Day 19 and Polonius has a senior's moment, and an exclusivist Angela Shanahan makes the pond want to join the exclusivist club ...

The pond always loved to catch the F train to Coney island, but never discovered a U train - or a P train for that matter. Who knows why?

Still the pond did appreciate the tabloid's explanation of New York values to Ted, and seconds the motion. You talkin' to me, ya punk?

But enough of international affairs and dalliances, because, being conservative, the pond is comforted by the familiar.

And what could be more familiar than the reptiles this autumn morning as we continue in the phoney war phase of leaflet dropping.

Look, there's the oscillating fan worriedly wringing his hands ...

And there's pompous, ponderous Paul Kelly warning the country about the burden of the hurt and the maimed, and the feds v the states ...

Is there a role for the federal government? Surely there's nothing for the federal government to do in matters of education, health and anything else that matters... didn't Malware speak on the subject recently?

Meanwhile, the reptiles are fiercely determined not to be distracted ...

Yes, yes, it would be a costly populist diversion ... as opposed to a bit of decent, fun-filled union bashing ...

Oh dear, who let that distracting leftie out of the closet?

Worse still, who paid thirty million to outbid Fairfax for the brand?

Never mind, the best thing about a Saturday with the reptiles is the chance to get ahead with moral improvement, humbug and an early start to the pond's Sunday meditation ...

Good old Hendo and the Angela - why that's up there with Smokey and the Bandit, or Thunderbolt and Lightfoot ...

Now Hendo has been in the wars of late ... as devoted readers of the weekly beastliness at the Graudian will recall ...

We do love it when Gerard Henderson gets confused, especially when he is criticising another journalist. And so it was on Saturday when the Australian published his Media Watch Dog column containing an item “Richard Flanagan’s Conscription Confusion” in which Hendo said the winner of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2014 is “ignorant” because in his Age column about the Easter Rising he confused the terms plebiscite and referendum. 
Our resident history buff tells us the referenda in 1916 and 1917 “were called by all concerned at the time—politicians, activists, journalists— referendum” so Hendo is wrong on that. But that is not all. The Australian’s media watch dog can’t tell Age columnist Martin Flanagan from his brother Richard Flanagan, the acclaimed Tasmanian novelist. Which is quite some error for a media watch dog. The item remains uncorrected a week later.

They have a nice front page from The Herald too, a special ancient referendum edition referring to the conscription referendum, here.

Now the funny thing is, if you head off to Martin Flanagan scribbling Can you beat it? The confusion of Gerard Henderson, you'll cop this ...

Last weekend, in his blog Media Watch Dog, News Corp columnist Gerard Henderson wrote: "... did anyone read Richard Flanagan's column titled 'The Easter Uprising impact endures' in The Age last Saturday? "
Your man Flanagan discussed both the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 and its impact on the conscription plebiscites in Australia in late 1916 and late 1917. Except that he called them referendums.
"A referendum is required to change the provisions of the Australian Constitution. Plebiscites are occasionally used to gauge public opinion – they have no constitutional significance. William Hughes' government did not need a constitutional referendum to introduce conscription during the First World War. Yet Richard Flanagan, one of The Age's leading columnists, is ignorant of this fact. Can you bear it?" 
Henderson uses the expression "Can you bear it?" as a refrain on his blog, ending numerous segments with it. Can I bear what, Gerard? Your smugness? To state the obvious, the article referred to under the heading, "RICHARD FLANAGAN'S CONSCRIPTION CONFUSION", wasn't written by Richard Flanagan. It was written by me. 

Smug? Humourless? As if that's going to hurt an infinitely smug and humourless chap.

But if you follow the link in Flanagan's column, you'll go to the wrong place, to the current issue 310. You need to head off to look up issue 309 of Polonius's Media Watch Dog, where Polonius's seniors moment still stands, uncorrected and unapologetic, still proud and defiant ...

Well it seems Polonius can wear it ... and has no problem displaying his ignorance with pride.

But back to the column at hand this day.

As for the overshadowing of a life's work, prattling Polonius gets off to a truly excellent start by deriding the man he intends to honour as a bit of a snob and a truly dreadful teacher who liked to grab at boys.

