In which the pond sorts wheat from chaff and arrives at a reptile winner ...

  

While the pond realises it's unseemly to boast, the pond would just like to note the astonishing restraint it shows on a daily basis, and how it refuses to take all the bait offered by Murdochian trollers, as it tries to sort the wheat from the chaff ...

The pond spends much of its time discarding pleasures which are simply too obvious, too blatant, to conform to the pond's rigorous quality control checks ...

Actually the most likely future for us is a dud NBN, but the pond has gone on too much about that.

This day the tabloids are in a state of shock as they lather up the latest race war offering, while the lizards of Oz are still in the same game, though they dress it up in a different way ...

Mixed messages and a nation at war?

Well Comrade Bill better learn quickly that this country doesn't tolerate dissenting views.

When the flag gets run up the pole, better salute, or fuck off somewhere else. Ah, the joys of a Murdochian totalitarian state ... please, no dissent, no ambivalence, love it or leave it, though you might be welcomed back as a furriner if you're prepared to use your squillions to prop up a failing tree-killing business model ...

What's that, the Terror was taking a stand?

Silence the Donald and the white nationalists in the White House?

Good luck with that Tory. Surely you realised after Charlottesville that there were good folk on both sides, and it would be best if you fell into line, and joined the Fox News crew in chanting "the Jews will not replace us" and "blood and soil" ... or if you will, in honour of the pond's remote connections to its Black Forest ancestors, "blut und boden" ...

Never mind, this posting is rapidly turning into a Seinfeld episode, a blog about nothing, or if you will, the lizards of Oz, and all this talk of the Donald reminded the pond of an item that bobbed to the surface just yesterday, like a cork, or a troublesome difficult something in the bathroom flusher ...

Now why did this tickle the pond's funny bone, and make it through its rigorous filtration system?

Well first Melanie Phillips is one of those wondrous barking mad Poms who made the journey from the extreme left to the extreme right, as extremists are wont to do - show the pond a fervent atheist or true believer, and watch the polarities reverse, and next thing you know, pace Christopher Pearson, a Pol Pot lover will be chanting the Latin mass ...

But dotty Mel's journey was even more extreme than most, much to the shock and chagrin of Graudian types, and so, in a typical liberal way, they blamed themselves ...

Yes, it was all about the way the liberal left ignored its own weaknesses, as you can read in the Graudian here ... as opposed to dotty Mel going barking mad in a north by northwest, hawk and handsaw way ...

Here's the rub.

Can anyone remember reading dotty Mel featuring on the front page of the lizard Oz - by gracious consent and by appointment to the Times of London - with a splash headed "President Donald? Preposterous"?

And with that followed by beguiling copy reading "The bandwagon behind the billionaire TV celebrity ignores his record, lack of judgment and breathtaking hypocrisy."

Well no, and besides, that horse bolted long ago ... and now it seems any billionaire TV celebrity can eye off the White House, though it might just involve being a real billionaire, as opposed to a fake one like the Donald ...

Back in the day, dotty Mel was more likely to be running this sort of story, as reported in The Independent ...

It's all here, with hot links, and it makes for quaint and delightful reading, including these fun bits ...

“Trump’s victory, it is claimed, will promote hatred, racial violence and an end to democracy,“ she writes, ”yet the people being hated and racially attacked are Trump supporters. “The accusations being hurled at Trump are not only distorted and display double standards but in turn smear the millions who voted for him...” 

... Her defence of Mr Trump also extended to the controversial appointment to his team of Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon, whose four years steering the site has seen headlines such “The West Vs Islam is the New Cold War - Here’s How We Win” and “Political correctness protects Muslim rape culture” published and disseminated. “Breitbart exposes Islamist violence and intimidation," she went on. "For that it is called racist, hate-fuelled and Islamophobic. Millions of voters who fear Islamist oppression and oppose uncontrolled immigration have been denounced in exactly the same way.” Phillips has already praised Mr Trump’s ascension to the White House as an "uprising of the scorned" that has given the Western world “a chance of surviving”.

Oh dear, what to do, what to say, when Stalin puts an ice pick in the back of Trotsky's neck, or the Donald says Steve has lost his mind ...

Contra all the problems the Donald offered as a lying, double dealing TV reality show star and snake-oil salesman, dotty Mel did her best to present the good side ...

 

Here's the thing, the hawk and the handsaw cunning nature of it all. 

There's a method to dotty Mel's madness. 

She works the personality racket side of the street, with stories and columns designed to shock and awe and irritate.

In her own way, she's a minor Donald, though she dresses it out with flourishes of rationality and hints of intelligence.

Dotty Mel realises she needs to be outside the Murdochian paywall to establish her profile and flog her books, and so she has an eponymous website here ... where all her Trumpian gushing excess can be read ...

Now the Jews are easily confused. 

After all, there's all those good folk marching in support of the Donald in Charlottesville and chanting soil and blood, and then there's that genius deal just around the corner ...

And that's why dotty Mel passes the dotty pond test.

Only a fuckwit of the first water could scribble how Oprah's a worry while the Donald is just a persecuted warrior working for just causes, and might still produce a genius deal, no doubt of the inspirational Breitbart kind ...

Besides, dotty Mel's presence saves the pond from having to wander down the road with the reptiles in their ongoing Australia Day war.

Not only would this have been a tremendous waste of energy, as usual, the immortal Pope had got there before the pond, and nailed it with his latest encyclical, with more papal pleasures to be found here ...