In which the pond takes a Halloween tour of the culture wars ...

Lordy, long absent lordy, did the reptiles have a lolly-dispensing, bumper book, Halloween special on hand this day, with Dame Slap out and about, maintaining the reptile crusade and her version of the culture wars …

The pond had barely time to note dissent in the ranks, what with nattering "Ned" taking the time out to explain how comprehensively stupid the bromancer sounded, and the bromancer taking another chance to be stupid in the onion muncher way he's so fond of …

 

With the reptiles still riven and torn apart by Malware, why bother to pay attention?

Smithers, please double the amount of koolaid in the water cooler so that some sense of seemly unity might be restored to the scribblers …

Sadly, the pond couldn't tarry or dally, because Dame Slap called, and it just so happened, by an ironical twist of fate that the reptiles love, that right next to Dame Slap's piece they positioned a singular example of western civilisational values - poofter bashing, hate, fear and loathing - alongside Dame Slap's blather …

Note well that the talk there is of headmasters, because women ….?

Strictly complimentary, old chappie, old sod … here no mistresses, no head mistresses here, perhaps just bed mistresses instead ...

Now before the pond begins, it should issue a disclaimer.

Ever since Dame Slap donned a MAGA cap and slipped out on to the streets of New York, to celebrate the arrival of a nationalist (white, except for that orange colouring and weird hair) as president of the United States, the pond has felt a remarkable contempt for Dame Slap and her values … 

Now let's see them in action yet again …

Right from the get go, it's a nonsense of course …that bizarre notion that Dame Slap has the remotest interest in ideas or is open to changing her own. Rigidity is the sort of thing you expect of stainless steel, and Dame Slap …

But as she spoke of a religious cult, what about a dose of angry Anglicans?

Nota bene that talk of "values".

Steady on you say, why did the pond resort to Latin? Well actually just to show that the pond could sound as fucking stupid as Dame Slap tossing "alma mater" into the discussion …

But back to "values". Perhaps the pond could decode. Apart from complimentary women, the values we're talking about here are the right to keep on poofter bashing, and in a bigoted way, maintain the right to consign the buggers to eternity of hellfire in the next life, and to continuing unemployment, no matter their qualifications or skills, in the present life …

It certainly gives a novel twist to Dame Slap's blather about western civilisational values, but sadly it's time for another dose of her own patented form of intellectual inquiry …

Of course Dame Slap did her own bit to celebrate the Donald, and found herself in pleasant company … of the Klan kind …

Now for anyone interested, the reptile culture wars recently spread to the NY Times, courtesy of David Brophy here …

...The myth of an embattled “Western civilization” has also been featured in a recent series of alarming interventions into the politics of race and immigration in Australia. In August, Senator Fraser Anning referred to his harsh policy ideas as the “final solution to the immigration problem,” arguing that we must not “concede the field to enemies of Western civilization.” Earlier this month, the governing Liberal-National coalition endorsed Senator Pauline Hanson’s motion echoing the alt-right slogan “It’s O.K. to be white,” and deploring “attacks on Western civilization.” 
Efforts to re-center the university curriculum on more celebratory notions of “Western civilization” feed off, and in turn give scholarly legitimacy to, interventions such as these. The Ramsay Center’s rhetoric may sound more sophisticated than the outright Western chauvinism emanating from the Australian Senate, but the kinship they share is obvious. 
The Ramsay initiative mirrors a wider global trend in which politicians and activists shape nationalist sentiment into pride in artificial and ahistoric notions of civilization. Amid growing geopolitical rivalries, and widely expressed hostility toward free trade, kindred spirits on the global right now seek to divide the world into cultural camps, threatening the critical spirit and international exchange that is so vital to scholarly work...

Uh huh. Of course in all of this, Dame Slap, the Donald, and David Dukes are reliable guides …

Whatever the fuck that means …

And naturally that brings the pond back to the angry Anglicans …

How dare they suggest that gay teachers are human with human rights! Where will all this talk of values end?

