Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ... or once a dumb dog botherer, always a dumb dog botherer ...

Thanks to a correspondent, the pond was reminded of this aspirational role model ...

But it was only a temporary high, because then thoughts had to turn to Mark "got a taxi driver who needs his arm broken?" Latham, and the reptiles' determined desire to see him maintain steady employment ...

A little while ago they tried to fix him up with Fairfax ...

Now that's failed, the reptiles have decided to help the bully boy out ...

Spiking copy is tantamount to a breach of contract?

By golly, and the reptiles managed to type that without a smirk or a shrug of irony ...

And they're hot to trot, but there's only a gentleman's agreement between gentle men?

Well the pond can't wait to see how this natural fit for the paper's audience in western Sydney turns out.

Of course another natural fit is thugby leaguers who piss on couches and soccer fans who riot in the streets, so Mr Latham should be right at home ...

One of the reasons the pond wants Latham in a new home is the predictability of the current crop ... look at what the Daily Terrorists offer today ...

Oh not little Timmie Bleagh bleating about his lost man love for the manly Tony, and the Devine bleating about the feminists ...

Talk about plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Even the Bolter is in subdued form, off his oats, an unappetising nag still bleating about his lost man love for the manly Tony ...

Talk about a whining, petulant, querulous tone, and a stamping of the feet ...

Of course if you actually read Vanstone here, with forced video - the pond counsels against it, and suggests a lamington for lunch instead - sweet Amanda actually sort of answered the Bolter's question by using herself as an example ...

Unless I have been lied to, and that can happen, Abbott has told a number of people that he is young enough to have another crack at the leadership. Even if that is meant in the most pure and innocent form, as in "Well, the Prime Minister might be hit by a proverbial bus", it does not augur well for the future. It shows an incapacity on Abbott's part to see what went wrong and how much of that related to his own behaviour. It also reveals a failure to recognise that there are others who have come up in the ranks and will continue to so do. It is not a static world through which only he progresses. 
Sadly, it would also mean every decision Abbott makes will be firstly about positioning himself for that opportunity rather than firstly about securing a team win now. 
Political teams are like rose bushes – you have to keep pruning or there are no new blooms. When John Howard gave me the flick in 2007 he offered to say that I had decided I would move on. I declined the offer; the truth is what it is. My press release thanked him and the Liberal Party for the opportunities I had enjoyed and others had missed out on. My spot was filled by Malcolm Turnbull. Pruning delivers results. Bronwyn Bishop, Philip Ruddock and a few others should stop being so selfish, start showing a bit of gratitude for all they have enjoyed, and allow some new blooms to burst forth.

Of course, the art of the selective Bolter quote is to take the last few words of the article and to ignore the implications of the preceding pars, such is the yearning for the return of the manly man so generous with his love for lovers of manly men...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Now for the confession.

All this has been a studious way to ignore the dog botherer.

It seems to the pond that the dog botherer is another pundit off his oats and a little lost.

It must have seemed like a jolly whiz and a clever idea and a jolly jape amongst reptile chums to start up a column that each Monday watched the media, which is to say exposed the ABC to the full withering wit of the dog botherer.

The trouble is, for this task, you need withering wit, and the dog botherer is a sheep shy of  top paddock wit.

This day the reptiles at first didn't bother putting the dog botherer on the front digital opinion page, burying him in the columnist section.

He turned up later, but the google splash established what's wrong with the entire enterprise ...

It verges on the obsequious ...

Yes, when there's a taxi driver who needs a broken arm, don't bother calling the dog botherer. 

The man's a genuine Malcolm in the middle, a centrist of the old school ... and even worse he has a soft sport for Chris Uhlmann ...

Oh dear.

So that's where Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose came from...

As for Uhlmann, when you stupidly tweet a stupidity, it's natural that a few might take note ...

But rather than pile in and pile on, in the proper manner of a media watcher watching the watchers, the dog botherer prefers to be obsequious to the sheep of like minds ... in much the same way as he supported the ABC in the matter of the NBN.

