In which the pond joins Polonius in deploring ridicule and the ridiculous ...

As a pedant routinely inclined to error, the pond is in an excellent position to note the extraordinary charm of pompous prattling Polonius, a pedant routinely inclined to defend the indefensible, and routinely inclined to error.

This sort of pedant sends other pedants into a feeding frenzy, and serves the same sort of purpose as a crow feeding on roadkill (though working out which is the carrion and which is the crow is a tricky business).

Were it not for the leaden drone with which Polonius carries out his pedantic tasks - a complete lack of humour has its risks - surely he would be the pond's most exciting Saturday matinee feature, a regular Johnny Weissmuller of a columnist.

Well, the pond might just have finished Polonius's grand survey of 2017, but truth to tell, there's something about Polonius - too much salt in the cracker? - that makes the pond insatiable, and Polonius very more-ish, and so before heading off to drink a glass of water or three, please indulge the pond in its Saturday Polonial indulgence ... (waiter, pass the Jaffas and a glass of Lord Downer's finest) ....

How in the name of high comedy is it not possible to love Polonius?

Whenever the pond reads him, it's reminded of that quaint ancient concept of "taking umbrage" ...

It also reminds the pond of that classic of petulant pedantry, George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody, fortunately available these days on Project Gutenberg:

April 6.—Eggs for breakfast simply shocking; sent them back to Borset with my compliments, and he needn’t call any more for orders. Couldn’t find umbrella, and though it was pouring with rain, had to go without it. Sarah said Mr. Gowing must have took it by mistake last night, as there was a stick in the ‘all that didn’t belong to nobody. In the evening, hearing someone talking in a loud voice to the servant in the downstairs hall, I went out to see who it was, and was surprised to find it was Borset, the butterman, who was both drunk and offensive. Borset, on seeing me, said he would be hanged if he would ever serve City officers of the Sydney Institute any more—the game wasn’t worth the candle. I restrained my feelings, and quietly remarked that I thought it was possible for a city Sydney Instituter to be a gentleman. He replied he was very glad to hear it, and wanted to know whether I had ever come across one, for he hadn’t. He left the house, slamming the door after him, which nearly broke the fanlight; and I heard him fall over the scraper, which made me feel glad I hadn’t removed it. When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion.

Who else but Polonius would get agitated about a letter to the editor and see in it the decline of civilisation?

As if no-one else at any time had got agitated in a pedantic way about assorted matters and rushed off to scribble a satirical missive? As if no-one else had ever been inclined to use ridicule, or been ridiculed with deadly accuracy?

Sadly, it's impossible to send up Polonius, when a master of the craft - Gerard Henderson - manages the task so immaculately well ...

Now the pond is astonished at the restraint and moderate tone of a certain Bert Candy of Glenvale, Toowoomba, suddenly catapulted into national attention by the laser-sharp gaze of Polonius in his prime ...

(here for the picture and Dolly Downer goes to London).

But to be fair to his reporting, it does seem that the fatuous fop did indeed go to a London wine bar, get on the piss in a fully Downerish way, and get told a secret ...

 

It's only a sideshow, the third ring in the circus, but it's the best we've got, and the Fairfaxians did their best to have fun with it in that tale of a "romantic encounter" ...

It was a chance romantic encounter by George Papadopoulos that set in train the events that led to the Australian government tipping off Washington about what it knew of Russian hacking efforts to swing the US presidential election. Fairfax Media can reveal a woman in London with whom Papadopoulos became involved happened to know Alexander Downer and told the Australian High Commissioner about Papadopoulos, a newly signed staffer for Donald Trump. Downer, being a canny diplomat, followed it up and arranged a meeting with the young American, who was mostly living in London at the time. 
What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails...

...As remarkable as it seems that Papadopoulos would be so reckless as to tell Downer - a foreign diplomat he'd just met - that he knew about the Russian hacking, Downer is known for his fondness for expansive conversation over wine, so it is plausible Downer had the young man talking well past the point at which he should have stopped.

And so on. 

Swanky? Fondness for expansive conversation over wine? The pond can vaguely recall what that's code for ... he's a pisspot, but he's able to afford a class drop on the way to getting pissed ...