Well luckily it will end for Dame Slap - for just a moment, but for this day at least - with this last gobbet ...

Hmm, perhaps Dame Slap hasn't spent enough time with her soul mate David Dukes, worshipping at the feet of the Donald …and now a final word from Brophy, though there's more at the link ...

In some cases in Australia, universities have shown themselves vigilant to the dangers inherent in this climate of cultural nationalism. When Beijing’s Confucius Institute came knocking at the University of Sydney, my colleagues rightly insisted that they have no role in teaching Chinese language and culture to our undergraduates. 
The Ramsay Center’s first suitor, The Australian National University, balked when it realized the constraints the center wished to place on its autonomy and the intellectual freedom of its faculty. Yet with much of the same proposal still intact, including a periodic review of funding and Ramsay participation in hiring decisions, administrators at the University of Sydney have been unable to resist the lure of the center’s millions and — to the considerable disquiet of staff, including me — are plunging into negotiations. More preliminary moves are afoot at the University of Queensland.

But of course the deeply nationalist reptiles of Oz won't be ending their crusade anytime soon. Nor will the angry Anglicans …

And so taxpayers will go on funding fundamentalist schools, whether Islamic, Jewish, Christian or Scientological, with those schools intent on preserving the right to be bigoted and discriminatory … while shamelessly, unapologetically functioning on the taxpayer dime …

Well around this time, with a frothing of the lips and steam coming out of the ears, the pond would usually settle for a cartoon - say one exuding papal infallibility and wisdom, perhaps one echoing the nattering "Ned" v. bromancer feud  - and have done with it …

But with the pond's humour restored - there's more restorative papal humour here - the pond felt the need to provide that special Halloween bonus …

Now all the pond will say at the get go is that John Anderson never struck the pond as the sharpest knife in the drawer, with a hint that he might be short of a sandwich for a picnic, or perhaps a snag at a BBQ, or sometimes with a prime merino set loose in the back paddock …

But this is such a monumentally silly and paranoid piece that the pond simply couldn't resist diving back a few days into the reptile archives to retrieve it and expose it to the light ...

The question that arose here wasn't of the kind that might ask Anderson about the role of complimentary women in the Anglican church, or other nonsense about Xianity and women. 

Instead the pond became fixated on that photo. Who thought it was a good idea to run a snap of Anderson in that pose?

It made him look ineffably silly … a cross between a preacher and an exhibit in a waxworks museum ... but then the pond realised that perhaps it was a subtle editorial dig, a sly wink, at the paranoid nonsense embedded in the words ...

Oh dear, poor old Anderson. He got caught in a loop there, didn't he? We must support timeless Australian values, but with continuous immigration, we must now not support timeless Australian values, unless they happen to be the timeless shared values of bigotry and discrimination …

Yes, if your fundamentalist Islamic, less secular than your average Australian turns up, why we must apparently embrace those religious values, no matter how bizarre or silly they might be … and whatever we do, we must go on funding any passing creationist or religious loonery in the education system ...

Actually the pond would settle for live and let live, and with that, the ability to earn a living using the skills you've developed, without regard to sex, ethnicity or sexuality, especially in institutions funded by Australian taxpayers, but bigoted Christians (and Islamics and a bunch of others) really do yearn to retain the right to discriminate …and Ando is all the way with them ...

Actually allowing John Anderson to pop out of his closet at regular intervals to blather about cherished social harmony is a guaranteed way to put the entire country at risk of disharmony.

The pond resisted the urge to resort to secular language of a rustic Tamworthian kind … instead, around this point, the pond would usually turn to a relieving Rowe, with more Rowe here …

But the pond has one last duty.

You see the reptiles also published that letter from the angry Anglicans …

More importantly along with that came a list of taxpayer funded bigots keen to maintain their right to discriminate ...

Shame on them, shame on them all ...

In which the pond turns to an old denialist favourite for relief from the reptile zombie hordes ...

Zombies? 

That's what passes for reptile satire this day? 

