In which the pond spends some quality time with the tone-deaf, totally humourless Dame Slap and emerges with one joke ... and that belonged to David Pope ...

So many distractions this day, including this remarkable observation about Fox News and the power of News Corp ...

Yes, has Sean Hannity and Fox ever been more in for him than they are in for the Donald now?

But enough of observations of the astonishing media bias of the reptiles, because the pond must now attend to what it must, in the manner of a Tamworth shovel, be called a spade load ... of sense of entitlement, moaning and groaning and whining ...

It can be found summarised in the reptile editorial of the day ...

Now the pond must pass over the peculiar situation of Kerryn Pholi, though those interested can read Why I burned my 'Proof of Aboriginality', and check out Pholi's case of Stockholm syndrome, she and her scribbling being major exhibits in the local version of the colonial Spectator, tagged here ...

The pond does so reluctantly, but only because paying heed to Dame Slap is the greater need on a Wednesday, and the Dame is in fine form.

Her scribble takes the form of a litany, a catalogue of complaints and injustices, accompanied by a whining and a keening.

The pond uses 'litany' not so much in its sense of ceremonial or liturgical prayer or supplication, though those meanings apply, but more in the sense of recitation,  mainly as in "a prolonged and tedious account ... we heard the whole litany of their complaints" ...(dictionary here).

Of course the funny thing about this opening is the way that Dame Slap takes not just offence, but the gate too. She's offended by everyone, she is herself a key proponent of the cult of taking offence, she is clearly infected by the sly unchecked virus ... it's impossible to count the number of greenies, leftists, progressives, centrists, mellow-ists, wets and even some dries who provoke her eternal intolerance.

So yet again, she sets out at tedious length the way she takes offence. This is not new, this is a sort of by the numbers set piece, and can be found all over the place, as in Anthony Dillon scribbling The Oh-So-Easy Habit of Taking Offence, which displays standard Quadrant outrage at the outrageous outrage displayed by the twittering class and their hashtag sermons ... is there anything more designed to lather up the outrage than the full to overflowing intertubes and its netizens?

The tone is always judgmental and sanctimonious, with a hint of the apocalyptic ...

Perhaps the pond should issue a trigger warning, but we have always thought that Dame Slap's scribbles will only set off mild seizures and where's the harm in that? Uncurl tongue from roof of mouth, wipe off foam and on we go ...

Now in this litany, the pond always finds certain curiosities.

What exactly did Dame Slap mean by "Jerry Seinfeld has said he has been warned to stay off campuses because they're too PC"?

How are campuses a "they're"? How did campuses become PC? Is this the same condition as their having tar and cement? Why would Seinfeld be such a wimp? If he's been warned, surely the honourable thing to to would be to take up the challenge and storm around the PC campuses teaching them good humour, instead of wasting his talent on his tedious coffee routines ...which are so lame even the coffee has grounds for complaint.

The pond was reminded of the lines by stand-up comedian Todd Glass:

You can be crass, you can be vulgar, and it’s not about worrying about offending people. Fuck offending people. Offend the right fucking people. Don’t let this fake argument that makes you not want to grow [as a comedian] and say, ‘Oh, you’re always going offend somebody.’ No one said you shouldn’t! It’s your fake argument! Offend the living fuck out of people! But make sure you’re doing it to the right group. Because, I’m sure George Carlin, most of the time, was offending the right people.

Now the pond grew up in different times, to the sounds of Lenny Bruce doing stand-up, and Woody Allen doing his Jewish schtick, and in those days, the Dame Slaps of the world were routinely outraged by their comedy stylings.

But it raises the question of tone and audience. Your average astute comedian realises what sort of crowd they're working and how far and in what direction they can go. It's being tone sharp rather than tone deaf. Some crowds can be pushed over the edge and beyond their limits. But a wedding, or a funeral say, aren't the best places for tone-deaf humour.

A few tips for the Dame might help her future comedy stylings. It's possible to make a joke about Jewish holocaust survivors, but it's better if you wheel in a Larry David to do it. He might be a secular Jew, but he's a Jew, and he can get away with it. Ditto black jokes. If you must tell a joke about the lame, the halt, or the poor, it's better if it's not Donald Trump mocking a reporter's issues. If you insist, remember that you're better off playing a tramp, laughing at the rich, rather than siding with the rich, and laughing and mocking the tramp. Your chances of imitating Charlie Chaplin head towards zero if you don't see the funny side of a rich man hitting a banana skin, and the lack of humour in mocking the dispossessed and the colonised ...

Now to explore this further, the pond must do a little time travelling back to an earlier Dame Slap litany of rage ...

Yes, it's the same old routine, but back in 2012, only this time it was accompanied by cluck clucking and tut-tutting and pursing of lips ...

Yes, there you go, the pursing of the lips in the line "it's called entertainment when they poke fun at the tykes" ...

Well yes, it is called entertainment ... and let the jokes fall where they may ...

Now the fascinating thing about all Dame Slap's columns is their complete humourlessness. Their lack of jokes, their lack of wit, their lack of laughs.

The same might be said of Bill Leak's cartoons. Somewhere, somehow, for some mysterious reason, the muse of humour abandoned him. It can still be found in the world, plenty of people possess it, but it never turns up in Leak's work, which is usually as funny as a tooth extraction. This goes beyond the crudity of the drawing into the crudity of purpose, the lack of irony, the lack of self-reflection and wit.

The pond will now step back into the time machine, return to the present, and observe how Dame Slap's columns continue to be a humour desert, with nary an oasis or a date in sight ... because litany ...

Oh okay, that talk of finding a Tasmanian tiger might pass as a joke in some circles ... provided said circles were impossibly lame, wet, feeble and pathetic ...

Oh and there's the notion that it's only the ABC, sections of Fairfax media and much of the academe that's intolerant, which could only be scribbled by a woman who has made a career out of extreme intolerance for anyone who disagrees with her ...

But speaking of Chris Rock, he had this to say, quoted here:

“Some people aren’t making comedy for me,” Rock said, recalling his experience watching the TBS late-night show. “Okay, this is not for me particularly. This is for a certain group of women, and I gotta kind of defer. I think people should be funny to the people who look like them first. If you can’t be funny to the people who look like you, something’s wrong.” 

Rock also pointed out that, as the director of Amy Schumer's stand-up special Amy Schumer: Live At The Apollo, he left in “all the stuff that I don’t know,” which, fortunately for him, includes a deep, personal understanding of yeast infections.

Not everything and everyone is funny to everybody, but Dame Slap is supremely funny to anyone who doesn't live on Planet Janet ...

Never mind, there's not much point exercising liberal tolerance in the presence of Dame Slap. It will do you no good at all ... rather it's taken as a sign of weakness and another reason to go for the jugular ...

Actually it might start with the telling of a good joke or three. But sadly whenever the pond visits Dame Slap's school for lessons, all that it gets is stern looks and a savage strapping, and confusion about what actually happened, forcing a trip to CBS News to check out the yoga saga.

Thank the long absent lord there are joke tellers out there still telling jokes, not least about the way that the humourless reptiles are determined to take over the planet earth, pod people with nothing but a relentless desire to ensure conformity to their way of thinking ...

Well damned if the pond will make that mistake. It's almost about time for the war on Christmas to heat up in News Corp, with demented angry white folk agitated about Christ having a swarthy middle eastern appearance ...

Never mind, the pond might not be good at telling its own jokes, but at least it can resort to papal humour of the first water, and as always, more Pope japery here ...

Yes, that'll work. A flying horse and Dame Slap cracking wild-eyed jokes about Chairman Rupert ...