The pond wanted to open with that bizarre offering from prattling Polonius, partly out of nostalgia for the Duffster (the pond started by stalking the Duffster), and partly because it offers an insight into the relatively unique* (*ABC licensed) mindset of Polonius …
Usually there's two ways to ignore an error - don't mention it, and hope it, or the complainant goes away, or just 'fess up, make the correction and move on …
Everybody makes mistakes - the pond is littered with them, and with typos too - but Polonius provides an insight into how a pedant responds to an error.
Polonius spends a lifetime pointing out the mistakes of others, so when caught out, how can a pathetic pedant respond?
Admit the error? No, make a whimsical post-ironic song and dance about it, pretend he's being post-modern, post-referential, and worst of all, call it a John-Laws-Style Deliberate Mistake …
It's in this sort of trivial gesture that reveals the shrivelled kernel of what might once have been a soul in the mindless pedant, always insisting on the errors of others while devising ways to protect his own infallibility …
A Freudian would have a field day with it, but the pond will settle for an easy analysis, evoking the binary world of fundamentalist Catholicism …
This brings the pond to another Freudian moment, today's post from Polonius.
It's saying the bleeding obvious to note that Polonius is obsessed with the ABC, but, in a way, that's the least of it.
Polonius is deeply, weirdly obsessed in a way that alters his mind and his world view.
Any issue at all is routinely refracted through the Polonial ABC lens.
If there's a mention of pedophilia and the Catholic church, or the current Pellist plight by hook or by crook, Polonius will drag the ABC into it and possibly David Marr.
So if Polonius dearly wants to have a go at Michelle Wolf, having a go at his beloved President, then somehow or other, it will be all the fault of the ABC.
Others would tackle Wolf directly, but Polonius must insist on dragging the ABC, writers' festivals and everybody else on the wrong side of the fence into his feuding and fussing ...
If the pond had a dollar for each time Polonius blathered about wickedness of the inner-city intelligentsia - while working from a handsome old shack in the very heart of Sydney's CBD for an institute catering to the intelligentsia - the pond would long ago have given up blogging and moved in to an apartment in the Toaster on Sydney harbour.
Might as well have harbour views while enduring monumental stupidity.
As for the interpretation of the jokes, the humourless sod doesn't seem to understand what Wolf was saying, which was that Sanders, Conway and Coulter lie repeatedly, with gusto and with a joyous freedom from the truth, much like the Donald himself.
This is hardly news, though it's remarkable how fundamentalist Catholics and fervent evangelicals in the Donald camp manage to reconcile themselves to this daily ongoing abuse of whatever passes for reality …
Wolf delivered a mixed set, but at least her jokes moved above the level of a John-Laws-Style Deliberate Mistake joke, which requires a hugely addle-brained understanding of things to be taken as remotely funny ...
The pond has a stark vision of Polonius sitting, sullenly and sourly glowering at the television screen, and then suddenly coming alive with ripe guffaws about the Clinton joke…
But most of all the pond loved it when Polonius jumped the relativist shark at the end. Apparently nobody has to follow the Donald's twitter feed of incessant abuse, whereas everyone is a "captive audience" watching national TV …
Tell that to the ABC ratings watchers.
But it does say something both remarkable and bizarre about Polonius. Rather like the Donald sitting and devouring Fox and Friends, it seems that Polonius sits captive in front of the TV, eternally condemned to watching the ABC …unable to change the channels, unable to switch off and walk away, hapless, compelled, captivated …
It helps explain why he's so deeply, weirdly neurotic and why, like many pedants, he misses the wood while focussing on ABC leaves …
It seems to have escaped Polonius as to the nature of the natural born liars who routinely lie for a lying President, though there was a hint that maybe this time Sanders wasn't going to take all the blame, as noted at WaPo here …
And now Guiliani, himself a constant and predictable liar in his later years, having been sent out to dissemble and lie on behalf of the President, has himself been flung under the bus …as the headlines in the NY Times and WaPo about the liars keep rolling out ...
As for Giuliani, even the reptiles couldn't resist this Times' story …
May have gone too far? There's an alternative read here ...
But this manages a charcoal sketch without mentioning how in later years Giuliani has jumped off the deep end ...
And that's the ultimate take-home from Wolf.
It's hard for any comedian to do better than the sublime comedy the circus itself manages on a daily basis.
As for Polonius, the pond can only urge that he switch off his TV, and discover he's free of the ABC. He can roam far and wide, and discover it's permissible to laugh at comedians, no matter what their level of bias or political correctness …
He might even discover that scribbling about John-Laws-Style Deliberate Mistakes isn't funny, it's just silly and pathetic, the sort of thing an inner-city member of the elite intelligentsia would scribble after an endless amount of fluff-gathering and ABC and navel-gazing …
Fortunately after imbibing a Polonius, it's always wise to drink deep of a Rowe, with more Rowe on the tap here ...
Ah yes, Loonpond in Duffyworld ! Those were great days, DP, great days indeed.
ReplyDeleteBut there's the sad eyed Prattler of the reptile lands with the pretense that "there's nothing wrong with Trump, and if you think there is, then there's something wrong with you". Clearly nobody is obliged to stay tuned to Trumpy's tweets just because that's often the place he reveals Presidential Decisions. No, no obligation whatsoever.
Who, by sheer weight of the written word is more obsessed with ABC, Henderson or Kenny? Also I caught Henderson's wife say she did not support the abolition of the GST on tampons as it did not effect her.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I think one might call that 'disinterested self-interest'.
DeleteNormally I find Polonius tremendously tiresome, but I'm so grateful to him for mansplaining Wolf's "smokey-eye" dig at SHS. Now I see it was a cheap shot by an left-wing 'leet against a decent conservative woman's appearence; until the prattling one set me straight, I thought it was skewering Sanders'(and her boss's) callous disregard for truth.
ReplyDeleteThat trait, Gerard evidently shares.
We can take it then, FD, that you don't share the lifeplan of Catch-22's Dunbar. Nor do I, but at least Dunbar had a good mate in Yossarian - which makes me wonder whether anybody ever would be a good mate of Polonius's.
DeleteI find it hard to imagine, myself, but somebody did become his "wife" and the perversity of humans is great and inexplicable.