In which the pond does a mid-week potpourri of reptiles with the bromancer, Lloydie and Dame Slap ...

When talking about Moorice's epic outing this day with another reptile lover, the fellow devotee recalled that in the old days, even on the right, anyone who embraced Bircher nonsense and wild-eyed conspiracy theories would have been frowned upon, and found publication difficult ... they might even have had to resort to pamphlets handed out at huddled meetings of the crazies, a common fate for both extreme right and left ...

But these days, as a result of the the coarsening of the debate, thanks to the Murdochians trying to guard their flanks from the likes of Breitbart, this sort of barking mad howling at the moon is now part of the general discourse ... and so we get Moorice, the Donald and other weirdnesses ...

The bromancer's splash hints there might be some significant contrition amongst the reptiles, with the suggestion that Josephine Blow knows more than the bromancer, Dame Slap, or any of a bigly bunch of the lizard Oz's strategic commentators ...

... but it's actually just another chance to smooth over the edges of the Donald ...

Round him out, buff him up, and keep the alliance in good shape, and so keep solid company with the barking mad, and all will be well ...

Much like you could trust their views on embarking on the Iraq adventure?

(here)

Meanwhile, the pond was tracking the thoughts of that other strategic commentator, Lloydie of the Reef ...

The trick with Lloydie of the Reef is to discover how covert he might be in his special pleading for "new" coal, "new" coal being all the go in reptile land. How to sound like Moorice, without appearing like a barking mad uncle just come down from the attic:

Yes, there's nothing like splashing out a billion dollars on a railway to be truly agnostic and ideology-free.

What's astonishing is that even Bjorn Lomborg dresses up his climate science denialism with the fig leaf that hefty subsidies for coal should be abolished, but not Lloydie of the Reef ... it's new coal for our man, cleaner than that old stuff ...oi, oi, oi.

And so to the main course of the day, in which Dame Slap gives Moorice a good run for his Murdochian money.

The pond at first heaved a deep sigh at the thought that this would be just another Triggs bashing exercise for Dame Slap ...

Has there ever been a more massive display of petulant intolerance than the pack of Murdoch hounds in pursuit of Triggs?

It is of course a hoot whenever Dame Slap scribbles about intolerance. It's hard to imagine anyone more intolerant in their scribbling, though to be fair, she's in a competition with the Bolter and Miranda the Devine, and if she were on air, Alan Jones would still give her a good run for bitch of the month ...

Then the pond became deeply concerned ...

The outgoing Triggs? We're not talking about her personality at a party.

She's left home? Whatever will the reptiles do? Has someone got in a supply of voodoo dolls and pins?

The meretricious Merritt seemed to be suggesting they might just have to go on demonising Triggs long after she's gone ...

Aah, henceforth everyone will be judged as Triggs lite or Triggs heavy ...

So it was with a hint of anxiety that the pond pressed on ...

Now there's a relief. It turns out that Triggs is just an excuse for Dame Slap to display her usual rabid, froth-foaming intolerance for any to the left of Genghis Khan ...

And happily David Goodhart was on hand with the sort of simplistic digital mind-set that appeals to the fundamentalist.

Here's how you do it ...

Love and hate, 1 and 0, wicked left, glorious right, or in this particular context, Anywhere and Somewhere ...

Now the funny thing is, somehow the well-heeled junketing Dame Slap (who can forget her missives from Germany?) sees her self as anywhere but the Anywheres ...

Schizophrenia anyone?

Of course it's just mindless stupidity. Want a hook to deliver more feral abuse at the ABC, Waleed Aly, and the like, or offer up a kind word for Margaret Court, or berate The Project?

It's easy. For a simple dialectical variation, pretend you're not an Anywhere, lost Somewhere up your bum ...

Fancy the pond fearing it was going to be a simple-minded assault on Triggs, when of course the intolerant Anywhere Dame Slap would instead launch an assault on everyone ...

Julie Burchill? Fuck that's desperate, and for any one who doesn't know about that Anywhere, her wiki is somewhere near here and the southern walri, wherein this great left liberal can be found opining on the Irish, the Iraq war, that great adventure, and sundry other drug-fuelled fantasies ...

In 2002 she narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred, "following a Guardian column where she described Ireland as being synonymous with child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women." Burchill had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in the London journal Time Out that "I hate the Irish, I think they're appalling".

Well we were speaking of Dame Slap's idea of tolerance. Please go on a little more ...

She supported the Iraq war, writing in The Guardian in 2003 that she was “in favour of a smaller war now rather than a far worse war later” and criticised those opposed to the war as “pro-Saddam apologists”. She justified her stance by stating that “this war is about freedom, justice – and oil” and that because Britain and the United States sold weapons to Iraq that, “it is our responsibility to redress our greed and ignorance by doing the lion's share in getting rid of him”.

Desperate pitiful stuff, and it's strange that the Anywhere Dame Slap would enlist Anywhere Burchill in her campaign to be tolerant ...

To be fair, the pond can keep pointing out Dame Slap's monstrous hypocrisy, wondrous intolerance, and supersized capacity for rabid hate speech - so much intolerant fear and loathing, so little time - but the chances of Dame Slap ever engaging with genuine liberalism and respectful debate is somewhere between a sparrow's fart and a snowball entering hell ...

As always, after that sort of encounter with intolerance - it can happen Anywhere in the lizard Oz, but especially in a Moorice or Dame Slap column - it's a relief to turn to a Rowe for a refreshing sorbet, with more Rowe here ...