Funny how the reptile cheer squad can't spot a nationalist, 'there's good people on both sides', President at ten paces … tweeting away about baseball just after the blood's run free … while the reality is blindingly obvious to everyone else, as in Trump is the Glue That Binds the Far Right… 

Dear sweet long absent lord, even the Drudge had had enough of Fox News …check your soul in the make-up chair, lizards of Oz ...

But actually debating this sort of stuff over dead bodies is beneath contempt, and of no interest to the pond, so the reptiles saved the pond's day by resorting to an old favourite …

Ah, a simple slam dunk, take the Asten and just do the old Burroughs cut and paste. 

Of late the pond has studiously avoided the reptile climate science denial agenda, but where's the harm in dipping a toe back into the warming water ...

The pond has been to this well before. You see, way back in August 2011, Michael Ashley wrote for The Conversation Event horizon: the black hole in The Australian's climate change coverage, and a certain Michael Asten bobbed up ...

Yes, back then he was just an old-fashioned denialist, busy spreading the smog of delusion and confusion.

So what's changed in the intervening years? Three fifths of fuck all it turns out. Gobsmacking … so let's let on with more Michael Asten smacking of the gob ...

It's impossible to overstate the enormous stupidity of the notion of a red team/blue team routine, though it does suggest the overwhelming desire of climate science deniers to thoroughly politicise climate science, and treat it as a matter of ideology or even theology. You know, get red and blue teams to debate whether that image on the cheese toast is really an image of Christ …

But the pond doesn't have to debate the matter, it can just revert to another gobbet of Ashley ...

Yes, some seven years or so on, the editorial bias means that Asten is simply too strong a climate denialist for the reptiles to resist their sordid, base urges ...

This bout of denialism is about as dumb as it gets - perhaps we could also get red and blue teams to debate how many angels can fit on the head of a pin - and also relies heavily on no one remembering Asten's heroic efforts at climate denialism over the years …

But now the pond has done its duty, it can afford a little free time and have a little fun …

Not the oscillating fan, the pond can hear stray readers moan, as they head off to do something useful, like drag fingernails or chalk across the blackboard to amuse sensitive students … but the OF it must be, because there's a very slow burn involved ...

Actually if he curled up into a ball and sat in the corner, how much better off the country would be. The trouble is, the country's now laughing so hard it simply doesn't want to get down to a hard day's yakka … instead it's easier to chortle along with Media Watch's celebration of "fair dinkum" power …

Fair dinkum, it's as if ScoMo and Angus the beefy boofhead had set out to prove that the onion muncher was a rocket scientist when it comes to marketing ...

So why did the pond revert to OF when it might have reverted to the Major Mitchell or the Caterist - deep in thrall to a book selling scam of a classic Menzies Research Institute kind - or other glories in yesterday's lizard Oz? 

Well it's because the pond wanted that set of steak knives the OF offered, which turned out to be an even better offer …a sublime celebration of the onion muncher, featured in the lizard Oz and the pond thanks to the sordid, base urges of the reptile editorial team ...

You can't make this stuff up? 

Of course you can't, but you can run a Rowe cartoon, with more recreational Rowe available here ...

The onion muncher … how he keeps on giving ...

And so to the slow onion muncher burn … you see, late yesterday our Troy made an astonishing discovery …

Doubts? Someone had many doubts? Who is the knave, where is that fool? There was never a time for doubting, there was always sublime certainty ...

Perhaps young Troy wasn't there at the time. No one who endured those years had any doubts that Billy McMahon was an epic dud … the pond's still got a copy of this wonderful book somewhere around the house …

But do go on Troy, you've been blessed with the Krygsman of the day, and so have guaranteed cult status ...

Apart from his tremulous, querulous, quavering, wavering voice, and his whining teary performance on his election night defeat, all the pond remembers of Billy is the way he was a blessing to cartoonists …

The pond preferred the koala motif with the fluffy ears, but wait, after a little more dwelling with Billy, the slow burn the pond promised will finally arrive ...

And so to the punchline, which comes at the very end of the piece ...

