In which the pond offers a supper of dashing Donners and prattling Polonius ...

The pond knew its duty … attention had to be paid to the thoughts of prattling Polonius, even if slotted into the late shift on the pond Weekly …

But first a word from a pond favourite, dashing Donners, with a sure fix for everything educational, who turned up in the reptile rag on Friday …it won't take long, and it probably won't fix anything …

That's as opposed to the Catholic education clique that Donners represents so whole-heartedly. 

But the pond must express some disappointment in this opener. No mention of the glories of Western Civilisation, exemplified by our noble and learned spawn? No mutterings about the dire threat posed by Gramsci's long march?

Frankly dashing Donners is off song, barely able to carry his usual melody ...

Indeed, indeed, what nonsense. Fancy all this talk of future societies changing rapidly and profoundly. Why, only yesterday the pond was on Tik Tok with Donners, noting its remarkable similarity to the use of pigeons in the first world war, and reminiscing about the ways that the telegram brought the world closer together …and mocking foolish young people for their assorted addictions, from phones to games to apps involving a Chinese conspiracy to rule the world by reducing them to simpletons ...

But alas and alack, Donners couldn't but help slipping into his old ways … what with his refusal to acknowledge any form of disruption … and his joyous belief that politicians will fix things, perhaps by dragging out the strap and the cane. 

What was wrong with a little continuity and a good whack on the bottom? What will happen to SM as a fetish if children aren't given the benefit of a good Catholic education? At least the Donald knew the benefits of a stout magazine applied with a whack to a saggy bottom ...

It should not surprise that ….?

Well here the pond must express some surprise, because experts can be found poking at the shape of the camel and coming up with all different sorts of things, and not so long ago at that, in August 2018 …

Well there's more at Grattan here, and dashing Donners can go on arguing with the camel, but the pond has properly honoured him, and hopefully has helped him a little, because his failure to blame the long march of Gramsci is a shocking error, a bad miscalculation, a hint that re-education might be due, a sign that he might be losing the plot ...

And so the pond turned to prattling "Polonius" with some relief.

Relief? How can that be?

You see, from out of nowhere, last weekend the reptiles dragged out a very strange man still carrying on the same way as he did when he was a chook with feathers…

And then from the Major on Monday to Polonius on Friday, the reptiles maintained their usual rage about the ABC and its programming …

What a relief it was that even Polonius was bored by the reptiles' compulsive fascination with the ABC!

It was Nine's turn, and Polonius had swung his gimlet eye on the recalcitrants and found them wanting.

Inevitably, it involved a tedious history lesson, yet more proof that Polonius has taken to living in the 1950s, making it his own, and claiming no one else understands what went down …

Oh dear, it's quaint how he wraps himself in equivocations, and evasions, just in case some time in the future the story might run against him.

Could anyone other than Polonius come up with "It is not being suggested that Wang has not told the truth, only that his story should be scrutinised."

The double negative is doing its work, when really Polonius is surely suggesting that Wang hasn't told the truth. Talk about hedging your bets …talk about old school equivocating Polonius ...

...There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

And so on and on. Watch out for them coming, and watch out for them going, and he should be scrutinised so all might know he's not telling the truth, but watch out, if you indulge in censure, be sure to reserve your judgement, because who knows which way the cock crows or the wind blows ...

Or some such thing … and so on with even more lack of definitiveness, hazy clouds of uncertainty, and degrees of scepticism …

And that's why the pond has a soft spot for Polonius. Who else would dare, while scribbling for a Murdochian rag amongst fellow reptiles, scribble "The problem with contemporary journalism is that so much is action driven and so little is motivated by objectivity."

Come on down Murdochian tabloids, driven by objectivity, come on down reptiles of the lizard Oz, fonts of objectivity, motivated by the desire to discover, politely but decisively, all that's truth and justice in the far right …

The pond has gone light on cartoons this outing, but surely there's no harm showing objectivity at work …

Well all that was by way of delay, because here comes the long-awaited history lesson …

Hang on a tic, wave that mo, Walker was using the same rhetorical device as Polonius?

For "potentially", why not substitute:

"It is not being suggested that Wang has not told the truth, only that his story should be scrutinised."

So much better than "potentially", so subtle and nuanced.

Putting equivocation aside, the pond suggest the real reason for Polonius's ire was that Walker had raised the matter of Petrov, and that was foolish and wrong …

Oh he might have acknowledged gaps remain in the defector's narrative, but his work demanded Polonius's intense scrutiny, and a history lesson ...

Should the pond point out that Polonius has managed to mention the Petrov Affair, at tedious length, and the Wang 60 minutes allegations in the same article?

Does he have any capacity at all for irony?

Even worse, about the only insight on offer in his piece is about Petrov, because Polonius clearly doesn't have the first clue whether Wang is telling the truth, but wanted to take a shot at Nine, in the hope that later, down the track, Wang would be exposed as a fraud, and Polonius could run around thumping his chest, and saying "see, I was right, I called it early, I called it strong and hard, I scribbled furiously, only I know about the huge significance of Petrov …"

Put it another, whole hearted, all-in, full of conviction way:

"It is not being suggested that Wang has not told the truth, only that his story should be scrutinised."

To be fair, the pond doesn't have the first clue about Wang either, but why on earth scribble a column at third hand without a clue as to what went down?

And when is Polonius going to chastise the Murdochian tabloids and the lizard Oz for their own overconfident exaggerations, which litter the landscape the way cane toads infest the deep north? Is it all for an eternity just going to be about Nine, supposedly Fairfax in disguise, and the ABC?

Say what? He doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds him? Oh good, that's very Xi of him ...

For all his desire to live in the 1950s, carrying on and carping in this Polonial way seemed an awfully Donald thing to do, and as good an excuse as any for a couple of closing cartoons …