In which Twitter shows the void of reptile Chris Mitchell and the reptiles of Oz ...

There are a few who think the great blight of the age is journalists talking to journalists. 

The ABC, especially News 24, is full of journalists talking to journalists, frequently about the work and deeds of other journalists.

Some interpret this as narcissism or a form of masturbatory excess certain to lead to blindness, but it has a certain charm - a bit like watching wild Brazilian marmoset monkeys delousing each other.

And when the reptile Mitchell gets to brooding about other hacks, it produces the same fascination in the pond as Marlon Brando lurking in the shadows in Apocalypse Now.

Will he disappoint this day? Probably not ...

Yes, there's a prime joke in there. Even the Northern Territory News routinely sniggers at the Northern Territory News, and treats itself as a joke ... so you know you're deep in cloud cuckoo Murdochian blather land when a hack lines it up alongside the ABC, The Guardian, and yes, even that guardian of Murdochian values, The Australian ... well, it occasionally does publish someone else besides Chris Mitchell ...

On the pond trudged with that sinking Monday morning feeling it's grown to love so well over the years by keeping company with the reptiles ... surely we'll soon be getting to the Twitter nonsense mentioned in the splash ...

Oh sheesh, so much masturbatory activity in such a short time. First there's the gossip about who is sleeping with who, and then came the indulgent nostalgic wander down Currish Snail memory lane, with the "we wuz robbed" or "we wuz ignored" routine, and then at last Mitchell came to the Twitter joke.

Now Mitchell, who routinely displays a wondrous self-regard, coupled with an amazing lack of humour, must surely be some sort of thin-skinned twit to mistake the point and the use of Twitter. After all, only a delusional twit would expect Twitter to deliver in depth journalism in 140 characters.

But it can provoke, with pithy sayings, and clearly the reptile had been prodded.

Why was so he so enraged?

Ah yes, it's easy enough to see why a pompous clown filled with self-importance and remembrance of glory days at the Currish Snail would be a little bit irritated.

But it didn't answer a key question for the pond. 

Was the use of the word "grub" appropriate for Paul "Ned" Kelly? What had provoked the use of that word? Was it an irresponsible defamation of grubs in the wild, considering the useful work they do recycling waste?

Looking back, and knowing what we know now, and what the Royal Commission has helped us learn, you'd have to call that pretty grubby. 

In fact, you'd have to call it pretty pathetic, as well as pretty deplorable. In fact, if you were given to accuracy, you'd call it the work of a shameless, shameful grub ...

Because Kelly, in his usual ponderous portentous way, simply wouldn't shut up, and thought that by keeping on digging his grub hole, he was digging his way out ...

The pond has exhausted all its adjectives. Given what we know now, and thanks to the Royal Commission, all that's left is to repeat shameful, shocking, and remember that this was a grubby defence of grubby institutions that certainly didn't need this kind of defence, but needed a good cleansing, and a good wake up call, and thankfully got it. But as usual, the pompous florid Kelly just couldn't shut up ...

In the end, if the pond had had only 140 characters to describe "Ned" Kelly's effort, it probably would have settled for "grubby", and regarded everything else as excessive verbosity ...

And now to return to Chris Mitchell. Having defended the indefensible by not bothering to answer the real question - why did "Ned" Kelly write such a pathetic and useless column? - it was time for a little spray of hagiographic Murdochian self-regard to wrap up proceedings ...

Well as the pond has commented, now for 8 long years, that the Murdoch empire is a corporate monolith where everyone drinks the kool aid and sings the song sheet, relying on harnessing the ill-will of angry old white men (frequently fundamentalist Catholic, it seems) who love to shout at clouds ...

Naturally Bernard Keane had some further twitter fun with this state of affairs ...

Well in the usual way, for having shot himself in the foot, and displayed heroic fervour in defence of the Murdochian home front and the indefensible, extraordinarily pompous "Ned" Kelly, the pond has no alternative than to award the Order of Lenin hunter yet another bar to his Order of Lenin...