With friends like that ...

Anyhow, deep into the argument, Polonius came up with this line of defence ...

Yes, it all happened long ago, and besides the past is a different country and they did things differently there ...

Yet Polonius has routinely demanded an apology from the ABC for the thoughts of Richard Downing, even though they were published in 1975 - more than a quarter of a century ago at a time when such matters were viewed differently than they are today.

Well a stupid defence for a goose is surely a stupid defence for a gander ...

In the same piece, Polonius put in a good word for such luminaries as Fred Nile and Mary Whitehouse. Perhaps he aspires to the saintliness of Malcolm Muggeridge ... a man who admittedly was even more tedious than Polonius, and that's really saying something. 

It seems there's still a tad more work to be done, and much more tedium to endure, before our Polonius achieves an exalted state of infinite righteousness.

But quickly moving along - so much to meditate about, so little time - the pond has to do an agile pivot to the hapless, persecuted Shanahan, feeling the pain for fundamentalist Xians ...

Oh indeed, indeed, and thankfully the Catholic church's ideology absolutely never overreaches into areas about which they have no idea.

They are so used to the bigotry regarding a rigid gender-based church (complimentary women available in the foyer for Anglicans on your way out, and don't forget the high church holy water) that they're distraught at being hounded by the hounded ...

Don't the filthy greenie lefties realise they're heading for an eternity of hellfire?

The pond was even more startled by this Shanahan revelation ...

What? Surely not! Everyone knows that the proper place for an abortion is in the backyard with a knitting needle or perhaps a straightened wire coat hangar, easily and cheaply obtainable from the local dry cleaner ...

What this country needs is a Ted Cruz!

During an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, the host sought clarification from the Texas senator about this controversial aspect of his platform. From the transcript via Lexis Nexis: 
KELLY: [Y]ou don’t favor a rape or an incest exception to abortion and for people like me, this may be a problem in getting behind President Ted Cruz. They think you may be too far right on social issues. 
 CRUZ: Well, listen, let’s talk – you know, when it comes to rape, I’ve spent a lot of years in law enforcement. I was the solicitor general in the state of Texas and I have handled cases with horrific cases of rape, of people who committed child rape, people – I went before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued in defense of state laws imposing capital punishment for the very worst child rapists. And when it comes to rape, rape is a horrific crime against the humanity of a person and needs to be punished and punished severely but at the same time, as horrible as that crime is, I don’t believe it’s the child’s fault. And we weep at the crime. We want to do everything we can to prevent the crime on the front end and to punish the criminal, but I don’t believe it makes sense to blame the child. 
The host responded that people who support exceptions to an abortion ban will argue that Cruz’s policy would force women “to go through unspeakable trauma to carry her rapist’s baby for nine months.” 
The senator then changed the subject a bit, saying states should debate their own limits on reproductive rights. (here).

Comin' at ya, to a campus or a New York near you ...

But at about this point, the pond senses there's a need for a little refreshment, some light humour and a toilet break ...

Eek, it's the pond's favourite Brando pose, and never mind the rear projection ...

Never mind, the pond realises there will be those who head off to David Rowe, twittering here, never to return, and so they'll the last bit of Angela's howl of pain, up there with Allen Ginsberg (as we're back in the 1950s) ...

Whoa!

The totalitarianism of infantile moral equivalence! Was Angela talking about this?

Now there's inclusiveness at its finest ...

But have no fear for the future.

The social manipulators are alive and well and writing for the lizard Oz ... and in that inclusive context, feel free to treat the pond to a bout of exclusivism ...

Something Shanahan knows all about ...

Religious exclusivism is the doctrine or belief that only one particular religion or belief system is true.

Silly Xians and their exclusivist ways ... and now the Scientologists are advertising on FTA television!

Is there any reason not to exclude these wretched exclusivists in all their strange forms?

And so to a Pope cartoon, because what other refined form of refreshment would suit the jaded palate bored by too much inclusiveness ...

Pope seems to like these gravity-defying feats ... and there's more inclusive Papery here ...