In which Bella takes out the Oreo ...

It's a singular achievement for anyone to make the pond walk past the Oreo and the Caterist on a Monday, nose sniffily in air, seeking an elevated plane of loonacy … but please, do honour,  do pay tribute to Bella of the IPA, clarion voice of freedom …

Yes, the champions of tobacco and coal have their own freedom champ … and naturally that means she's granted a slot at the lizard Oz, and the Oreo and the Caterist must give way to the champ.

And this isn't the pond's insight.

The reptiles are so pleased to have this freedom champ in their corner that they've blessed her with the Lobbecke of the day, guaranteeing her cult status, and also incidentally guaranteeing her the status of a conspiracy theory paranoid goose.

You see, Bella's thesis is that agitation about Australia day has nothing to do with pesky, difficult blacks who might tend to think that Australia Day celebrates an invasion. That apparently is all the fault of academics, who devise discord and pop the balloons of civilisational harmony …

Of course it might be difficult for Bella to conceive of the arrival of the invaders as a dismal affair for some … she does, after all, carry the grand title for the IPA of "Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs"….

… which is obviously vastly superior to the pond's title "grand poobah director for building  a foundational blog from the follies of loons …"

The modern obsession with class, race and gender?

It takes a consummate loon to imagine that in ancient times no one had an interest in these subjects, though they might have tended to take an upper class, racist, patriarchal view of such matters …

It was the natural order of things, pesky blacks out of sight in the portable across the school grounds oval, women in their natural place in the kitchen, and men left to do manly things, and perhaps allow the women a quiet drink in the ladies' lounge …

Then difficult people came along, and started to make a fuss about the natural order, and what do you know, soon enough loud-mouthed uppity women were being called "director" and given a prime spot in the lizard Oz to blather on, and the pond began to wonder if it had all been a hideous mistake, and might not the world have been better off staying like Tamworth in the 1950s?

Bella would understand, if she'd only just shut up and get back into the kitchen and tend to the scones ...

It seems Bella is just another part of this identity politics problem and not the solution… though she'll do her best in the next par by celebrating male historians going about doing what male historians must do, which is to understand and study male Australian history, with perhaps the odd footnote on women and pesky, difficult blacks …it being a proven fact, that women doing history is improbable if not impossible, as Dr Johnson himself was wont to note.

"Sir, a woman's doing history is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find Bella doing it at all."

And wouldn't you know it, instead of Gramsci, it's all the fault of Foucault, even though in these troubled postmodernist, post ironic times, the pond has it on the best authority in the world, the personal lawyer for the President of the United States, that truth isn't truth ...

Now the pond deplores historians who embark on political activism, and perhaps even write columns for the lizard Oz as part of this activist behaviour …

This sort of activity, designed to advance contemporary political agendas, is shocking, especially when it's assigned the task of disempowering minorities and keeping the oppressed suitably oppressed, or at least consuming tobacco and dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi …

… which leaves our Bella in something of a contradictory bind, seeing as how she purports to be an academic historian and scholar, while peddling feral commentary for a privately financed lobby group, the IPA in the pages of a notoriously biased lizard Oz …

Oh well, it's tough being an historian and the gigs are few and far between outside academic life. The pond always admired a fellow student, who managed to scratch a living in the Geoffrey Blainey style, seeking out jobs for hire, such as The history of Woop Woop from 1802 to the present, and The Woop Woop Steelworks, making Australia great since 1902 …

He was still at it after many a long year when the pond last checked online, and felt exhausted just watching all the energy at work.

Say what you will about such activities, they allow a little more awareness of self than that displayed by our champ Bella, churning out guff for the IPA, a propaganda hack without even Wodehouse's self-deprecating manner when he got into a little propaganda trouble, wot wot ...

Perhaps there is no identity crisis, perhaps Australians are content to acknowledge the first people to make it down under, and to recognise that a very diverse bunch of ratbags have subsequently made the trip, and to acknowledge that there's more to life than faux nonsense about "western civilisation", as if that strange beast appeared out of nowhere and bore no relation to other "civilisations", be they Egyptian, Chinese, or came out of the middle east trailing a bunch of myths and delusions, or whatever …

But we've been there before recently …

[King] was talking about Western civilization, that, ‘When did Western civilization become a negative?’ and that’s a fair question. When did Western civilization become a negative?” Gohmert told his hometown paper, the Tyler Morning Telegraph. (here)

Indeed, indeed, and western civilisation has always so good to pesky, difficult blacks, perverted gays, and wicked witches …just remember that western civilisation is code for white supremacy, and all will be well.

