In which the pond is pleased Malware is off the hook, to the consternation of the Bromancer and the Bolter

(Above: the immortal Rowe sets the scene and more Rowe here).

If it please the father of the groom, the pond has prepared a few off the cuff, spontaneous remarks - it only took last night to finish the drafting - and would appreciate being indulged before we proceed to usual reptile business.

The pond would like to address a few polite words to Malware on the matter of the plebiscite and the possible impending divorce, only a few hours after the wedding.

Think yourself lucky if Bill Shorten votes to end the folly and so saves your bacon and wears the odium. You were on a hiding to nothing, swallowing the poison pill left to you by the onion muncher and facing a world of pain.

You see, there’s nothing to debate, and there’s no genteel arguments that need to be teased out and contemplated.

If the pond might offer the pond as an example, it’ll be a cold day in imaginary hell before the pond bothers to discuss, debate or even forcefully argue this sort of thing with those who believe in complimentary women or Eve being the cause of original sin, or for that matter silly buggers who think the reward for killing people will be a decent supply of virgins in the afterlife (what is it with virgins anyway, except a power thing? Are they afraid of an experienced woman who will drain them of their precious bodily fluids?)

Equally, the pond suspects that anything anyone who believes in munching flesh in the guise of wafers or blood in the form of wine isn’t going to be able to transubstantiate the pond’s ideas by dropping a pamphlet in the box. They'll just confirm the pond is off to hell without benefit of a cold day ...

As for politeness, forget it. We’ve already had the bigot Hanson show where that’s heading these next few years. And Cory has already gone the full polygamy and bestiality thing, and is likely to keep it up in heat of battle.

It was only a few days ago that the dreaded Rebecca Weisser turned up on The Drum  - here - and became decidedly nasty on the subject. Oh everybody tried to be terribly polite and civilised, but suddenly the pond was shouting at the screen and the vile creature …

Which brings us to the social media angle. You see, everybody in Murdoch la la land assures the rest of the world that social media is full of cantankerous, difficult people, bottom-crawlers, mud suckers, disgusting types with no moral fibre or sense of decency.

The pond is one such, and worse still, trained in its behaviour by the abusive bottom crawlers and mud suckers who infest Murdoch la la land and demand the end to 18C so they can be even more abusive and untrammelled by law.

Well the fund thinks nothing of 18C, a fie and a fig to it, the pond routinely calls professional journalists reptiles and lizard people, the pond dishes out abuse and contumely. To be precise, the pond is devoted to insulting language, insolent, derisive invective, opprobrium, obloquy, vituperation and vilification. Just like its reptile trainers …though it confesses to still being an apprentice up against the likes of the master Bolter and essence of weird acid, Miranda the Devine ...

Though come to think of it, the language is about what you might expect of some savage politician on either side of the house …

How on earth did you ever think it was going to end well? How did you drink the onion muncher’s kool aid and think no one would notice the dribble and the spittle?

Think yourself well off if Labor cans the deal, otherwise prepare for the mother of all rides.

You see, the pond learned in the past that if you sat around meekly and allowed the reptiles to talk grandly of inner city elites and warmists and chardonnay swillers - frequently while themselves swilling chardonnay or a nice pinot - they’d keep doing it 24/7 until the 12th of never, and that’s too long a time for the pond. They can call the pond a dangerous city 'leet but the pond was Tamworth born and bred, and so the instinct to go out the back of Maguires and sort it out runs strong ...

These days the pond dishes it out in much the same way that it gets dished, and now you expect to spend $15 million cultivating harmonious, polite, genteel and civilised discourse?

Say what? In your dreams, you ruiner of broadband, you promoter of copper … you, you, Malware ...

It’s settled, so far as an argument goes. Either you’re prepared to allow SSM or you’re not. Yes or no, move along, keep the line moving ...

If the result had been positive, there'd have still been a lot of tears, and heaven forfend, if the result turned out negative or just too close for comfort - a common enough story in many of the referenda this country has voted on - there would be an eternity of bitterness and payback. Now it's not a referendum, just a very expensive opinion poll, but still, the tendency to say 'no' has a long history ...