Of course it's only a sideshow, a colonial third ring in the circus, but who wouldn't want to have a bit of fun with it?

Well anyone except our prim Mr Pooter, drawing himself up to his full height and demanding that the tradesman show proper respect ... as if the Australian tradition of The Bulletin has ever been in that game since way before Norman Lindsay ...

The pond always thought it hard for anyone to match Lord Downer at being a pompous ass, fresh from the pen of P. G. Wodehouse (a thanks to the street library for that Bertie book), but our Polonius manages the task effortlessly. And then he dares to head off to the main game ...

What the fuck? How tone deaf can a Polonius get? Sure, he might have scribbled this copy a few days before the Wolff wave broke and roiled the United States, but surely he could have inserted a few sentences that showed a grasp on current realities?

Right at this moment, it's everywhere, and yet Polonius is still mounting a defence of the Donald?

This is an Olympian achievement by the pond's resident tosser - if the Donald isn't a freak show, then the pond must have stumbled into a screening of Tod Browning's Freaks by mistake - but fortunately the pond isn't in to ridicule ...

Instead we should just note that Polonius seems to get his news from Fox News. Enough said ...

Fox News is a source of reporting that has a fact-based, emotion-free tone?

Yep, it's impossible to satirise Polonius when he's out and about. Instead the pond should just note the paranoid, hurt tone, which sounds very Donald ... "ridicule rules and is used as a weapon against political conservatives".

This from a loon who, in the guise of a dog, spent 2017 ridiculing all sorts of people?

Tonightly, which could be renamed “Go-Leftie”, carries the traditional warning about coarse language, sexual references and adult themes. The first two are there in abundance. But adult themes? Tonightly is more like a piss-poor Year 12 revue. Except that the small audience is motivated by a clapper to, well, Clap and Laugh. 

THE HUMAN MUMBLE CHANNELS THE LATE PROPHET OF PALM BEACH 

Did anyone hear Senator Derryn Hinch – aka the Human Mumble – on Paul Murray Live last night? Well, Derryn (“All my jokes are no more than 50 years old”) Hinch decided to throw the switch to prophecy mode with the following (mumbled) prediction: 

Derryn Hinch: [Mumbling] Paul, can I give you a [mumble] guess, Hinch’s Hunch for next year. And Hinch’s Hunch is usually wrong. But I would bet you, I bet you next year Tony Abbott will resign from parliament. If they [the Coalition] call an early election in March as Labor Party thinks they will – if a lower house election is called he [Abbott] will not stand for re-election in Warringah. There you go. He’ll call me up tomorrow morning and say “Hinch, shut the beep up”…[Mumbling]. 

So, according to the Human Mumble, Malcolm Turnbull will call an early election in March 2018. And Tony Abbott will resign from the House of Representatives in 2018. And Mr Abbott will call Senator Hinch this morning and tell him: “Hinch, shut the fu-k up.”

So there you have it. An angry David Marr – intent on “learning” Jackie Kelly – believes that if only Ms Kelly reads history and listens and pays attention to him and his mates – then she will agree with him. Sounds somewhat authoritarian don’t you think? – especially for a self-proclaimed libertarian. Can You Bear It? (The pond took only a few samples of bile and ridicule here, before the noxious fumes drove it from the page).

Ah, Mr Bert Candy of Glenvale, Toowoomba, if only you'd have had the decency and courtesy to talk of humble mumbling. Can you bear it?

Can you imagine the schizophrenia, the paranoia and the complete hypocrisy of our Polonial correspondent, ridiculing ridicule, while routinely  indulging in healthy bouts of ridicule for decades? As if dressing up as a dog somehow makes the ridicule not his, but the dog's?

Not to mention some truly pisspoor Photoshop from the intern ...

 

What a sublime ridiculous idiot he is? How impossible it is to ridicule him? What a national treasure he is ... and no wonder he provokes so many admiring comments when he turns up on parade in the pond.

And if that's the spirit of Oz columnists these days, what can the pond do but join in and run a few cartoons explaining how the White House is in the rudest of ruddy health ...