At least now Billy has been displaced from our memories and lost in time, replaced by bitter politicians with few lasting achievements …

Oh what a burn, but who could Troy be hinting at?

Come on down, way worse than Billy McMahon onion muncher …

The pond just wanted to do that little edit - apologies to Rowe - to bring out a few of the details, not least that transistor radio on the beach, which seems permanently set to 2GB. 

Why even Billy himself would probably have been listening on his four band 8 transistor radio to this later bitter politician, without any significant policy achievements, hanging around like a miserable ghost.

Still, it's for a noble cause, with the onion muncher erasing Billy from history so he can be replaced by a man with a somewhat infinite (thanks ABC) capacity for hate and revenge …

And so to the immortal Pope, reminding us that the demagogic, authoritarian trend established by the Donald - with the aid of the Murdochian evil empire - continues apace… with more sage papal insights always to hand here … 

Where are the zombies now, reptiles? All the pond sees flapping about in the sky are climate denialists, miserable ghosts and your favourite white nationalists dragging the United States and the world towards far right fascism ...

In which the pond distills its favourite brand of moonshine ...

The pond got to talking the other day with a friend about about the moonshine that the pond illicitly distills and circulates. There was the moral question - did the pond mind the brain damage that might arise from stray passersby swilling the hooch? - but a better question was what was the pond's preferred drop?

Here the pond had to confess that it had given up on the likes of deeply heavy shyt of the Miranda the Devine, Akker Dakker and Bolter kind, and of late had settled for a modest drop of the lizard Oz reptiles …

Given that ignoring the most barking mad of the reptiles severely limited the amount of rotgut and mind fuck, there were still some clear favourites … with the pond always loyal to the onion muncher.

Just look at the line-up of top digital stories this early morning in the lizard Oz.

There's the onion muncher just below the EXCLUSIVE …no matter what, no matter the damage he's already done, he can't shut up. He makes Barners look like a rank amateur, and see below him, there's Matthew Guy, a man involved in notoriously corrupt activities, going the onion muncher path, and going the slur. The polls must be really going against him …

And just below the developer-loving Guy, it's possible to see where the path of outrageous slurs and notorious hate might lead this country, in the same way that the Murdochian reptiles of Fox News and the Donald have led the United States …

It gets even funnier when the onion muncher now pretends he's a tribalist, at one with the new leader of the tribe … because Australians, notoriously and pleasurably don't fancy themselves as tribalist, but rather as inclined to the laconic and ironic members of a community. The last thing anyone needs is the mumbo jumbo of a fanatical tribalist ...

Is there anyone at any time in recent history that's been so comprehensively tone deaf as the onion muncher, with the possible exception of former chairman Rudd?

You see? He just can't shut up, he's always having an anxiety attack about his ongoing relevance, and the lizard Oz always caters to his narcissist need for attention. 

If he'd had any grace, the onion muncher would be off doing a former chairman Rudd and writing amazingly long memoirs about his great deeds and triumphs, and the doings of his dastardly enemies, but it might be hard for the onion muncher - how to write about the BBQ-stopping reintroduction of knighthoods?

So instead he keeps bobbing up in the lizard Oz … blathering about a policy divide, when of course his recent behaviour has been motivated by a simple, Freudian form of deep hate and a desire for revenge, so naked that it frequently verged on the positively indecent ...

In my judgment?

Dear sweet sir, over the years, you have demonstrated you have absolutely no judgment, and your retrospective desire to prove you how you were grander and more inclusive than Malware just proves your ongoing capacity for delusion …frequently bathed with self-pity, as with the notion that Scottie will be okay because no one will be stalking him for his job, in the way that you suffered while PM … sublimely forsaking mentioning the way you relentlessly stalked and finally ousted Malware ...

… which is why after a dose of onion muncher moonshine, the pond gets a swagger in its step and is ready for the day …

And now for that blather about being a tribe and a tribalist ...

What an admirable fucker he is! Sure he fucked the last few years and sure he was a major force in the squandering of the majority, but now they're all tribalists?