Just think yourself lucky, and so to the reptile business of the day.

Oh and wadda you know, here they are, reptiles lining up to prove the pond's point. Who's first?

So you're asking the pond to be polite when confronted by the sight of the bromancer at his silliest?

You see? There's bloody 18C trotted out again, and then there's the sight of a fat cat reptile whining and moaning at endless length about being censored, and this well paid member of the media chattering class then decides to blame the political class (as if, by any definition that's sensible, he too isn't a part of said political class, jumping into bed when ever he can with his onion-munching bromancer friend).

If the sight of a man blathering on endlessly about how he's being censored by anti-democratic impulses of bureaucratic authoritarians isn't enough to send the pond into a frenzy, what other meretricious abuse of words and meaning could do it? What's that you say, there's more?

Now the pond has been down this sort of road before. If we might make the parallel obvious, if confronted by George Wallace, one isn't supposed to call him a racist or a bigot, one's supposed to do a John Howard and say he's entitled to his views, even if the pond doesn't share them ...

Well bugger that for a joke, and when it comes to Lyle Shelton, he's one of the shriller and sillier bigots doing the rounds, and it's perfectly reasonable to say so. Whether it's this ...

Tuazon-McSheyne asked how his marriage and relationship to his partner of 18-years could possibly affect Shelton’s marriage to his wife? Lyle responded that allowing gay marriage would make everyone’s sexuality a matter for debate. “If the definition of marriage is changed – people will no longer assume I’m married to a woman,” Shelton said. “It affects me straight away – I’d have to explain myself.” (here)

... that's the light, jocular side, because there was also this Facebook posting, amongst many other 'this's'...

Oh sheesh, not the Godwin's Law thing, and done in such tasteless style, designed in a trolling way to keep the focus on Shelton ...

But how is it much different from the bromancer's absurd claim that the law will outlaw traditional Christian teaching? 

In the way that traditional Christian teaching has demonised and persecuted gays for a couple of thousand years?

As if on cue, just to maintain the rage, along came the Bolter this day, in much the same way as the meat in the meat safe on the verandah used to attract a remarkable swarm of blowies ...

This from a man certified by law as a genuine peddler of hate speech ... the irony would be too rich if the reading weren't so tediously predictable ...

All the pond can do is hasten on quickly, eyes averted, before talk of the 'fowl-mouthed' induces a kind of tragic Tamworth joke ...

Because raising the spectre of the Nazis in the 1930s is a meaningful contribution to a serious debate? 

No doubt in the same way this was supposed to be a meaningful contribution to a 'serious' debate ...

More here, but surely it's enough to note that Cory is standing by to make further important contributions to the 'serious' debate. 

Who knows, it could well be that Nazi-inspired wombats will want to form polygamous relationships with kangaroos. Surely this is the next step. Where might it all end? And we cowards will be complicit no doubt ...

Of course it's the Bolter's business to inflame the alleged debate, because that's his bread and butter, a daily dose of bigotry, bile and hate, and it's easy to see why he's frustrated ...

Will we all soon be living in a Nazi Germany run by gays, who show impeccable taste in black leather jackets and great Marschstiefel, but show a deplorable tendency to persecute bakers and ministers of religion?

Yes, it's that sort of complete, Bolter enhanced fear, loathing and paranoid nonsense that would ensure much shouting at the barricades ...

Consider yourself lucky, Mr Turnbull, very lucky, if you manage to dodge the Lyle Shelton/ bromancer/Bolter bullet ...

Of course there's still your matter of somehow getting yourself hitched to a very plain bride for your own personal political gain and expecting everything to turn out well in a Woollahra way ... 

But at least Pope is on hand to do a cartoon about that, and more excellent Pope here ...

Oh and if you accept, along with the confetti, gorgeous George's notion that you're up there with Ming the Merciless and the lying rodent, just remember who it was that called the rodent a rodent ...