In which the pond applauds efforts to normalise the Donald, but wonders if Berlusconi might be more to the point than Napoleon III or Ronnie Raygun ...

Actually "Culleton's" a lot worse than the bloody Lebs, the pond has had a thing about the bloody Normans for bloody centuries ... 

Coming in there, and ruining a bloody good country for the bloody Poms ...

Like a slice of devon luv? Bloody croweaters ...

Well there's more fun Rowe here, don't forget his calendar here, but it did set the pond to wondering what was the more nauseating spectacle, the boofheaded thick stupidity of the mutton Dutton, laced with chunky bits of deep ethnic fear and loathing, or the betrayal of by Malware of everything he once stood for, a captive to all that's vile in the extreme right ...

Admittedly, it's a tricky task, comparing the weight of a variety of vomits, but naturally the vomitous were out in force, ready to foster the hate, the fear and the loathing ...

There's a lot more but the pond's reflex kicked in ...

Now on a technical level, religious and ethnic hatred isn't racist, so much as common or garden bigotry, but the Devine transcended that by spending the rest of her column attempting to be splendidly, determinedly, viciously racist ...

If an Islamic reading her column wasn't radicalised, then the pond certainly was ...

But rather than spend time in the company of the loathsome - there's only so much scent of putrid vitriol anyone can sensibly wear - in a curious way, that brush with the Devine ugliness led the pond to an excellent outing in this day's lizard rag ...

Indeed, indeed. Whenever the pond thinks of the Donald, the first thing that springs to mind is Napoleon III...

The similarities are huugge, mindblowing, awesome and overwhelming ...

It is of course all part of the normalisation and familiarisation process, an important duty for academics and chattering elites, so that the startled horses won't be too startled, and in due course will be gentled and mis-directed yet again ...

Let the pond observe how it's done ...

No doubt the immortal name of Ronnie Raygun will at some time turn up in the process ...

Ah indeed, Ronnie Raygun ...

Now here the pond has to wonder if the more likely comparison would be to Silvio Berlusconi. 

Trump has already made it clear that he intends to loot and rort like a bandit ... the pond would run Seth Meyer again on this, except for the way that repetition dulls the senses, but these two do as a reminder ...

For those who missed it, it's on YouTube here ... and anyone googling stories of the Donald's businesses and conflicts of interest will find dozens swinging in the breeze, as at The Atlantic here ...

His sons look at home in either the Mafia or as Mussolini sidekicks, and the Donald himself is best thought of as a vulgarian parvenu, an arriviste, a commoner, a nouveau roturier, with a narcissist emptiness inside that leads to an incessant grasping after riches ...

Bunging him up there with a emperor is just another contribution to the Donald schtick ...

Anybody skilled-up in a Greg Hunt way can dodge the walri, and discover how useless and risible a comparison it is to evoke Napoleon III, by heading to the Napster's wiki here ...

The original Napoleon was the upstart, and by the time of Nap III, the fix was in.

By comparison, the Donald's family of arriviste upstart braggarts, a gaggle of nouveau political Kardashians, will find that Europeans are dripping with condescension, as when a Napoleonic prince decided to do a tour of the United States while the civil war was under way (the French aristocracy having some sympathy for the southern gentlefolk who supplied them with their cotton ... and never mind the means ...)

For this, and for a bit of lightweight meaningless historical banter of a Der Derian kind, the pond must turn to a NY Times reading of a Napoleonic prince bumping into honest Abe over a chow down ...

There's more here, including the visit to the Confederates and oh there are going to be great fun times when the Donald is forced to leave the United States and move amongst the British, the Europeans and the Asians ...

He's already tugged the Tory forelocks by suggesting they need to go Farage, and that's just for openers.

It's possible to imagine the French marvelling at that crowning rug and concluding that its wearer has the appearance, not so much of a bootmaker, as of flip flopping ear of corn ... 

That time will come ... perforce he can't hide in the United States for the entire time of his presidency ... and then we'll see whether attempts to normalise this vulgarian arriviste have worked their magic ...

On the evidence Der Derian's feeble attempt, it's going to require much more hard work on the part of academic elites pandering to their allegedly new Ronald Raygunish master ...

Well there's a fudge. Greater surprises? Life's just a box of chocolates, and you never know what you might bite into?

If there's a market crash, let's see who can afford the chocolates.

And now, having started with a cartoon, the pond traditionally ends with one, so it's back to the good old days ...