In which the Bolter goes Napoleonic and the freedom to do bad science and perform heroic deeds of bigotry is once again asserted ...

(Above: and more essential popery here).

There's very little doubt that Friday is the best day of the week for reptiles.

Passion spent, the country saved from the homosexual agenda and climate science, the weekend looms and there's time for play in the herpetarium.

Reptile lovers enjoy the chance to tickle and tease their pets, and there's no one more adept at pleasuring her pets than Amanda Meade.

What fun she had yesterday with the Bolter's book and its world tour ...

...which built to this punchline ...

According to Bookscan figures, Worth Fighting For has sold just 2,665 copies to date. For comparison Niki Savva’s book about former PM Tony Abbott, Road to Ruin, has sold 34,496 copies since it came out in March.

Miaow.

Some might consider this cruelty to animals of the reptile kind, but the Bolter sailed on ...

There's something poignant as well as delusional in that header "The Bolter goes full-on delusional Napoleonic". 

Can a caricature in a Dickens' novel be far behind?

Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial Blog, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial Blog out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr. Dick supposed would come of the Memorial Blog, if it were completed; where he thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under the sun, it was certain that the Memorial Blog never would be finished. It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorial Blogs, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all my heart.

And speaking of kite-flying, the venerable Meade reminded the pond of another sterling effort by the Currish Snail ...

... which reminded the pond of the Pope cartoon, which reminded the pond of a recent piece in The New York Times ... Think It's Hot Now? Just Wait ... with oodles of graphs and statistics, and a message to the good folk of Texas ... you're deeply fucked. Enjoy your GOPery now and have a good day, ya hear ...

And so the virtuous circle of monstrous stupidity and good humour is maintained.

But what's this, the pond can hear some gentle protests wafting in the the breeze ...

This is all very well, these voices whisper in the ear of the pond, like delusions of Napoleonic grandeur ....literary allusions and Charles the First madness and the kite-flying Currish Snail is all very well, but where's the world's greatest scientist, where's Moorice?

After all, it's Friday so there should be a Moorice to top off the week ...

But that's the whole point of a winding down Friday ... not every day can be a rare steak day, and Friday is a chance to savour all sorts of diverse flavours, as it gives the lesser reptiles a chance to frolic and gambol about, flying their very own precious kites ...

Oh okay, it's a tiresome kite, and an infinitely stupid kite, one that's flown every day of the week in one reptile rag or another ...

...but then Craven is a lesser reptile, so it would be wrong to expect the spark of originality, as opposed to the adoption of the sort of camouflage colouring needed when playing with other reptiles of a like hive mind ...

Actually, some forms of speech are much more expensive than others. 

You have to pay to read the drivel in News Corp rags and yet the pond has noticed that the reptiles haven't been inhibited in their ability to speak freely, even as their circulation and therefore their income continues to fall ...

But still they bleat on a daily basis about how their freedom to speak is circumscribed and limited and cabined and cribbed and confined ...

... in much the same way that Craven, handsomely paid, ostensibly to be a VC, and supported by the Australian taxpayer, can have his free speech shoved behind a paywall so that the reptiles might profit from his free, but expensive, speech ... 

Others might wonder and ask if it's so bloody limited, how can they keep coming up with such spectacularly crappy journalism?

Why do people have to pay for an advertisement to present an alternative view of the world?

Well don't expect any answers from fellow travellers like lesser reptile Craven ... just more mournful wailing and yowling about inhibition and repression ...

Now the pond had a bet that at some point the pond just knew that the real point of the piece would surface.

Whenever the subject of free speech gets raised these days, it's almost certain to be cheek by jowl with the rights of bigoted fundamentalist Islamics and Christians to rail against the wicked homosexual agenda ...

Actually, as Craven mentions the second world war, it might be worthwhile remembering what went on in those days ... and where hate speech might lead ... and still goes on, thanks to vandals, beneath the sanctimonious gaze of caring Christianity ...

Well the pond doesn't mind if Xians recycle the bigotry and festering hatred they learned from the ancient camel and goat herders of yore, a deep vein of fear and loathing that has been nurtured in the bosom these past few thousand years ...

If they want to call on their bible and their god and his stern injunctions, they're free to do so... heck if they want, they can celebrate the importance of devouring human flesh and sipping human blood ... 

It's just that the pond has seen several thousand years of this sort of fundamentalist crap go down ...

So much death, and so bloody tiresome, and scratch the surface and the bigotry is much the same as the fundamentalism that litters Daesh ...

Of course Craven might think this sort of blather appropriate, or perhaps a little dated and not quite appropriate for someone who purports to be head of a modern university, though clearly what passes as a test for academic clear thinking these days can still be shrouded in medievalism of the Catholic kind ...

Well he can keep chanting this sort of litany to himself,  andothers as they walk together in ever decreasing circles, perhaps enjoying the odd sip of bloody wine and a cleansing fleshy wafer, but they should expect a little mockery ...

...along with the sort of mockery that Murdochian climate science and the Napoleonic Bolter regularly enjoy ...

... and they shouldn't mind if others want to escape the bigotry and prejudices of ancient camel and goat herders ...

Meanwhile, David Rowe helps the pond stay abreast of the economics debate, and more splendid Rowe here ...