In which Polonius wanders in to the past to avoid the mutton Dutton's thought police ...

 

Does the pond miss the washed up, sick, scammer, psycho, fruit loop, dropkick, deadbeat, disgraceful, loser, nasty, vindictive comedy stylings of the bromancer?

Well yes, but enough of the pond showing off its statespersonlike and presidential qualities - for fear the bromancer might write a column - "the pond towers over London and France and dead men in service of rage and hate" - because the pond also missed dashing Donners in a state of high hysteria …

No doubt the police are investigating the disgraceful affair even as the pond scribbles, though whether it's the feminists the cops are on to, or dashing Donners for introducing an alien concept from a quaint religion into his column is a matter of dispute. Did feminists really issue a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognised authority, and so defame the silly demonic old gander as he squawked away?

Who knows, and truth to be told, what a relief it is to be free of an angry old bigot, shouting about clouds or lawns or feminists or fatwas … hie thee to a monastery where you might prefer to issue encyclicals of a proper Western Civilisation kind …

And so to the pond's now much circumscribed business, the checking up on prattling Polonius, and it didn't start off well …

Oh dear, an historical tract, and with the usual paranoid Catholic world view mixed into the brew. Surely there was something a little more up to date Polonius could have written about?

Well at least the immortal Rowe is in good form, with more Rowe here, and the pond perked up.

Could it be that last week's pointing out of Polonius's senile ability to repeat himself endlessly about the ABC had at last sunk home? Might there be a change of pace, no matter how ancient and tedious?

Well there's the history lesson, but not a single mention of how it was all the fault of the ABC, and quite possibly due to the absence of a single conservative presenter on the ABC's radio, television, telegram, Twitter and carrier pigeon networks…

But the pond never gives up hope. Surely somehow, in some inscrutable way, the ABC must be responsible, must be held accountable ...

Phew, the pond breathed a deep sigh of relief …it's that bloody dreadful Tony Jones. 

Now the pond can hear some muttering from the back row … didn't Hamish McDonald publish a story way back on February 11th 2012 headed Framed: the untold story about the Croatian Six …?

Well yes, but it takes the mummified remains of Polonius a little while to catch up on things, and besides, it's important to tippy toe around other events this week …

Still, if the ABC scored a mention, the pond can take comfort from the way that Polonius was forced to dissemble, lest the dreadful Fairfaxians, as they were once called, take any credit, though at one time it seems that Hamish McDonald wasn't actually a freelance journalist …

A Herald investigation strengthens suspicions that the Croatian Six - Max Bebic, Vic Brajkovic, Tony Zvirotic, Joe Kokotovic and his brother Ilija Kokotovic, and Mile Nekic, all young tradesmen and Australian citizens of Croatian birth - were framed, each spending up to a decade in prison….

...Framed, the Herald’s first ebook, investigates the fate of six men jailed for up to a decade over plans to blow up a Sydney theatre in 1979 as part of a Croat terrorist plot. Hamish McDonald spent months tracking down the surviving members of the Croatian six, the police and others involved in the case. His findings strengthen suspicions that these convictions are, as one former senior Australian official puts it, ‘‘a grave injustice’’. McDonald also investigates the role in the case of the Yugoslav state security service, which used Australian police and intelligence services as tools to blacken the reputation of Croatian-Australians as extremists.
The Herald publishes an extract of McDonald’s book in print, online and on the iPad app today. Video interviews with key subjects in the story are on the Herald’s iPad app and online. The full story, Framed, is published as an Amazon ebook on the Kindle Store.

The first ebook! The pond felt quite nostalgic … and to think it might all have been avoided if there'd been a single decent conservative commentator on the ABC, or perhaps management had done the right thing, and appointed Polonius to run Q and A ...

Now don't you mind that, at the very moment Polonius scribbles about ancient misdeeds, mutton Dutton's hounds from hell lap at the door of the ABC and even, oh can it be, the noble HUN beast itself, while the smirking salesman speaker in tongues dissembles …

And out of it came this odd Crikey headline …

Yes, it's a strange thing when the creature you help create comes back to bite you on the bum, the economy slows, and talk of surplus is a mere dream from a midsummer's night … but the pond felt it had done short weight, and so felt free to indulge a little more.

After all, in for one conservative Catholic commentator, in for a reptile dozen …

Now the angelic one has never been the sharpest wafer in the holy reptile communion, so the pond wasn't expecting much, except for the usual paranoia, fear and loathing ...

It seems that the only solution is to set the barking mad fundamentalists free, so that they might howl at the moon and contend whether Sharia or Catholic law is the best way to send homosexuals to hell …

The pond felt a strange ennui of a kind it hadn't felt in what seemed like months, or years, though something crept over the grave and sent a shiver down the spine reading the Weekly Beast, talking of the ABC showing a complete lack of Adani spine, and little Timmie Bleagh being more revolting than usual … a considerable achievement, as being revolting is little Timmie's resting state, and when he gears up, supremely revolting is what you'd expect when he's idling in first gear …

But back to the angelic one making an ambit claim, in which apparently religion encompasses everything, including atheists and those that might have some disagreements with the widely different, conflicting and confusing thoughts of imaginary friends.

The problem of course is to sort out the "it". If religion encompasses everything, is the encompassing Jewish, barking mad fundamentalist Hindu, Islamic, Catholic, or evangelical, consigning the whore of Babylon to eternal hellfire? No doubt the pond will be on board, when as Media Watch suggested, an atheist teacher might stand up in a Catholic classroom, explain that the religion is loopy, and anyone who doesn't want to attend the compulsory mass is excused, and it's all in the cause of freedom of conscience ...

The pond read on, hoping for the state of no enlightenment would continue ...

It sounded vaguely hedonistic - in religion, apparently "you can do whatever you want", though what you might want to do might well depend on which imaginary friend you believe in. Never mind, so long as the Ponzi scheme can be preserved, and the state can be persuaded to finance the indoctrination of children, all's well in the world, and who needs any notion of balance? After all, where would an education system be without a balancing belief in creationism,  and Adam and Eve and such like tosh …

Dammit, the pond knew that a dangerous reformist liberal judge might be involved (sssh, not a word about him being one of those disgraceful homosexuals pretending that they know about love and marriage and all that stuff):

Religious doesn't mean stupid? A Freudian would have a field day with that, simply because whenever the angelic one scribbles, the pond suspects that she suspects that she's not the strongest holy water to come out of the tap … (maybe a little more fluoride?)

Never mind, that final persecutory, paranoid flourish was enough. A couple of thousand years of persecuting witches, poofters, and all sorts of people they didn't like and suddenly, somehow they think the shoe is on the other foot, and the fundamentalists are supposed to be feeling the heat. Tell anyone seeking an abortion in the deep south about how it feels to be that far under the gun …

But enough of that, because the pond would like to finish up where it began, with a New Yorker cartoon and another one from the immortal Rowe  … well, they put the infallible Pope behind a paywall, and while the pond loves him, sadly the pond's money goes to the NYRB and the New Yorker and not to The Canberra Times ...