In which the pond goes into self-reflexive, navel gazing at the old belly button mode, thanks to the Major ...

 

 

The pond sort of gets it ... the deeply weird, obsessive compulsive, anally retentive desire shown by some reptiles to scribble furiously about the ABC ...

For starters, it's an easy way to produce copy ... just observe and then pound the keyboard, and voila, another outburst is produced that fills up the void always there on the intertubes. But there has to be more ... some kind of fascination, moth to flame style, that drives the compelled reptile on ...

The pond sort of gets it because the pond experiences much the same phenomenon each day observing the reptiles observing the ABC. It's reflexivity cranked up way beyond eleven, but for all that it's a  familiar phenomenon,  it remains deeply weird shit ...

Of course no one can top Polonius for his ABC fixation. But give the Major Mitchell his due, he runs a pretty close second ...

 

 

Look, right there, from the get go ... the Major promoting Leigh Sales as an object of study, of interest, worthy of observation. He's promoting ABC viewing. Sure, it's only to rant at Sales and the ABC, but still, deeply weird, n'est-ce pas? But then here is the pond promoting the Major observing Sales as an object of study, of interest, worthy of observation. You can see where this is leading. Instead of fluff missing the thread, who's for gazing at fluff in the belly button?

Never mind, it's not the first time the pond has wondered why it does what it does ... hoping against hope that at some point Chairman Rupert carks it, and the pond can head off into the distance ... but in the meantime, on we press ...

 

 

There's another aspect here ...the way that Sales is really just a cardboard cutout on which the Major can hang his own obsessions - the Twitter left, the nonsense about Chris Uhlmann, the love of the Bolter, the hatred of Twitter yet again, and then as always, the redundant "I", as in "I first met Sales", so that the Major might still seem relevant, as opposed to a dunderhead wandering down nostalgia lane, positioning himself at the centre of the narrative, the sort of bore you always bump into in a party ...

 

 

Then there's the curious way that the Major fails to see how he's living in a bizarro world of his own invention, as in "the social media left punishes any deviation by the ABC from its agenda."

The one certainty the pond wakes up with each day is that the reptiles will routinely punish any deviation from the corporate agenda ... which is why the the Major uses as a whipping boy the matter of vaccination rates, when your Kudelka cartoonist might have a little fun with that line ...

 

Sorry, the pond had to reach for a cartoon early, because the pond can only take so much reflexivity and thought it heard the Major sneezing ... so on we trudge ...

 

These are not questions? But the Major himself isn't asking questions, he's just wishing he was Leigh Sales and was hosting 7.30, and holding SloMo to the role reversal, inflationary dangers fire, which when you think about it. is deeply weird, and not just because there might be a hint of gender fluidity in the matter. Luckily, the last gobbet was short ...

 

 

What to say? At the end of it all, the poor old parrot has to admit that the ABC is supported, and the best he can offer is that its supporters should expect it to be better. And here the pond can at least part ways with the Major. The pond doesn't expect the Major to be better, the pond expects the Major to be predictably moronic, and relentlessly obsessive in his ABC watching, and to be fair, the Major never fails the pond ...

And so to the Caterist, doing what the Caterist does ...

 

Anyone who has attended the pond with some regularity will know that the pond publishes regular reminders that the Caterist works for a "think" tank - yes, inverted commas are required - which is a front for the Liberal party, and which routinely receives generous grants from the federal Liberal government ... because, conflict of interest, quoi? Utilitates ex conflictu, so there's no need to say more of that this time - there's only so much reflexive repetition required - so this time, the pond will simply sit back and watch it all unfold yet again ...

You see, there's nothing to say, except to say that the Caterist would say all of that, wouldn't he? His business for the day is to defend the most Labor budget in decades, indeed even including the days when there was a federal Labor government ... and pretend it's deeply Liberal and a boon to the masses, and inspired and visionary, and such like and so forth, and at some point the name of Ming the Merciless will be invoked and the pond will nod off to sleep.

Yes, such is the simple-minded nature of the Caterist that he doesn't bother with some post-modernist self-reflexive thinking, he just jumps in and pounds away ... as if, by way of comparison, to make the Major and his note on role reversals and inflationary dangers and baked-in debt, and such like, seem like he's a veritable Sam Beckett ...

 

Well he would say all of that, wouldn't he, because it's always better to wander back to some mythical land where Ming the Merciless was king than contemplate the chances of home ownership in the current landscape ...

But that's what you get when dealing with a below average propagandist of the hack kind ...

 

The pond always feels slightly shop-soiled when dealing with the Caterist. Here's a man scribbling about the need fir pragmatism and worldliness, when he himself headed off into a world of pain with an obsessive bout of deluded nonsense, tilting Don Quixote style at the movement of flood waters in quarries?

Best move on, though unfortunately this day the Oreo dares to go there ...

The pond lost sympathy with settler activist pleas with the 2000th crude eviction ... but at least the Oreo shows the dangers of what happens when a reformed, recovering feminist decides to align herself with a far right lunatic, as opposed to people trapped in a gulag these past fifteen years, and thus, isolated and lost, inclined to be demented ...

 

But, and here the charge of anti-semitism becomes a powerful, simple-minded weapon, Israel is a racist, colonising power ... with the march of the settlers showing a tremendously skilled ability to colonise, and the treatment of people trapped in assorted gulags reminding the pond of the old saw that bullies are usually that way because they were bullied in their past, and took on the behaviour as some sort of perverse role model.

The result can see both the bully and the bullied deeply traumatised, deeply fucked, and incapable of achieving any sort of resolution ... with some not wanting resolution, some wanting the conflict to go on, because that's what bully and bullied do, and when there's a deeply corrupt leader involved, seeking to avoid jail time, and deeply corrupt leaders on the other side, simply picking one side isn't going to help much ...

 

One thing's certain. The Oreo flinging about petrol isn't going to help quell the flames ... but then as a reformed, recovering feminist, she's used to burning the past, and adopting new identities ...

 

If you must defend Netanyahu, and his corrupt cronies and far right supporters, and rabid settlers, and fundamentalists of whatever religious stripe, first know what you are defending ... because even the lizard Oz itself in one story noted the bleeding obvious ...

 Would one man cheerfully preside over pain, suffering and death to keep himself out of the clink? Is the Major a parrot and the Caterist a hack? And is the pond seriously deluded?

As for all the tall tales about that media centre, pull the pond's other leg. We all know that what happens in a gulag or a ghetto is best kept inside the gulag or the ghetto, or as the immortal Rowe noted, with more Rowe notes here ...