In which the Major Mitchell takes care of the pond's irony diet for the entire week ...

Monday is undoubtedly the pond's favourite day for reptile spotting ...pay no mind to the weather, there's sure to be a reptile gambolling about, and they usually offer post-modernist reflexive delights of the Major Mitchell kind ...

There's a delightful absurdity in the sight of the Major Mitchell patiently explaining how objective reporting won't date ...

It's perhaps the fault of the logarithms that when you google Chris Mitchell and Manning Clark, the very first hit produces this observation by Rod Tiffen, available in full here, which ended this way regarding the declining standards at the lizard Oz ...

Of course Tiffen also mentioned the classic which the pond always recalls whenever the Major Mitchell turns up like a bad penny, the adjudication on the matter of Manning Clark v the Major's Currish Snail in the matter of that Order of Lenin ...

That appeal judgement - and the original judgement, appealed, with appeal dismissed - can be found here, and there's a related plea about misinformation here.

It ended with this rich text ...

Of course when it came to the crunch, the Major Mitchell toddled off to ruin the reptile of Oz, while serving his patron's political interests and conducting sundry crusades, and with good reason ... and as for completing the investigation and reporting the findings?

And all that's why the pond found it terribly hard just to get past the first post-modernist deeply reflexive Major Mitchell splash ...

It took care of the pond's irony diet for the entire week ... all the more so, as in his rich hypocrisy, the Major Mitchell managed to sound like someone bleating for the ABC or Fairfax...

That's here, but now, perforce, the Major Mitchell in all his glory must step up to the microphone ...

The secret to achieving top-notch surrealism is to pile absurdity on absurdity, and the Major Mitchell is some kind of gee whiz Dali down under ...

There's the bizarre bird, as quaint and as curious as a cockatoo, bemoaning the way opinion journalism is destroying both the profession and the politics, and then citing an opinion piece by Miranda Devine as being eminently sane ...

This is a form of primordial insanity, with a hearty dash of essence of vitriole.

If there was to be a winner of the top award for the ruination of journalism with bigoted hysterical 'hang a greenie from the nearest lamppost' pieces, the Devine would only be hard-pressed by the Bolter ... though the pond was exceptionally pleased that some pundit decided to go the full photoshop on another Murdoch ratbag kicked upstairs so that he might ruminate on his cud ...

The pond is a slow learner, but it has begun to realise that the Major Mitchell is genuinely thick and un-self-aware. 

The pond is always slow to spot it in people who are deeply insecure, and cover that insecurity with a kind of vainglorious arrogance and naive certainty.

The Major might have had the corporate savvies and a rat cunning which enabled him to suck up to the Chairman and get himself up to the top at the lizard Oz, and now his reward is to sit back and write opinion journalism pieces about the way opinion journalism is ruining journalism, thereby compounding the ruination he has already wreaked ...but deep down, his obsessions about social media and the digital age reveal a deep and abiding insecurity. 

It's probably to do with old age, and the sense of the impending arrival of doddering senility - or has it already arrived, a feature of the condition being an unawareness of its arrival - but it leads to some remarks richer in irony than a serve of lamb's fry and bacon ...

Uh huh. So here we are, with the Major Mitchell's opinions and speculations dressed up as "facts and truth". What form of rampant Napoleonic egotism is this?

And where did that intense study of media demographics get the Major? Cue a little more Tiffen ...

The funny thing is that Mitchell, in his guise as an opinion journalist determined to ruin journalism - having already done a mighty fine job as the editor of the lizard Oz and the Currish Snail - proceeds to present his own opinions as "a few facts", when all it really reveals is the way the Major views everything, from climate science through to political allegiances, via the prism of politics and "strategising":

There you go, not content with presenting the "absolutely correct" Devine as some sort of objective source of information, when she was in fact offering profoundly silly advice of the "let the onion muncher back into the ministry so he can really get on with the wrecking, sniping, undermining and leaking" kind, the Major Mitchell carries a flame for nattering "Ned" - the very same "deeply analytical" Ned who presents this kind of blather for the Catholic Boys' Daily on a regular basis ...

Truly, it's impossible to evoke the silliness and stupidity of the Major Mitchell when he does it so well himself ... and as for his continual harping on the young, and social media and academics using literary deconstruction and cheer squad feedback on website posts, is there a Freudian in the house?

Indeed, indeed. Well in terms of useful contributions, perhaps there's a good case for a bout of physician heal thyself. 

Of all the commentators that turn out for the lizard Oz on a daily basis, the most singularly useless is the Major Mitchell. Do they really need his insights, and his pejoratives and loaded deconstructive adjectives, or could he simply be excised?

But to do so would be a tragedy. How else could the pond start its Monday with a guaranteed laugh fest, and no need to include red meat in the diet for days afterwards, such is the rich level of irony on view ...

Oh the pond could also just start with a Rowe cartoon, but let's face it, Rowe is much too inclined to straightforward reporting of the objective news, with more balanced news bulletins from Rowe here ...