In which Western Civilisation is saved, and Dame Slap shows how to be a damned good bigot ...

Late yesterday the pond was delighted for the reptiles, and was sure there'd be dancing in the streets today, with the reptiles donning party hats and celebrating with gusto … yet amazingly this day, only a short time later, the good news was right down the digital page in higher education, and barely to be seen.

After all the Herculean labour, the news sounded like a damp squib. What had gone wrong, why were the reptiles so casual and dismissive?

They'd sold the University of Wollongong a pup, and its students were no longer referred to as University of Wollongong students, now they were Ramsay students …it seemed like a complete victory.

And then the pond realised … yesterday the reptiles had been cock-a-hoop about Comrade Bill, how he'd copped a big smack on the chops, how he'd made a fatal mistake, how SloMo was finally turning the Titanic around, and so on and endlessly forth …

And today? Shock, horror, the vote done, the defeat noted, and consternation at the top of the digital page and on the front page of the tree killer edition …

 

Oh it was too much for a reptile to bear, and the jokes and the cartoons were coming thick and fast, with the infallible Pope sensing a weakness in the reptile skin …with more cartoons fabricated from crocodile leather here ...

How could the reptiles pay attention to Western Civilisation at this grave hour?

Oh sure, the reptile editorialist tossed off a very short piece …

Now the pond deplores sandstone universities as much as the next UNE graduate, and dances in the street at the greatness of the 'Gong, but all the same, this seemed rather a dullard celebration of a great victory.

Was there something about it being in the 'Gong that made the reptiles sad? Did it address the great and urgent need for plumbers? After all, only on Monday, the Caterist had deplored doctors, and explained how he much preferred a plumber to fix his pipes …

The pond had to know more ...

In the top 200? Uh huh, and what was the content?

Hmm, back in the day, the reptiles would have had a field day with this sort of vague overview of assorted subjects, a miss-mash re-tread of well-worn topics, a model of superficiality and bland overview …

And they would have torn into a wretched degree seeking some sort of modern relevance by including Pat Barker's retelling of the Iliad ...

Why that's the sort of outrageous nonsense that attracts the praise and attention of the ponces at the likes of the NYRB (sadly inside the paywall) …

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker’s unsentimental and beautiful new novel, tells the story of the Iliad as experienced by women captives, from inside the Greek camp overlooking the walls of the besieged city of Troy. They are the Greek heroes’ prizes, taken from conquered outlying towns and villages to be prostitutes, domestic workers, and, on occasion, wives. Herodotus, in his Histories, tells of the Ionian Greek customs with regard to their captured women: they married Carian girls, whose parents they had killed. The fact that these women were forced into marriage after the murder of their fathers, husbands, and sons was the origin of the law, established by oath and passed down to their female descendants, forbidding them to sit at table with their husbands or to address them by name.

Egad sir, what's that sort of nonsense doing in a course on the glories of the patriarchy?

Next thing you know, it will be scoring favourable reviews in The Graudian, and the NY Times …

Are the reptiles pleased that impressionable young provincial white males should have their still-forming minds exposed to this kind of nonsense?

Oh most of the reptile readers tried to be pleased, though a few had sharp words …

The pond began to feel a little gloomy as it read the final gobbet …

All the years of struggle for this? Not a jot or whit of difference with dozens of other courses, and hundreds of other units that could already be found in universities across the land?

And with the Caterist still in search of plumbers to clear his pipes?

The pond felt badly in need of a lift, and what better way than to finish off with Dame Slap ravaging the greenies?

There is, of course, a touch of hilarity and hypocrisy in this. Dame Slap of course cheerfully donned the cap of a master bigot, and a pussy-grabber to boot, ripe for a Pat Barker perspective and re-telling of the voyages of the Donald …

Now to be fair there are misdeeds on all sides …

But the pond must resist the temptation to reach for a cartoon when confronted with Dame Slap …so get ready greenies for a Dame Slap slapping...

And there are probably a few good people in Mexico, amongst the rapists and the criminals … and who knows, there might even be a few good Trumpists …

… though even the long absent lord might take a view on what a bigoted pussy groper is doing for the planet …

Sorry, the pond can't help it. Just accept it's a nervous tic, so the pond can move on, as it began to realise that perhaps Dame Slap had an ulterior motive for her ranting and her smearing, and all might become clear at the very end of her piece …

Dame Slap would banish as bigots anyone who refused to engage with credible Muslim groups?

Sorry Donald, you pussy groper, you're gone …

Trump promised a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the United States. His executive orders accomplished substantially less — ultimately only restricting the entry of people from five Muslim-majority nations.

Sure, it was a broken promise, but where's the harm in donning the cap of a bigoted, racist, white nationalist-leaning, autocrat-loving pussy groper?

Okay, it's a crutch, it's a support, these cartoons, but the pond is determined to get to the end and discover why the mote in Dame Slap's eye only allows a selective annotation of forms of bigotry …

Of course the pond agrees. Concentration camps is entirely the wrong word, "gulags" is much more appropriate and to the point … and its meaning has widened a little to indicate a certain sort of mindset …

You know, the 'lock her up,' 'build a wall,' or lately, 'finish a wall' mindset that wants to set up barriers and cut off huge areas of the planet, while consorting with autocrats of the Putin kind …

Walls are the sort of things you build to make ghettos, and gulags, as in Israel, or along the southern border of the United States, though an island gulag is also handy … and somehow you still don a MAGA cap and contrive to think of a wall as a kind of winning, as if the Berlin wall was a form of winning …

But thankfully the pond has made it to the end, and at last in the final gobbet, Dame Slap reveals her true purpose for defaming and smearing a whole group of people with her fear and loathing …

There it is, in that last sentence, the entire point of the smear, worthy of a MAGA cap wearer … the reptile fear of the fate of SloMo, and the dangers of the independents, and oh the suffering, a suffering and fear so deep that all hands must be on deck and every smear must be wheeled out, and yet still they wonder, will it be enough?

After all, only yesterday they were delighted at the hiding comrade Bill was receiving, and today the University of the Ramsay Centre was a tired plaything to be tossed aside, and sent down to the 'Gong.

As always, the pond consulted with the oracle known as Rowe, and he discovered that perhaps there was a need for doctors as well as plumbers, with more oracular Rowe here …