The bromancer's love for Malware on a sound footing ...

Of course it's the first sign of madness when the commentariat begins to refer to the commentariat in the third person, as if the member of the commentariat isn't a member of the commentariat, but perhaps instead is a spectre hovering above the crowd ...

This is the sort of alienation and distant dreaming, an echo of some kind of airport dreaming castle, was memorably celebrated in Bliss ...

Look, down there, it's the commentariat ... seen from the perspective of a wise Zeus ...

Well it wouldn't be a good week if the pond didn't have the commentariat thinking of that central figure of the commentariat, the bromancer, to hand ...

But it has to be said that Bliss is the wrong demographic for the bromancer. As the pond has noted before, he's more a Wuthering Heights, moors sort of man, always roaming the heather in search of his Heathcliff ...

Here's how that works, but first we must remember that the bromancer long ago found his Heathcliff and gave his heart to the man, a brave tough man, always ready to make a captain's call, and then his one true love was done down and cast out and went into exile, much like Brontë's hero...

In such tragic circumstances, let us see how a new footing can be found ..

Now women expert in the romantic ways of men will understand how this works.

You see, the bromancer remains attached to his earlier one true love, but on the rebound, he has mentally gone in search of another true love, so that he can discover in that new true love all the qualities and noble aspects of the earlier true love.

This is not unusual and difficult. After all, the novel establishes that it is possible to love two men, and to be disappointed when they fail to understand.

Of course it helps when the new love is sophisticated and worldly wise and independently wealthy - a kind of oily, toffy, Edgar if you will - all handy qualities up against a wall punching, budgie smuggling bogan of a rough, coarse, Heathcliffian kind - but the true paramour will discover that underneath the superficial trappings, these manly men are entirely the same, and so worthy of love ...

It is essential to spurn, mock and deplore as demented and nutty anyone who can't see that these obscure objects of desire are actually entirely the same, in every essential way ...

And yet it's so very hard to let go that of lost first love, which is why there will always be the odd little petulant outburst of grieving, and a sense of injustice that one so true and good was snatched away in his prime ... Just imagine the ABC's reaction if Abbott had said that!!

Now let the pond be quite clear - Sheridan is true, wise and well said in his statements, and he represents a continuity between the old bromance and the new bromance.

It shocks the pond to the core that there are dissidents in the world, and that these cads would dare to regurgitate nonsense from the World Bank of the kind promoted by Greg Earl in TPP benefits only modest for Australia, World Bank finds. (inside the paywall).

Worse, the wicked Earl even provided a graphic, as if he was involved in some kind of ABC presentation of the financial news designed to put the pond off its dinner...

Now there's a simple explanation for this treachery, this resolute refusal to embrace a romantic view of the world. The World Bank is involved in a demented conspiracy to establish a world government, and Greg Earl is a nutty Fairfaxian, and there's an end to the matter.

This is all part of the defamatory refusal to understand that Malcolm Turnbull is just the same as Tony Abbott, and therefore worthy of true bromantic worship ...

Now in any romance it is important for the supplicant not to undervalue themselves or their love.

Their devotion and sense of duty enhances the object of love, in much the same way as supplicants grovel at the feet of saints.

Of course there are cads and villains out there, always willing to cast mud at the love ... yes, you'll always find a belle de jour suffering somewhere ...

In this case, it seems that the mud-flinging cad is one Hugh White.

But let's be fair, because in the process of his inane, unforgivable incapacity to understand, Mr White allows the bromancer to blow his own trumpet, modestly honk his own horn, and parade his virtue and his devotion to his beloved ...

Now there might have been some who got agitated and upset by the pond's application of Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights to an understanding of leadership and foreign affairs and the scribbles of the commentariat, but it can be seen that the bromancer himself understands and approves, with his talk of an arc of disillusionment and an at first sorrowful, and later caustic, disillusionment.

This is the language of love and the bromancer knows the pain of love, knows this kind of loss only too well, but has now found a new love just like the old love, perhaps even better ... at least until the first sorrowful, and later caustic disillusionment comes along ... because let's face it, there's often lipstick to be found on the collar as life goes on ...

It helps of course in any pursuit of a romantic fling to do it in a substantive and stable and right way, and so any use of wild terms such as nutty and demented and sterile and tendentious should simply be seen as a euphoric celebration of a love of an uxorious kind ...

So there you have it. Perhaps the pond was wrong to insist that the bromancer was a member of the commentariat. His work has all the hallmarks of a devoted reader of Mills and Boon, and where's the harm in that.

With a little more effort, he might yet come up with Tony Eyre, and its companion volume, Wuthering Malcolm as novels for the ages...

(Below: and more Moir here).