And that brings the pond to the Major.

While the pond has passed over the Oreo, rabbiting on about Davos, and the Caterists, doing their duty and berating Labor's tax policies - why else would the Department of Finance fund the Caterists doing their duty? - it would be remiss of the pond not to celebrate the Major's return ...

Oh it's a gloomy Major, no doubt about it, but the Major is unlikely to answer a pond question … can the Major see a successful business model in a rag running faux stories about identity from a privately funded lobby group?

Hah! Talk about a dud. The new format for cricket viewing managed the remarkable feat of diddling Seven, Foxtel, viewers and cricket itself. Foxtel thought it would be a way for it to staunch the bleeding, or the churn, but the stumblebum Australian cricket team stymied that strategy ...and Cricket Australia embedded itself behind a paywall, as was predicted way back in November 2018 … and so the pond could spend the summer mercifully free of the cricket …

As for the Major urging someone with a news background get the gig at the ABC, the pond suspects this job application is likely to pass unnoticed… but do go on ...

Why can't media outlets of the reptile kind break through "with the facts"? 

Could it be that the "facts" are noticeably absent from reptile la la land, while the Bellas are unfortunately all too visible?

Has the Major ever wondered about the wisdom of a business model which pitches to an ageing readership? Has the Major ever looked at the youffs of today, intently focussed on their screens, and wondered whether killing trees for newspapers was the way ahead?

Is becoming a free suburban giveaway at airports a sustainable business strategy?

Would the Major be unwise enough to start off the next par mocking whining, whinging youffs of today?

Here's the thing. Reptiles of the Major kind routinely scribble in fury about "grievance holders" but it's impossible to imagine a rag more full of grievances and grievers than the lizard Oz, with a Bella here, an Oreo there, a Caterist moaning and whining, all of them moping and groaning, all "grievance holders", because that's how they make a living …

The result? Nights on SkyNews where a select band of well-fed grievance holders air their grievances to - in the Major's words - a tiny audience, eager to feed on their grievances (or if you will, their anti-Labor, anti-Malware, anti-reasonable, anti-rational, climate denialist assault on youffs who dare to be different).

Perhaps the reptiles are at last beginning to realise their folly … perhaps the Major in his own humble way is at last doing a mea culpa for the HUN, and its race hate, and the result that produced in Victoria in the recent election …

Oh the essence of distilled comedy … "sections of the media".

It was the HUN, Major, go on, name them and shame them, and remember that the lizard Oz played the same game and failed in a similarly spectacular style …

But keep on staying far out there on the far right, and pretending that somehow this is the centre right, and keep on delivering laugh out loud lines for the pond ... "making sure those pages are open to a wide range of opinion."

Translation: making sure the IPA and the Menzies Institute and loons of the Oreo kind can still be found shouting at clouds on a Monday … and Bjorn will turn up to explain that climate science is just a passing fad, and Moorice will celebrate dinkum clean Oz coal, oi, oi, oi … and so on and on, and we haven't even had Dame Slap return to don her MAGA cap again …

January isn't over, and already the pond is feeling fatigued ...

That's the way forward? It's not just going to be dark times for cricket, it seems …

But on the bright side, the famous Rowe has returned, and right away he gets back to basics by putting the onion muncher front and centre, with more Rowe to be found here … and what do you know, these's a whiff of class and gender and coal and religion and flying pigs and Gillette in this fable

A little history to go ...

It was also considered uncivilized for men to have hair on their face. Having a scruffy face meant you were a slave or servant, definitely of lower class. Is that why corporate guys and politicians always have clean shaven faces? Do we associate a clean shaven face with someone powerful? 
In the ancient Roman Empire, hair removal was often seen as an identifier of class. The wealthy women would remove their body hair with pumice stones, razors, tweezers and depilatory creams. (here)

Quick, someone tell the IPA … the Romans had a class system. Who'd have thunk it?