In which the pond finally tackles prattling Polonius, then retires for the day exhausted ...

The pond's talk of virtue-signalling this morning was a build-up to the hefty, weighty matters raised by prattling Polonius this weekend …

Here's the thing.

Some things are beyond matters of left or right. A pedophile Marxist is no different from a pedophile fascist from a pedophile priest, at least in the matter of pedophilia …and to attempt cheap point scoring from pedophilia is as cheap and as debased as it gets.

It doesn't help the cause of understanding for the Devine to shriek that it was the Marxism that made Hewett do what she did in matters sexual … and it does Polonius no good to blather on about the left and the liberal media, while refusing to confess to assorted sins by others …

This isn't a matter of conventional point-scoring, and yet because of Polonius's routine, the pond is also tempted to do some conventional point-scoring …

You see, before tackling Polonius and his bather about the left protecting his own, a friend had sent the pond a link to The Saturday Paper and to Martin McKenzie-Murray's piece …(paywall involved, may use up your one free read).

Why does this matter? Well we're talking about the left protecting its own, thanks to prattling Polonius, and by any reckoning, The Saturday Paper might be called a left of centre publication …

Don't take the pond's word for this … take the word of the Bolter channeling Polonius …

And so on … 

Or you could take Polonius's word for it direct from the horse's mouth, or arse …

And so on …

But that talk of Catholicism and persecution is germane to the Polonial response to the Hewett matter, which is full of cheap point-scoring, as opposed to empathy, and which is driven in essence by Polonius's ongoing resentment of the treatment richly earned by the Catholic church, and deservedly handed out to it …

This little teaser chunk should be enough to remind stray readers of the Polonial method ..

You see?

No, it's not "said to have been committed by present or former members of the Catholic churches."

It's not "said", it's actually held to have been committed in sundry courts of law, and with much compensation paid to victims destined to remember the abuse for the rest of their lives …

It's not fucking "said", alright?

But where did "said" spring from? Yep, it's the old Catholic chip on the shoulder about the treatment of the Catholic church, accompanied by blather about there being no public comment by the intelligentsia on other matters …

Cue Martin McKenzie-Murray, who shows a capacity for understanding singularly lacking in Polonius …

No point-scoring here. Just a reminder of that Tom Cowan film, and a setting of the scene, and as well as reading the lizard Oz story, McKenzie-Murray took the time and the trouble to speak to Lilley …

And then he went on to discuss the peculiar dilemma of anyone interested in the arts. What to make of the reality that people who create sublime works of art can also be rat-fink bastards?

McKenzie-Murray partially solves the problem by suggesting they weren't very good artists …

Well yes, but even someone such as Beethoven, who managed to write much noble music, was a bit of a prick in his personal life, and managed to harass his nephew Karl into attempting suicide by shooting (Greg Hunters can get indignant about the pond's interpretation here).

What to make of Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and many more?

Well yes, but even those who treat it as a profession are happy to use the advantages of the shrine for professional advancement, and Hunter S. Thompson is a particularly easy target … just to call him an artist, as opposed to a gonzo wannabe journalist, is a bit of a stretch, but all the same, the point is taken, and yet the works of personally dodgy artists should remain on shelves … only yesterday the pond trotted out Woody Allen and felt no shame about it, there being thirty pieces of silver at stake …

But in this elaborate build-up the pond has almost forgotten about Polonius carping away behind the arras in typical style …

And here the pond must again pre-empt Polonius.

It's not a matter of conservative, liberal, left or right. It's not about the silence of the comrades and the mates.

