In which the pond celebrates with Dame Slap the oppression-busting radicals of the 1960s ...

The pond is always beguiled by nonsense.

The notion that Dame Slap had some sympathy or interest in the activities of the "oppression-busting radicals of the 1960s" is such a sublimely nonsensical hook that the pond was immediately drawn back into the gravitational forces of planet Janet ...

It was the google splash that belled that cat with a clearer indication of the Dame's approach ...

But the reptiles were clearly infatuated with the Dame's story and put it at the top of the tree killer edition, alongside the fab four, who famously led the Dame to do many acid trips and meditate with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh back in those wild 60s ...

Ah, those were the days, but speaking of stifling orthodoxies, as one does in company with the Dame, what to make of this prime example of front page mother Grundy, wowserish tut tutting and cluck clucking?

That's the way it goes in Murdoch la la land. Talk of stifling orthodoxy, followed by a Mary Whitehouse front page, which is beyond the valley of the stifling and the orthodox.

We could, in this world, be treated to a thousand front pages excoriating Mrs Murgatroyd Murphy of Moonee Ponds for failing to give up the fags ...

But if we're going to indulge in stifling orthodoxy, isn't there something uniquely obscene about an island state boasting of its border protection policies and blathering on about how it's going to take in 19,000 or so a year - apart from the ones in its own special gulags - while elsewhere the problems faced by land contiguous countries zooms into the millions, and given recent shameful events in Syria, only likely to get worse ...

Well if that's stifling orthodoxy, or deploring the rancid Trump and his ratbag supporters, the pond must plead guilty and be given a Dame Slap dunce cap and sent to the back of the classroom ...

Uh huh. It's all the usual stuff ... and irresistibly Dame Slap ...

Now here's how the gimmick works, and it relies a little on sleight of hand ...

You see the conflation? Suddenly rigid Christian doctrinal teaching (substitute Islamic or Scientological if you like) are transformed into open debate and reason, as opposed to gay marriage zealots and fanatics ...

Somewhere in that farrago of nonsense, 'live and let live' disappears completely into a classic bout of Dame Slap rage ...

How does that song go? They took the liberal out of Liberalism long, long ago ...

And so to that bizarre trip down memory lane, whereby it seems the likes of the Weathermen, the Black Panthers and the Baader Meinhof gang (please allow the pond to commend Uli Edel's 2008 The Baader Meinhof Complex) can be transformed into libertarian freedom fighters ...

This is an abuse of privilege of course, a variation on the Bolter's constant complaint that he's constantly being silenced when in reality there's never been a more omnipresent presence since they invented someone to preside over the Garden of Eden ... even the ABC can afford to waste an hour achieving absolutely nothing on a documentary designed to piss taxpayers' money against the wall.

As for the actual long ago fuss, it's hard to call Cat Stevens - the pond uses the name intentionally and abusively - a leftist, but like many literary gents, Rushdie himself was extremely confused as to his politics ... and the response to the fatwa went beyond conventional notions of left and right, as a quick Greg Hunt of the wiki will confirm, though Dame Slap can never move out of her rigid box or remove the blinkers ...

Nevertheless the pond treasures this explanation as one of the many listed as the source of the rage Rushdie generated:

• Among second generation Muslim immigrants in UK and elsewhere, a decline in interest in universalist "white Left" anti-racist/anti-imperialist politics, and rise in identity politics with its focus on the "defense of values and beliefs" of Muslim identity.

In fact reactions were diverse - the reactionary, misogynist, anti-semitic, affectionate to Hitler and Mussolini, Roald Dahl denounced Rushdie as a dangerous opportunist, while the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie demanded that the Blasphemy Act be extended to cover Islam ...

According to Dame Slap, dangerous fellow-travelling leftists, both of them ...

Why are these complexities and variabilities always swept under the mat by the rigidly, fanatically right wing Dame Slap?

Well there's an even better explanation to follow, when the Dame attempts to drag in some supporters for her cause ...

Now Cohen and Rundle can look after themselves - pundits arguing with pundits is their bread and butter - and the pond has dealt with good old Baldy a number of times, recently here, but also in earlier times here ... 

Of all the weird lost souls to want to enrol in your crusade, surely old incoherent rage filled Baldy takes the cake ...

But here's the thing that the Dame resolutely fails to understand ... calling drumpf supporters dummies and dumbbells is exactly what free speech is about ...

And calling Hansonists racist is merely an accurate assessment of the situation.

Let's see how one of Dame Slap' heroes of the former left does it ...

And so on - there's more here at the Graudian under the header Extremism thrives because of cowardly collaborators ... 

The pond fantasises that Cohen had Dame Slap in mind when he wrote of cowardly collaborators...

As for Rundle, he suffered some self-inflicted wounds, much enjoyed by prattling Polonius ...

Thanks prattling Polonius, morale is always high, especially on a Dame Slap day ... and nothing strikes the pond as funnier than Dame Slap defending Guy Rundle against your satirical thrusts ... though sadly even the Bolter joined in the demands for censorship!

Where's a Dame Slap libertarian when you need one?  

Where would we be without the freedom to speak of the dark UN conspiracy of world government under cloak of climate science?

Never mind, Rundle was back on the job behind the Crikey paywall ...

The pond likes to fancy that the reference to the all-crazy "extreme political expressions out of the mainstream" includes not just Dame Slap but all the lizards of Oz ...

Meanwhile, thanks to the Dame Slap ruckus, as usual the pond must now resort to the infallible Rowe to deal with the actual political issues of the day, and more ineluctable, infallible Rowe here ...