In which the dog botherer responds to the latest crisis by blaming social media ...

Shock ruling?

You mean the High Court can read English, but it's beyond the Donald ... and the average reptile journalist?

Naturally at a time of great crisis, great reptile minds will turn to the key issues of the day ...

Sheesh, who let the dogs in? Won't someone let the dog botherer out?

Now it's not as if there aren't any number of minds that have tirelessly worked away at this mindless meme ...

And so endlessly on and on ...

Of course back in the day, the meme was the way that coffee and coffee houses and gossip newspapers were ruining everything ...

That last illustration,  of nouvellistes gossiping and reading in a café of the Palais-Royal (from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France), could be found in Robert Darnton's piece, Blogging, Now and Then, back in 2010 for the New York Review of Books, and luckily outside the paywall at the moment ...

In the spirit of serving up tidbits, Darnton ended his piece this way ...

The answer to that question is already in. 

These days there are respectable, mainstream blogs, who have in fact adopted the guise of conventional old school media - the Daily Beast kind, where it's impossible to pick the difference between the farmers and the pigs ... while most other blogs have the disruptive force of a sodden paper bag or a warm lettuce leaf, used to give reptile journalists a ritual spanking ...

The day of the lengthy blog has long past, the days of bemoaning koans for their brevity has begun ...

But enough of this trip down memory lane, no doubt the dog botherer will provide a generous dose of his own rich, ripe stupidity to an analysis of the situation, and instead of blogs - long forgotten by the reptiles as their prime source of discontent - it will be all about modern social media, and the newest discontents, because everything and coffee houses must change so that everything can stay the same ...

What a twit he is, capable of making even twittering seem like an intelligent response ... but please excuse the pond, because it had promised itself that the next time it came across a mindless reptile repeating in a moronic way, talk of virtue signalling, that it would run this cartoon ...

It might require clicking on for readability, but the pond just had to do it, as a way of clearing the decks ...

You see, when twits get to talking, mindless shorthand of the "virtue signalling" kind always comes out of the keyboard like a cliché in full featherless flight

Now there are many windmills in the dog botherer piece that the pond might tilt at, not least that the dog botherer represents mainstream views, as opposed to wanton childish climate denialism of the destructive kind, all the more ironic when this fringe dweller asks if it's social media that's dumbing us down, when the dog botherer is a walking, scribbling, example of dumbness in action in old media ...

But there's a more important question coming, and that's how far the dog botherer can disappear up his own fundament, as if imitating a plastic clad arm intent on inseminating a cow ...

The answer comes in the next gobbet ...

There you go, there's the answer, the dog botherer is so far up himself there's no chance of anyone spotting a glimmer of the sun ...

Pious, sanctimonious, righteous, virtuous, the teacher of valuable lessons, the ineffable fair reporter, the humbug talk of a good lesson well learned ... and coming shortly another snide reference to climate denialism ...

Without seeming to understand the how or why of it, the dog botherer once again proves what a wonderfully risible right of centre figure role model he is ...

It goes without saying that for the rest of his piece, the dog botherer excretes the usual sort of right of centre twaddle ... because dog botherers must do what dog botherers must do ...

Remember this week that evidence emerged that a staffer of a senior minister tipped off the media so that an unseemly police raid could be turned into a media circus ...

That last line about inferiors says a lot about the rich insecurities, the deep paranoia, and the sublime condescension of the dog botherer ...

Scratch the veneer, and underneath there's a ponce quoting Plato about his inferiors ...

Why all we need now is prattling Polonius rabbiting on in Marie Antoinette style about how lucky the workers are to get their cake ...

Eek, he really did ...

No wonder each day the pond feels like it's sitting in Plato's cave, gazing at the shadows cast in the weird, wacky world of the reptiles ...

Is it any wonder that at every chance, the pond forsakes the shadows on the wall and heads off for a Rowe, with more Rowe here ...