The silence ranges across the political divide, and the reptiles spend an inordinate amount of time mocking the #MeToo movement, except when it turns up something that suits the ruling ideology in the rag …

The pond rarely speaks of Bob Ellis but knew him personally and disliked him intensely, while also sometimes enjoying his way with words. Ellis's habit of asking any passing woman for a fuck was made even worse by his explanation that if one in a hundred said yes, he'd had a win. He also had the habit of explaining at interminable length his theory of "sperm lines", how men were linked by the way they'd managed to deposit sperm in the vagina of any passing woman who'd happened to say yes. Throw in his eating habits and his dress sense, with food splatters decorating his front, and the ripe aroma of flesh, and Ellis wasn't the best companion in a closed space. (That ostensibly sprang from Ellis's belief that the smell of an unwashed male body, preferably with the smell of sperm and juices from a recent sexual encounter, sent unwary women into a frenzy of sexual excitement, but the pond always though it was because he was a slob, too lazy to shower and preferring to insult people with his stench).

Ellis had his reasons. He'd grown up deeply fucked in the head as a Seventh Day Adventist in a country town, and here the pond should note the way that Lismore is not so far from growing up deeply fucked in the head by Catholicism in Tamworth …

But enough of that, it's back to McKenzie on the matter of Ellis ...

Well yes, and because the pond thinks people should head off to The Saturday Paper, even at the risk of using up their one free read for the month, the pond has mangled McKenzie-Murray and anyone interested should read the original …

And perhaps now it's time to revert to Polonius for his last gobbet …with that bleat about the ill-treatment of the Catholic church at last put into its wretched, equally problematic context ...

Yes, he's still rabbiting on - in his interminable, endless fashion about Richard Downing, the ABC, yadda yadda, etc etc, but the pond got stuck on that line about the Fairfaxians running a story  of sex between men and boys in Catholic institutions being behaviour that was "just part of the time."

In fact, "just part of the time" is routinely used as an excuse for institutional errors, as in Angela Shanahan's explanation of what went wrong with the Catholic church …

The numbers tell the story: 86 per cent of claims alleged child sexual abuse between 1950 and 1989. The largest proportion happened in the 70s. and began to decline in late 80s. By the 90s the numbers dropped dramatically, and recently there have been almost no cases. This mirrors the decline in religious orders with non-ordained brothers, in religious vocations in general, the closure of orphanages and the rise in lay administrations of schools. Despite the commission and victims’ advocates claims of ongoing abuse, the church has already changed, clearing its house of the predators. 
Needless to say, this does not excuse the past...

Yes, it was just part of the times, and needless to say, this was the angelic Shanners putting her best gloss on the church …

But what should someone report if the sisters did indeed actually think the behaviour was just part of their circle? Well you might end up with this McKenzie-Murray ending:

Well yes, there's ambivalence in people and in the world, but not in the closed mind, simplistic, 1 and 0 world of prattling Polonius

And now the pond must do another little back-track to another Polonius thought, because in his usual predictable way, Polonius proposes at the end of his piece that Bob Ellis is a protected animal …

The pond wouldn't know Martin McKenzie-Murray if he turned up in a confessional box, or if he wrote a true crime book, but he shares the pond's view of Ellis …

According to Polonius, Ellis's memory is protected, in leftie publications of The Saturday Paper kind? The long absent lord protect the pond from McKenzie-Murray's idea of protection, but please, do go on ...

And that's enough of virtue, or anything else, for the day …because the pond is very much over the deep level of hypocrisy on view in Polonius's cheap point-scoring. If only there was a lord, who had designed a hell, surely Polonius would be assigned to an outer level ... 

The day that Polonius can summon up the strength to write a damning account of the behaviour of pedophiles in the Catholic church on a par with Martin McKenzie-Murray's  piece on Ellis, the pond will finally believe in miracles …

Sure the pond has an atheist axe to grind, and a grudge against its treatment by the church as a child … but some things are beyond simplistic left/right, atheist/Islamic/Xian divides, and the reprehensible treatment of children is one of them …

You see, a joke about a newspaper not having a crocodile on the front cover is not a sufficient, proper, right or caring response to the rape of a two year old child…whether the joke happened to be cracked by a Labor politician or a particularly wretched PM.

There's no cartoon that might illustrate this simple point, but the power of bullies to abuse victims caught in a power imbalance is perhaps illustrated with this one …