What's this? A line-up of rogues, of the usual suspects, but no prattling Polonius?
Ah, poor Polonius. Perhaps he's frolicking on some beach somewhere, his trousers rolled, parting his remaining hair just so, getting out the coffee spoons, spitting out the butt-ends of his days ...
And then a few more rogues caught the pond's eye ...
Hang on, hang on, there's something kinda funny looking - to borrow from the Coen brothers -about that rebel yell.
What on earth could it be?
Please allow the pond to seek a context ...
Yes, there it is, gold bars of greed to the top of it, gold bars to the bottom, gold bars to the left, and if they'd had the room, there would have been gold bars to the right ... but no gold bar on the rebel yell.
The reptiles are giving it away for free!
It's a brand new business plan, destined to ensure the mighty rag will soon be well down the path to profit.
Now usually this sort of generosity would defeat the pond's business plan - after all, free is worth what you've paid for it - but it's a long way until the next full serve of the major Mitchell on a Monday, and the pond decided instead to get in provisions, and embark on the extremely long and tediously hagiographic journey with Rothwell.
Well if you're going to be a suck and a sycophant you may as well do it at extraordinary length so that full suckiness might be deployed ...
Oh dear, the pond is beginning to feel fatigue and we're only at the fifth par. Time to get the nibbles out of the back pack and have a little light relief ...
Oh dear, so it's going to be the Hitchcockian way.
But wait, the reptiles are aware things might get beyond the valley of the tedious, so they've introduced some nicely hagiographic and significant pictures to relieve the monotony of the climb ...
Oh dear. So Chris Mitchell is the Machiavelli, the master puppeteer, who helped the master of the dark art of media manipulation rise to power, but was just a hapless pawn in his fiendish scheming ...
Or whatever.
Just make sure that the major Mitchell is at the heart of the nation's affairs, a giant, a colossus of Rhodes, or at least of Brissie ...
What a movie that was and while we're rummaging through the snack pack ...
Oh dear, the break was far too short. Back to the full-on explanation of the complete and utter significance of the major Mitchell ...
Oh dear, the pond feels faint, but the crew needs to shape up, we need to hit ramming speed now that Kim has hovered into view ...
Oh no, wait, Kimmie sank himself, it's time for a little Freud.
How silly of the pond not to realise and back story to the plot ...
Sadly of course we will see the likes of a major Mitchell again. News Corp specialises in growing these roosters and then when they're plucked and sent to the back roost, on they squawk and crow ...
Now the pond can hear distant shrieks and howls, forlorn cries of despair, and even offers to read the book rather than endure the unendurable ...
Perhaps the trick is to lie shamelessly and say it'll soon be over - but then the wise punter could simply look down and see a further three huge gobbets which would make even the Donald change his definition of huge ...
Now there's been quite a few pars gone by since that gobbet opened with Rothwell's sublimely stupid suggestion that if Abbott had blamed it on the palace, he would have been spared much critique - or even criticism and ridicule, but that's the trouble with this sort of hagiography.
Only a truly dumb reptile would think that blaming it on the palace, and using them to take the rap would explain away the other knighthoods or the monstrous tone-deaf stupidity of the onion muncher on the matter.
But to comment on it and the rest of the nonsense peddled by Rothwell would simply compound the original crime.
The pond would have to be as tedious as Rothwell, and there would be no end of it. The pond would be off on a journey to the twelfth of never and that's a long, long time, but not for Rothwell ...
It's around this time that the pond's feeling of nausea began to take hold. Something of the equivalent of a diver coming up too fast and getting the bends, or high on a mountain top and running short of oxygen, and the climber goes into featherless freefall flight ...
Not even a sixties joke from The New Yorker could help ... though at this point, the pond should acknowledge the magazine and boast of being a subscriber and point out that the gourmand providore of cartoons can be found here ...
Now be still, over-pulsating heart, because we have reached the very last gobbet ...
At journey's end, the few that have made it this far might consider re-labelling Nicholas Rothwell as the senior whore at The Australian, but the pond will have none of it ...
Senior, most respected hagiographer is much grander. Clearly these words, this profound tome of the major Mitchell lodged deeply in Rothwell's heart and lit his path in journalistic life.
As for the reptiles giving it away for free, it suddenly became very clear why the reptiles were so generous.. Most readers confronted by this sort of claptrap and insufferable hero worship would demand to be paid to read it, rather than pay for the pleasure. Even your average masochist would flinch at troubling the redbacks in the purse, with Rothwell making Thomas Carlyle sound like a novice in the hero-worshipping game ...
Never mind, the pond has bit its tongue, despite rolling around on the floor with the jaffas at the talk of the lizards of Oz being on the verge of profit ... and so able to afford its fit of Rothwellian generosity.
What to do to wrap it all up? Well it goes without saying that Rothwell is in line for an Order of Lenin medal, but more importantly, he might well now be considered for a plum job as senior writer on Pravda or similarly balanced and insightful newspapers ...
Meanwhile, the pond must count the lost brain cells and mourn their passing, and turn to the infallible Pope for a little final light relief, with a reminder that there's always more infallible papal japery at the Canberra Times here ...
Perhaps you could use dot points - would that make it easier, um, Dot?
ReplyDeleteTrouble sets in right from the start - the sauna dinner has been fact-checked and it's looking rather Trumpish.
ReplyDeleteWow - we have a 2016 winner for the coveted "Brown-noser of the Year" Award!
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing about the Oz is that it is extremely boring.
ReplyDeleteIt is always the same, always the same, always the same, always .....
That said, I will always read something by Nicholas Rothwell. I read his piece on the Mitchell memoirs today and I thought he was having a bit of a laugh. The ref to Abbott's 'public civility' revealed the joke.
Miss pp
I could never really understand why/how Rothwell could in good faith even associate with Murdoch's reptiles.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion he is easily The Oz's best writer. His writings on Aboriginal art have always been superb. So too with his writings on Aboriginal culture altogether.
How such a sensitive writer can even stomach the reptiles such as Mitchell, and all of the rest of them too, is beyond me.