In which the pond spends its Monday with the major Mitchell's fantastic Order of Lenin plumage ...

First the pond must issue a genuine, deeply felt apology ...

Time and space at the pond is simply not up to the job of keeping up with the commentariat ...and besides, there was the unnerving sense on the weekend of being caught in a time warp ...

Yes, it's a couple of lazybones bludgers scribbling about wicked bludgers for the Terror ... an art from the reptiles have perfected over the generations.

What to say, except by way of a cartoon?

Indeed, indeed, and when the pond read Peta and the fat owl at the car wash this weekend - give up newspapers and you can afford the indulgence - it was reminded why it never bothered paying for papers designed merely to outrage ...

But the pond can't tarry and indulge in welfare bashing - surely a simple solution to the fruit-picking problem would be to get Peta and Akker Dakker out in the field to show us all how it's done - because today is major Mitchell day and the bird's plumage is looking grand ...

Now it just so happens that the major Mitchell is one of the world's great reporters and even greater editors.

Lesser types than the pond would hesitate to call the major Mitchell Napoleonic, but he cuts a grand, majestic figure ...

For a few latecomers, there might be some wonder why the pond is in the habit of awarding the major Mitchell an Order of Lenin each week for his tremendous columns. This isn't some obscure little tin-pot award, it's serious stuff ...

And the major Mitchell, being such a tremendous reporter and editor, really nailed the treasonous treacherous traitor who donned the gong ...

You can read the judgement here on his fine work, but for those too lazy to click, please allow the pond to indulge ...

Now this canard kept popping up thereafter - witness Jeff Sparrow trying to whack the mole in Crikey in December 2008 here ...

As Tim Lambert notes at Deltoid, back in 1996, Oz editor Chris Mitchell, then at the Courier-Mail, scooped the world with revelations that Manning Clark had received an Order of Lenin from the Soviet Union, a story the paper adorned with a digitally altered photo of a sneering Clark got up in a Russian peasant smock. 
 “Clark was indeed a Communist,” the Courier-Mail explained. “No, more than that, he was, until today, an undiscovered member of the Communist world’s elite, a man who would come to be covertly honoured with the highest award the Soviet Union had to bestow, the Order of Lenin.”

If you follow that link, and then follow another, you'll get this comical note from Paul Norton:

What to make of the persistence of Kelly and Mitchell? Apart from stubbornness and stiff-necked pride, perhaps there is also an element of Australian anti-communism's uneasy awareness of its own essential triviality in the great struggle against Soviet totalitarianism, and that its main contribution was not to contribute anything of substance to the aid of the plucky Sakharovs, Walesas, Havels and Co., but to provide aid and comfort for anti-communist anti-democrats closer to home, such as Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland, Suharto in Indonesia and occupied East Timor, the apartheid regime in South Africa, and anti-feminists, anti-unionists, anti-anti-racists and authoritarian obscurantists of all stripes throughout Australia. Perhaps the escalation of a Culture War adversary such as Clark into a "secret member of the communist world's elite" was and is a kack-handed way for the Australian Right to stake a claim that its own role in the Cold War amounted to something more meaningful than throwing cream puffs at the Lubyanka prison.

Frankly, the pond could spend all day admiring the folly, which always reminds the pond of Mr Dick and his fixation on King Charles' head, which keeps intruding into Mr Dick's memorial:

"Did he say anything to you about Manning Clark's Order of Lenin, child?" 
"Yes, aunt." "Ah!" said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. 
"That's his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he chooses to use."

And so on, but around this point, the pond realised it hadn't even run the first bit of the Order of Lenin hunter's magnificent Monday column urging good, solid reporting on all...

Can the pond ignore the result of that appeal for the moment, and turn to the scribble, thought at least now the piece can be refracted through an awareness of the major Mitchell's own wondrous Order of Lenin example ...

Indeed, indeed, let's just forget the enormous stupidity of someone thinking a $22 saving on avocados will see them right on the path to a $1.5 million mortgage.

What's needed right now is a little screed along the lines of "fuck you gen Y trendy hipster Jacks, I'm alright."

Yes, everybody loves the bright plumage of the major Mitchell ... 

Now let's sock it to those ne'er do well hipsters, who likely as not are bludgers who refuse to go fruit-picking and so earn the deposit for their $2 million city home, it being well-known that fruit pickers live a life of inner-city avocados on toast indulgence ...

So there you go. The crimes of the daughter - daring to publish a book not in keeping with the reptile world view - are visited on the father, and somehow Gleeson is responsible for what another person said at a book launch.

Because that's how it goes with thought crimes in the world of the major Mitchell ...

And there's your Mr Dick in perfect conflating, paranoid, breathtaking action ...

The pond feels so guilty at promoting this sort of nonsense that the least it can do is provide a plug for the book ...

Oh and as promised, about that appeal ...

It will report fully on its findings?

If you google, you'll see the Currish Snail still peddling lies, innuendoes, smears and sinister implications, without a shred of hard evidence ...

This sort of idle crap, smearing all the toilet bowl bearded hipsters of inner Sydney as nascent Leninists ...

That piece of prime horseshit, in the absence of any actual hard evidence, concluded on this mysterious note ...

Moot? Fucking moot? Courageous, you snivelling lickspittle? Might have scooped? With what?

Too many unanswered questions, you shameless hack?

The real unanswered question, Des Houghton, is why you keep on peddling this sort of horseshit without any actual hard evidence ... of the kind that might be obtained by scoring a result in the Soviet archives (except they couldn't find any).

Why do you keep pandering to the major Mitchell's kite-flying?

And is it any wonder that the pond is unnerved by the resemblance of the major Mitchell to the kite-flying, Charles the First head obsessed Mr. Dick?