In which the pond admires the major Mitchell's Monday feather display ...

While some are waiting anxiously for the next instalment in the great debate, it means nothing to the pond, because today is the day when the major Mitchell puts on his wondrous display of his incisive, insightful plumage ...

Can plumage have such qualities? Does anyone doubt the power of the major Mitchell's feathers when they flap? Why a butterfly in the Amazon isn't in the race when it comes to disturbing the entire world ...

Now the pond admits others might be inclined to wander off to insipid, dull sites to read pieces such as Adam Gopnik's Donald Trump: Narcissist, Creep, Loser, a Marxist analysis of the current situation, luckily outside the paywall for the moment ...

Thank the long absent lord for the cinemah.

And then there was the punch-line ...(spoiler alert) ...

When the prime minister of Sylvania tries to plead his way out of the Upstart War, Groucho announces, “It’s too late. I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.” Trump has already paid more than a month’s rent on his, and real-estate tycoon that he is, or pretends to be, he may not want to leave the rent money wasted.

But interesting as it might be for some movie buff perverts, this sort of Marxist analysis by Gopnick channelling St Groucho is nothing up against the major Mitchell ...because the major follows the principle that it takes a narcissist to analyse a narcissist, and a strong man to dissect strong men ...

Now one of the marvellous stylistic tics is the way that the major Mitchell meanders.

The major is an idle bird and it wanders from Media Watch to Lateline to the astonishing glories of The Australian to the wickedness of the Fairfaxians to an insight only a regular winner of the Order of Lenin might offer ... the need to reveal the truth about Manning Clark and his covert work for the Soviets as a deep mole and agent of influence ...

There was nothing adversarial or prosecutorial, or indeed mere humbugorial in this noble campaign, as indeed can be said about all the lizard reporting by the reptiles of Oz over the years on such important matters as climate science, and coal, coal, coal and Bjorn Lomborg and ... well and so on and so forth and etcera.

At some point, some devious Marxist of the wrong kind will probably pop up and begin to ask why the major Mitchell, in his quest for truth, failed to mention the role Fox News has played in the rise of young Donald, with craven boosters pumping away ... 

It makes Clive Palmer's comedy routines in Lateline seem like small beer up against Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen's benign rule of Queensland (approved of and supported by the Currish-Snail).

Yes, late in his career, Joh famously said that some newspapers had become the arm of the left wing of the ALP and nominated The Australian and the Currish-Snail as the only two papers he would talk to, and in the United States, Fox News has played the same glorious role ...

With all that in mind, it's time to turn to the second gobbet of the major Mitchell.

It's a near certainty that he'll give the Fox a roasting even the hounds of hell might find alarming ...

Oh dear, sorry, expecting analysis of Foxism and Trumpism by a certified delusional Trumpist was too much to expect.

It was Gopnick who made this Marxist point ...

...let us add, before the moment vanishes, that, along with the compulsive Trump creepiness, there was also, perhaps significantly, something pathetic and therefore newly vulnerable about the taped Trump. This was not a dominant American Mussolini asserting himself contemptuously on stage. It was, well, a loser, struggling to impress a very insignificant new acquaintance with pitiful boasts about his masculinity. What runs through the tape is, along with his one-size-fits-all brutality, Trump’s deep insecurity and desperate need for approval from other men.

Followers of the major Mitchell will recognise the symptoms:

In my view, this is where strong editors set directions for their papers and programs....It was the right campaign and I drove it.

Yes, it's a classic example of the strong man syndrome ...

Throw in the usual moan about Twitter, a celebration of the glories of traditional tree-killing newspapers - ah, the smell of the ink, the roar of the crowd - and that final flourish of rhetorical questions which presumes simplistic, simpleton answers, capped off by the suggestion that consumers can see through the nonsense peddled by the major Mitchell and his acolytes and driven stooges, and frankly, it befuddles and flummoxes the pond that the major Mitchell isn't held in the highest esteem around the land, an esteem almost as high as that which the major Mitchell holds himself in...

Frankly, the pond is routinely shattered each Monday when the major Mitchell is featured, and hits and comments dip, and attention isn't paid! Attention must be paid! Let us not have talk of deep insecurity and a desperate need for approval, and if withheld, the way the unhappy, unloved bird must perforce himself approve of his plumage ...

Then make the major Mitchell your father, gentle reader. You can't do that, can you? I don't say he's a great man. The major Mitchell never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper, well not as much as he liked, as he strongly directed and drove his minions from the back room. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. 
You called him crazy... no, a lot of people think he's lost his... balance. But you don't have to be very smart to know what his trouble is. The man is exhausted. A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for the Chairman thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his title and his status away and give him a column instead. Are they any worse than his sons? When he brought them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old hacks that loved him so and always found some hacked out copy to hand him in a pinch--they're all dead, retired. 
He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Canberra. Now he takes his typewriter and carbon copies out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he's exhausted. Because Twitter!
Instead of walking he talks now, and scribbles. He scribbles seven hundred miles a minute, and when he finishes and hands it in, no one knows him anymore, no one welcomes him or his copy. Because Twitter!
And what goes through a man's mind, scribbling at seven hundred miles an hour for a pittance, slops off the chairman's table, and a Monday spot in the declining sun? 
Why shouldn't he talk to himself? Why? When he has to hang around the water cooler and drink the kool aid with the rest of the reptiles and pretend to us that  he's still a contender, that he's not lost in the glories of the past? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I'm sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get the medal for that?

Right here, right now, albeit with a deep and profound apology to Arthur Miller, and Adam Gopnick too...

And so to a Rowe to wrap things up, and more award-winning Rowe here, as he celebrates just 29 more sleeps to go...