In which the pond moves from the goose Switzer to cooking with the bromancer ...

(Above: and more essential Rowe here).

It's rare that the pond shouts at the television screen, but whenever Tom Switzer appears it's likely to turn into a shout fest.

Now the pond doesn't usually descend into Colbert's kind of joke - presented in the pre-show Q and A, and here for your entertainment - but Switzer was such a relentlessly stupid goose on last night's The Drum  that the pond felt like giving the fine joke another run (don't let your grandkids click on the link).

You see, Switzer reverted to the standard gambit that Trump was a jokester who was joking about Russia and the emails, and sounded like such a dissembling idiot in the process, that once the pond had shouted itself hoarse, life moved on, and the pond thought that it was the end of it.

If the pond might quote the clown, when asked to Julia Baird to "unpack this" - apparently it's some sort of suitcase, or if you will, a Tamworth "port" - Switzer responded:

"...well look I think this is much ado about nothing ... (hysterical laughter from other panellists) ... no seriously, it is ...if you watch the whole video of Donald Trump, it's clear that he's having fun about this ... and he's really joking about hoping the Russians will find the missing 30,000 emails ... and you know I think the media is so out to get him ..."

And so on and so forth, because the pond can spend only so much time transcribing so much pigswill.

And then, after thinking that was the end of it, the pond was browsing The Atlantic, and came across this from David Frum:

The first excuse for Donald Trump’s amazing press conference on Wednesday, in which he called on the Russians to hack and publish the 30,000 emails wiped from Hillary Clinton’s home server, was: He was only joking. 
That excuse almost immediately dissolved. When Trump was asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta whether he would call on Vladimir Putin to stay out of U.S. elections, the presidential nominee answered that he would not tell Putin what to do. After the conference ended, Trump tweeted out a slightly tidied up request to the Russians to find Clinton’s emails—but to hand them over to the FBI rather than publish them. 
The second excuse, produced on Twitter minutes later by Newt Gingrich, is that Trump’s remark, while possibly unfortunate, mattered less than Clinton’s careless handling of classified material on her server. That defense seems likely to have more staying power than the first—about which, more in a minute. 
But it’s important to understand that there is more here than one unfortunate remark. Over the course of his candidacy, Donald Trump has revealed a remarkably consistent attitude toward Russia—a subject he seems to have thought about almost more than any other in this campaign.

And so on, the rest is here, but it led the pond to an astonishing understanding in newly this topsy turvy world. David Frum made more sense than Tom Switzer.

Imagine that! And there was the pond thinking Frum never made any sense at all, not even when he attempted to recant.

It did help the pond understand why it's adrift in an existential crisis, and all the usual moorings have been rendered meaningless. But how useful is this for day to day living?

There is a solution of course, and that's to switch off The Drum whenever Switzer appears, and this will be done, but in the meantime, the pond has decided it's probably better not to have The Drum on at all ... or else the pond will end up agreeing with recanting American Republicans, and who knows where it will all end.

Well for starters, how stupid of the ALP to rail about the need to back former Chairman Rudd in his bid to rule the world.

They ejected him from leadership of his own party, and then, after desperately bringing him back like a zombie in search of a sequel, they dumped him again, as did the electorate. And this is the man they think should be given backing in a futile exercise involving delusion and grandiosity and narcissism?

Take any Labor heavy aside, and ask them honestly, if off the record, what they thought of Rudd, and after lighting taper, stand well clear. This isn't about conservative v progressive or the rest of the nonsense. It's about competence, and actually remembering events which would count as recent except for anyone trained by Murdochian media.

Go on, Frum up at News.com.au on Bill Shorten: The man who knifed two prime ministers. Frum down at the ABC with Labor's shadow men stuck knife into Rudd.

But why did they take him down? Because he was an incompetent control freak who made a mess of Canberra. And this is what we want to foist on the world? Because he's dinkum and in need of another fair swig of the sauce bottle?

Please, just take one Pope cartoon with a swig of Frum-brand cordial ...

And more Pope here.

Well to keep the international theme going, the pond headed off to the lizard Oz for the definitive views of the bromancer, a sure-fire way to avoid shouting at the TV, with genteel banter all the go ...

Immediately a question sprang to mind before the pond could get past the splash ...

Yes, was anyone listening to the bromancer? Does anyone care what he has to say? Could anyone be bothered reading him?

And then as the pond got into the re-hash, another question arose ...

Actually, it wasn't so much a question, as a re-treat of an old Woody Allen joke:

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort reading the bromancer in The Australian, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the commentary in this rag is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly, especially if you've spent it reading the bromancer.”

Yes, whether anyone is still reading the bromancer is moot, but that's your small portion for the day, and for this they charge you? And when it comes to the key line, the wretched bromancer can't bring himself to state the obvious.

Which is that Obama was equating Trump's mindless home-grown demagoguery with communism, fascism and jihadism ...

Any other commentator caught the dog whistle immediately. The pond selected this bit from Vox at random, there being dozens of others (have the reptiles ever wondered why their business plan is in peril?)

Strong stuff bromancer? It's the apocalypse! (and the rest of Vox here).

The bromancer was so tedious - and so tediously short - and so like Switzer in print form, that to get its dose of fun, the pond had to head off to the comments beneath the bromancer piece, and amongst the usual bunch of angry old men shouting at white clouds, scored this ...

Oh Dan, Dan, Dan, you can't talk sense to reptile devotees, and really is the unhinged constituency only to be found in the comments section. What about the reptile commentariat? How about a complaint that this day there is no Moorice column to satiate the senses?

Never mind, come join with the pond, Dan, and let us shout at Tom Switzer on the television together ... there's no good talking sense to reptiles.

And so to an excerpt from a First Dog cartoon ...

The cartoon can be found in full here, and just to keep First Dog on theme ...

The pond plumps for 3.

It's certainly worked for climate change in Oz la la land.

That full cartoon here, and finally, this bit of social media montage caught the pond's eye ...