In which the Major Mitchell avoids the bromancer but is still marked down ...

Those loyal Major Mitchell readers who went looking for a hit of their favourite cockatoo this morning would have been dismayed to discover that, early in the morning in the digital edition at least, he had been relegated to "media opinion" ...

The pond was outraged. To think that the glittering bird would be so cruelly and shabbily treated ...

... and yet he had important things to say about the media ...

First a little background.

The reptiles of Oz have recently erupted into internecine warfare, celebrated very recently by the pond in In which the bromancer gets a whipping and turns his tail ...

In this war, the Major Mitchell seems to have decided to cast his lot with Noel Pearson, which might explain why he was exiled to the gulag of "media opinion."

There's no more irrelevant feather duster than the tail feathers of a plucked bromancerphobic, a discarded, onetime head, formerly ruling the roost cockatoo editor ...

Did the Major Mitchell name and shame the bromancer, and his recent public flensing?

Or did the onion muncher and the Bolter get to feel the Mitchell heat?

Around this point, the pond became compelled.

Surely the Major Mitchell had to mention by name the bromancer, and his humiliation?

Thus far in the yarn, all the pond could see was a reference to "critics demand", and the blood-sweating hypocrisy of the onion muncher ... yet the prime "critically demanding" reptile critic these past few weeks had been the bromancer...

Would the next gobbet take out the bromancer? It's a lengthy enough chunk, a whole bowl of bird seed, leaving plenty of room for the Major to join Pearson and savage the upstart bromancer ...

And there you go.

Mark Latham, Alan Jones, Paul Kelly, Frank Brennan, all score a mention, but not the bromancer and the flame job on him by Pearson ... and yet, the Major sounds sympathetic to Pearson ...

Would he finally break ranks, would he make explicit his attitude to the bromancer? Or has the pond just embarked on a wild, useless goose hunt  ... much like a search for a non-existent Order of Lenin medal?

Would the Bolter have to serve as a sock puppet in lieu?

Remarkable stuff. Not a single mention of the bromancer, or his drubbing by Pearson, yet still the Major was drummed out of the front page, and forced to sit in the "Media Opinion" page ...

Oh sure, he snuck out later in the day to sit on the front digital page, surly and chastened, but the point had been made, for all his tip-toeing around the elephantine bromancer in the reptile room.

And so Pearson must sit away from the founding fathers, on a separate table to the current ruling clique at the lizard Oz, while the pond heads off to a couple of Moirs, with more Moir here ...