Perhaps he's even looking for a job opportunity at the new ABC ... well it's understandable, what with the reptile business model being such a fragile thing, and it would explain the obsequious thingie ...

Even worse, there's something rote about the dog botherer these days.

Oh sure, there's the ritual incantation of fuck the climate science, fuck the gays, fuck the prevailing winds of the fucking love media, but it feels a bit like the way that one parish priest in Tamworth used to speed up around the Angus Dei, and positively gallop to the end so he could make sure he got in a full round of golf ...

After the obligatory touching of the forelock to the long suffering Uhlmann, the dog botherer padded out the rest of his column with a tepid fulmination about a former comic interviewing a current actor ...

Yep, he had a chance to get stuck into serious matters, and instead he settled for an item as light as froth and bubble and squeak ...

That's the best he's got? That's the best he can do? 

Now the pond must confess it never listens to what in Sydney is 702, nor does it care much for the thoughts of actors, even on the subject of acting. Let them read Stanislavsky in private and leave the pond alone ...

But this sort of conversation happens every day of the week, in all forms of media - television, radio and the print, most frequently when an actor is out and about, peddling his or her latest work. 

When this gets a little too tedious, some other distraction will always turn up in the conversation, unless, as the pond once did, you happen to interview a sweet bubble-headed young actor like Christopher Atkins and no one's at home ... except a puppy (can anyone remember The Blue Lagoon?)

Now what's irritating about the dog botherer's work is that it took the pond only a few seconds to discover that Roxburgh fronted Harmer to talk about his new feature film Looking for Grace.

This isn't an ABC television drama. It's a feature film, and it has the usual assortment of government and private funding, as anyone could read here ...

There's no "presumably" about it. You just had to fucking listen, you silly man.

And there's the dog botherer's problem in a nutshell. He's bored, and bored leads to being sloppy ... 

He's also wrong. That "He's a Liberal" was, given the tenor of Roxburgh's previous conversation, posed as a question, as if to say "what do you make of that?" It should, with just a shred of honesty, have been transcribed, "He's a Liberal?"

Just as the opening bit of the conversation about the republic was a natural segue - after a fluff with the mike - from a previous item on the show. 

Even worse, that bit of Harmerist Roxburgian chatter went to air back on the 25th January. It's now so old it's about to expire on the ABC website here ...

It's old, stale, chat and talkback radio. 

It was old and stale the moment it hit the airwaves, and Roxburgh chats on just as happily about the painterly quality of the West Australian wheat fields featured in the movie as he does about republics. 

Sure the conversation gets on to him being a bottle-o in Avalon Now, but that's an entirely different matter, as outlined in Fairfax here. 

And eventually he gets on to talking about an actual ABC drama, and the French loving Rake, but then, when Roxburgh says he can't talk about an ABC show, he's there to talk about Looking for Grace, Harmer cuts him off, saying they've run out of time.

And even worse, the pond had to suffer through all this chat just to discover what a fuckwit and a bad reporter the dog botherer was ...

As if anyone needed to do that, when the bleeding obvious is apparent each time the dog botherer scribbles for the reptiles.

He couldn't even be bothered getting right the name and nature of the show Roxburgh was peddling ...

And he assumes that somehow the ABC is responsible for what Roxburgh says when it comes to politics and the republic.

Presumably on his own show Kenny argues vociferously with his guests the moment that they disagree with him.

Conclusion: It might have seemed like a good idea to write about the ABC on a weekly basis, but the dog botherer's heart isn't it. 

He's always been an ultimate waste of space, but now he's a total, complete and comprehensively useless tool ... and he's causing actual pain to the pond by making the pond go check up on him.

He should stop it, or he'll go as blind as he is dumb ...

Never mind, the pond caught the real drift of the conversation and so can report that the feature film was out in Palace cinemas last week. 

That's what it was all about, you useless dim-witted dog botherer ...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ... is that a way of saying, dumb then, still dumb now?

Behind every smirk, there's a really stupid dog botherer ...

Put it another way, as the poster did in its tag line ...

Well you might find grace if you go looking for it, but the pond's buggered at the thought of anyone trying to find wit and intelligence in the dog botherer ...