tony, it seems like Warringah might get terribly icky", while the pond anxiously awaits prattling Polonius's reprimand of young Troy for daring to call the Vietnam war a catastrophic folly ...

Never mind, young Troy wins a special pond award for wringing an enormous pile of blather out of very little - surely that last sentence with its talk of a long shadow and answers and grappling and fresh mandate is the epitome of meaningless reptilian discourse - and all thanks to the very fresh news that Ming the Merciless retired as PM on the 20th January 1966 ...

It almost makes the pond inclined to scribble its own story for the reptiles ... along the lines, "When faith takes up arms", followed by "The House of Murdoch will need far-reaching reform to coexist with liberal societies of the West ..."

And so to a bible joke ...

Oh sheesh, you goose ... according to the bible, all of humankind descended from one man and one woman ... 

Oh wait, maybe you're right, after all Brendan O'Neill and the rest of the reptiles and the fundamentalist Xian brotherhood keep thinking of women as bewitching but totally useless spare ribs always creating an irritating fuss ...

A perfect example is young Timmie Bleagh. Little Timmie is always worried about climate science, and lately has been terribly worried about events in Cologne, because, it goes without saying, on any given day, Little Timmie is a tremendous feminist. 

Little Timmie therefore felt the need to provide a good example for Islamic fundamentalists on the best way to joke about women ...

There you go Islamic fundies. 

Call 'em frightbats and they'll love your distinctively feminist approach ...

Then you can righteously scribble a column for the Daily Terror this very day...

But please remember, this can only be done when living inside the delusional, wonderfully hypocritical frightbat world of House of Murdoch la la land ...