But tribalism is exactly what the country doesn't need.

A strong feeling of identity with and loyalty to one's tribe or group. (here).

Not the community, not the country, but a tribe or group ...

But what about the rest of the country you tribalist goose, you monomaniacal narcissist chatterbox?

That's how you ended up doing the Royalist rag when the young Royals have recently been demonstrating that they didn't need your inordinate stupidity to help support the brand.

Luckily the immortal Rowe had a weekend cartoon that evoked that onion muncher tribalist mindset ...

More immortal Rowe here, but now the pond has to confess that citing the onion muncher didn't answer the question as to which reptile member of the 'leet lizard commentariat was the pond's favourite hooch. After all, he's of the political subset, even as he scribbles like a very dumb propagandist.

So to the question of which commentariat reptile the pond swigs down with the most relish?

Currently the Monday offers many contenders … there's always the Order of Lenin man ...

But the pond could pour a bottle of Major Mitchell down the sink without blinking. 

It gets harder with a choice between the sweet taste of an Oreo, and the Caterist, still with his paw deep in the taxpayer's cash register ...

All the same, there was no need to hesitate. The choice is clear.

The Oreo is, on a Monday, and probably above any other contender through the week, the 'leet commentariat scribbler most likely to have the pond howling at the moon in drunken pleasure …

Here, take a swig, and make sure it's a deep draught. 

Sure, right at this precarious moment, she's foresworn the Donald, and his enthusiastic support of far right nationalists and loons, sure, she's only going the safe route of bashing academics, but she's as close to ouzo as the pond can manage with its potato and corn mash ...

Treasure that opening line. It's a pity of course that the Caterist wasn't a co-author. There would have been something piquant about the cash in the paw man getting agitated about academics and public money …

Of course there's a punchline coming in relation to the Oreo herself, as she blathers on about academic waste, and having pity for the homeless and such like - why not just close the lizard Oz and give the proceeds to the homeless? - but it will have to wait until after the penultimate gobbet …

Oh okay, it goes without saying that the Oreo personally prefers to be stunted, and prefers to display deep intolerance and a closed shop to different cultures and experiences, unless it happens to be the gun-toting extreme right in the United States, and their memorable celebrations of intolerance and aggro refusal to be open to different cultures and experiences, unless it happens to be an openness to blowing people away.

And now the pond will have to suggest that the Oreo herself is a sublime example of the failure of tertiary education in Australia …

Say what? She's been trained as a professional bullshit artist for the lizard Oz, in the arcane area of political science, and she's actually a desperate globalist, cited around the world?

And that's why the Oreo is the pond's preferred choice of rotgut moonshine … with a warning that once you get a taste for downing undiluted metho or wood grain alcohol, it can be hard to give it up ...

Actually it's remarkably easy to deplore child marriage, any form of genital mutilation and the death penalty … and it's not hard to be an atheist or a liberal, except when the reptiles start banging on about how universities are full of free-thinking atheistic liberal leftists at war with Western Civilisation, or infested by climate science theologians …because there's nothing more important for reptiles than debasing both science and the humanities …

The real test comes when you swill the Donald-loving moonshine - hang 'em now, hang 'em hard, never mind the Central park Five - nonsense that's routinely distilled by the Oreo on a regular basis …

Got a problem about a history of men's dress, an area the pond finds interesting? Dress reveals much about people, customs and society.

In much the same way, the pond found Jiayang Fan's piece for The New Yorker, Yan Lianke's Forbidden Satires of China interesting ... (currently outside the paywall)

Warning: an interest in other cultures would be helpful for the read.

How hard is it then to stay tolerant and benevolent? 

A lot easier than it is to imagine what it must be like to be an Oreo, a scribbler who no doubt finds it easy to imagine a life, a country, a world, where every institution must have an armed guard or three on stand-by as madness sweeps the planet ...

Luckily the immortal Rowe provides a solution … after imbibing the hooch, you'll be primed for a tension-relieving laugh … and did the pond remember to remind you there's more Rowe here?