In which the pond enjoys quality time with the Lomborgians and the bien pensants ...

The next time a stray innocent reads a whimsical line about 'leets or dole bludgers or welfare fraud or the dangers of government grants in the lizard Oz - and it's not just the Caterists celebrating their cornucopia of kickbacks - they should remember this story so that they can properly enjoy the rich, redolent ironies ...

Now even amongst chums, $640k is a tasty sum. And when it came to Birmingham's excuse, it was one of those which immediately invoked Godwin's Law.

You know, Hitler killing the Jews somehow is justified by pointing to what Stalin did to the Kulaks or Mao did to his own people courtesy the mass leap forward to murder ...

It's okay, because Labor?

An honest answer would have run along the lines "Well, Lomborg's a reptile pet and at the heart of years of theirs and ours climate denialism, and we thought, if we scratched the belly of the pet, he'd purr for us and them, and so the reptiles would be pleased, and they'd be ever so nice to us, and everything would be sweet in the sun-blasted garden. Oh and never mind the climate science ... and because Labor ..."

Not to worry, it's Friday, and for a little light reading, the pond headed off to the Spectator, where an even greater congregation of loons assembles than at Quadrant ...

What's interesting is the way that lizard of Oz commentariat reptiles, like Gary Johns (consider how awful the pesky blacks are) and Neil Brown (consider how wonderful Gorgeous George 'the book case man' Brandis is) return to their natural home ... (consider also if you will, Michael Davis doing a tirade about Bob Dylan ...)

Of course the pond settled for the easy quick read, good old Flinty, still striking sparks and setting fire to the tinder ...

The remarkable thing about Flinty is the way he gets a day ahead of himself, being published on 21st October, yet proudly carrying the date of 22nd October ... because, trust the Internet ...

Now the pond just loves the way that Flinty uses "aux bien pensants" in an ironic and satiric way, without seeming to realise what an accurate evocation of his unique form of ponce-ness and pomposity it is.

A lah de dah French bit of clever dickery - while other reptiles of Oz get hysterical about French philosophers and Marxists - and yet there in the text is the ineffable ponce talking of politically incorrect barking mad One Nation notions passing the mythical "pub test."

The pond would love to see the sort of pub this prat in metaphysical spats attends ...

Would he fit into this sort of joint?

Who knows, maybe there's a pub in Woollahra where the toffs gather to talk of Queens and debate the hot button issues of the day and produce this sort of splendid insight ...

Poor old Flinty, logic was never his strong suit.

What he's alleging in his own conspiratorial way, is that the Republicans are such stupid sheep that they were easily tricked and herded to the edge of the Trumpian cliff by the fiendishly clever Clintons, more devious and devilish than Fu Manchu himself ...

Worked like a charm? They looked at her hypnotic crystal, and did as she commanded?

The United States is full of these sorts of conspiracy theories, fed into the system by the Russians, no doubt immensely pleased at their work, and marvelling that they have the likes of Alex Jones ready and willing to triple down and head into a stratosphere of madness ...

And then comes that Flinty use of "ladies", which like other put-downs has its place, but is best left to women to use (in much the same way as 'poofter' and 'nigger' should only be employed by those in the tribe), as Ann Friedman explained in New Republic when she tried to reclaim the word (here):

Such reclaiming may be easier, however, if you aren’t from a generation where the insult was commonplace. “Every time I hear a woman casually called a lady, something goes off in my mind,” Lakoff told me. “If you came into feminist consciousness 40 or so years ago, and at that time identified the word lady as a problem, it’s very hard to let that go.” It’s the linguistic equivalent of exercising on a stripper pole. Other objections stem from linguistic saturation of the term: “Ladies, like ladyparts, lady business, lady writer, etc., started out as humorous and ironic, but overuse has made it clichéd and affected,” the feminist writer Katha Pollitt wrote me in an email. “What is wrong with ‘women’?” Pollitt asks. “Does that sound too fat and hairy for today's young females?”

Well, the pond has a pretty fair idea of the tone in Flinty's yarn, and it isn't a post modernist, post ironic tone:

This morally loaded and intellectually unserious interpretation meant feminists in the 1960s and ’70s objected to the term, especially in professional contexts. “[T]he more demeaning the job, the more the person holding it (if female, of course) is likely to be described as a lady,” wrote the feminist linguist Robin Lakoff in a 1973 academic paper. “Thus, cleaning lady is at least as common as cleaning woman, saleslady as saleswoman. But one says, normally, woman doctor. To say lady doctor is to be very condescending.” Lakoff pointed out that no such dichotomy existed for men: “Garbage man or salesman is the only possibility, never garbage gentleman.” Likewise, feminists argued, “woman” should be the neutral default.

So why didn't Flinty write "does that explain why so many women waited until now ..."?

It's easy enough to work out why, and the prim pursed lips as they pronounced "ladies" with ladles of irony, and a hint that these ladies aren't ladies, they're sirens leading a hapless, innocent billionaire to his doom ...

William Blake got it right, the grains of sand to be found in "ladies" and "pub tests" and all the rest of it ...

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

Old Flinty's words are a grain that show off his world Compleat ... and the conspiratorial nonsense about Clinton and the bizarre notion that Donald Trump's policies will be in the best interests of the US, up against Putin, are just cream on the bien pensant ponce's cake ...

And now while speaking of old school blimps, the immortal Pope has come up with a handy cartoon, and more papal pleasures here ...