In which the reptiles publish a correction but prattling Polonius refuses to be corrected ...

The pond couldn't help but notice that the reptiles had decided to publish a correction this day ... in the 'opinion' section ...

Strange.  A correction is an opinion?

And what peculiar wording: The Australian accepts that this reference to Dr Hannah McGlade was made in error ...

What could it mean? Was it a bald-faced lie, or weasel words to wriggle off a hook, or something else?

The reptiles didn't get around to taking the story offline so naturally the pond went off to take a butcher's crook ... and guess who turned up as the author?

Gorgeous George ...

Hmm, no mention yet of the offending text, just a well-off federal parliamentarian with a handsome parliamentary allowance and superannuation scheme railing at the elites ... presumably on the basis that it takes a fat cat heading off to surgery to spot another fat cat heading off to a meal ...

Perhaps the pond would do better with the next gobbet ...

Well that rather bells the fat cat and seems convincing evidence that the reptiles published, in lieu of an apology, a bald-faced lie ...

The Australian accepts that this reference to Dr Hannah McGlade was made in error ...

There was no way that the reference to McGlade was made in error. It was made deliberately, provocatively, and with insulting intent ...

Now the reptiles and gorgeous George might have wilted under threat, but what a contemptuous way to try to dodge the fall-out.

A more truthful wording might have been ...

The Australian accepts that it fucked up in printing this reference to Dr Hannah McGlade which was made deliberately and provocatively by gorgeous George, and the lizards of Oz deeply regret the error of letting his errors out, like a cat out of the bag ...

Of course at the same time they could have apologised for printing the thing at all, and all the usual guff about the boon of Adani and the nonsense about inner-city enclaves, a libellous and defamatory attack on the reptiles themselves, working as they do from their inner Sydney Surry Hills eerie where the coffees are only ever single origin, and might have the fragrant flavours of rosehip, bergamot, concord grape and chamomile ...

There's only one solution to these ongoing slurs against the reptiles ... come Monday, they must begin to shift the lizard Oz out to Penrith, or perhaps Lithgow, if they want to go properly west ...

And now, just for the sake of completeness, the pond should finish off with a final gobbet of George ... though indulging to excess is never wise ...

Ah, the old "clean coal" routine ... it never gets old ... even if it's a tad more expensive at the moment than a Surry Hills coffee ...

Incidentally, while apologies and corrections are doing the rounds, the pond would make it clear that it in no way intends to defame, harm or demean gorgeous George with outrageous and insulting comparisons ...

The real gorgeous George made a living as a wrestler ... and nothing wrong with that ...

But for a moment, the pond thought that the reptiles and gorgeous George had taken the wind out of its sails, and it wouldn't have the time or the space to pay attention to the wailing and moaning and prattling Polonius ...

But then the pond thought why not? Dealing with the reptiles has, of late, meant that the pond is trying to match Gibbon's history of the decline and fall of the Murdochian empire and the planet's climate ...

Why not see prattling Polonius deploring the left, while refusing to be corrected about the excess of the right ...

You see, there's nothing new in all this talk of leftie excess. 

The pond was reminded recently when googling sundry matters that the onion muncher, as well as punching walls near people's heads, was always going on about lefties at university in his boofhead Oxford boxing rugger bugger way ...

J'accuse indeed ...

Those stories are easily googled ... adding as they do to the pond's impression that it seems that corrections are all the rage in recent times ...

Polonius also entered that onion-muncher story, in a tale told at Fairfax here, but which included this fine example of Polonial apologetics ...

Uh huh ...

Well that sets the mood and the tone for today's Polonius ... because if nothing else, it would seem that the older some lost souls get, the more ancient the cultural warrior, the closer they totter towards senility, the more likely they are to revive ancient battles and punch the walls of bitter memories ...

Uh huh ... and some, without having been within cooee of ancient incidents, nevertheless find a way to apologise for or dismiss certain incidents around the combative onion muncher clinging to his days of punching glory...

By golly, even then he looked a a surly sort of boofhead, as well as being a fundamentalist Catholic bigot ...

The pond recognised the type, though it had nothing to do with either the aggro left or right that wandered the cloistered ivy-clad halls in Armidale ...

What's interesting is the way that Polonius follows the 'never forget, never forgive' injunction to the letter ...

Actually, nothing better explains the weakness of the intelligentsia than the devious, dissembling apologetics of Polonius, always harping on about Fairfax, the ABC, the left, Robert Manne and all the rest of the usual suspects, while ignoring the very large motes in the eyes of many around him ...

Looking for balance is a bit like trying to find the balance in the United States ...

A true balance?

Long, long gone ... even the notion of it ...

This can have unfortunate consequences ... lost souls who lose their way deciding to do over the country with their anger unchecked and misdirected ...

Lolling on a psychiatrist's couch might have been a better solution than deciding to run the country, but no, look where all this student anger and rage led us ...

And yet this is the reject Polonius routinely defended, that band of happy brothers, that tribe of strange Catholics shutting down debates and consigning the noisy to eternal hellfire and damnation, while at the same time, deploring the way the radical left shuts down debates ...

Go figure, it's too weird for the pond ...