In which the pond does the traditional Monday thing, marching with the Major and exploring the movement of flood water in quarries with the Caterist ...

 

 

 

As its now its duty again, the pond will get around to the usual reptile stew, but can the pond first have a quiet word about the vexed question of race and racism.

The Jewish religion is not a race. Nor for that matter is Hinduism, Catholicism, Pentecostalism, atheism, etc, etc, whatever …

Whenever a discussion of racism turns up, too often it's based on the Nazi construction of race and racism, which it goes without saying was/is comprehensively wrong, though as a country that once routinely divided people into categories such as octoroon, it's difficult to argue that Nazi thinking was never out and about and proud down under. Second thoughts, that was English thinking, since the English were ineffably convinced of the superiority of the white race. Correction, the English were convinced of the superiority of the English, since you'd be hard put to spot the difference between an English and an Irish person in Liverpool, unless you could hear the accent.

What is usually taken for race is frequently a cultural, social, tribal or national distinction. The Nazis found it very hard to follow through thoroughly with their attempt at genocide, because Jewish people looked "German" and could pass, in much the same way as some people with mixed parentage could pass as "white", while ostensibly "white" people could fall into the grotesque Nazi caricature of swarthy eastern European men and people of middle eastern appearance (a good reason to completely obscure the likely look of the real Jesus).

Setting aside the grotesque Nazi attempt to turn a religion into a race via a semitic caricature, skin colour has often been the basis for racism, but the notion of race itself is deeply mired when it comes to the science, as vague definitions of what constitutes racial groupings no longer cuts the categorisation mustard. It's easier to sort out the current species from alternatives such as the Neanderthal - and yet even then we all have a little Neanderthal in the genetic make-up.

So what's the point? Well when certain loons start banging on about race …

 

 

... we come back to blather about how the Holocaust was about race. The Jewish religion is not a race. Jewish people are not a semitic Nazi caricature of a vile kind.

Admittedly,  there are many kinds of skin colour racism - just ask your Japanese friend about the peculiar diary farm smell that "white people" give off ... (though that sort of trope has dropped off as diary has spread through Asia).

Chances are, when certain loons get around to discussing the Holocaust, they're embracing Nazi notions and methods of defining race, but instead of reconstructing those ideas, perhaps it's time for deconstructing them. 

That way, we might not get cheap Netflix style jokes about gypsies, who are not a race, and homosexuals, who are not a race, and ditto the intellectually impaired and yet whom the Nazis had profound genocidal inclinations about (but then the English tried it on the Irish and we tried it on Aboriginal people in Tasmania and elsewhere, so the point's not entirely clear).

Incidentally, the same sorts of conflations and confusions arise about ideas of sex and sexism. When it comes to transsexuals, for example, the likes of J. K. Rowling and Germaine Greer are deeply sexist.

But enough of all that, the pond is back in the reptile stew, and who better to lead the way than the Major ... and the Major's work this day is made piquant, because he has to goose-step around the recent deeds of his protege, the oscillating fan.

See how he pirouettes ...

 

 

Yes, it's pretty standard left wing deviant media bashing of the Major Mitchell kind, with special gong to the ABC by the Major, but you can see the problem coming (no it's not finding that long lost Order of Lenin gong).

Nobody much remembers what anyone else said or asked at that media junket which the horrible, horrible person, liar and hypocrite and complete psycho had seen as an opportunity for a re-set and a re-branding... until it all went wrong, and who was the cause of that?

Why it was above all, the Major's protege, the oscillating fan. Perhaps that's why the reptiles had to deploy a little distraction in the form of a tingling shot of the devious and reprehensible Tingle ...

 

On the weekend, the pond noted that the prattling Polonius had the same problem with the oscillating fan, to the point where the cock crowed thrice, and still Polonius was ignoring the fan's connection to the lizard Oz ...

So it is with the Major, perhaps all the more difficult because he plucked the oscillating fan from the ranks and suggested he'd discovered a new Paul Kelly ... as if that meant anything except an eternity of suffering...

Yes, unbelievable, but the pond's source is impeccable, the venerable Meade ...

It was a milestone day for the political academic, who was dubbed “the work experience kid” when former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell hired him as a columnist at the Australian 13 years ago, praising him as “the next Paul Kelly”.

You can see the problem here, and why the Major has to spend so much time avoiding the oscillating fan and his performance at the press club (some might say antics, but whatever) ... and instead had to rant and rave in the usual way about the Major's usual suspects...

 

And so on and so on, in the style of the Major, but eventually even the Major had to make note of the work of his protege ...

Ah, you see? It's Ten's Peter van Onselen! 

The poor lad has been tossed out of the temple, ostracised, blackballed ... why it's a kind of racism, if you ask the pond. The oscillating fan has been shunned, cast out from the Major's world, as authoritarians of the Major Mitchell kind are wont to do, ever vigilant thought police ready to render heretics invisible, or at least in another tribe ...

And yet even this day the lad was shamelessly on parade at reptile HQ ...

 

A contributing editor no less, and once the apple of the Major's eye, but now just a Ten hack ...

And so to a survey of the rest of the field, and here the pond must feign a lack of interest ...

Yes, Josh is joshing, in the usual Josh way, trying to make both employers keen to get staff at a reasonable price desperately unhappy, while also making those who would like to shift jobs (try being a woman over fifty into job shifting) desperately unhappy. Still, it's the sort of delusional leveling up for which the Joshs of this world are notorious ...

Oh, and the truly horrible, horrible, natural born liar and hypocrite, and complete psycho, has apparently embraced the spirit of forgiveness, at least until after the election, and won't the fur fly after that, but the pond will take a pass, and head down to the commentary section ...

 

And yes, on a good day, the pond would taste precious time on bubbleheaded booby Claire, while Julian's plea for the right to go on demonising gays would have attracted the pond's attention ... unless it happened to be that other Josh joshing about Joe Rogan ...

It's been a disappointing week for religious freedom and the right to indulge in gay bashing, but no doubt Julian is as disappointed as the pond at the chilling effect experienced by fundamentalist Xians let loose in the deep north ...

Ah yes, it's all very tempting, but the pond is a traditionalist and a conservative, which is why it stuck with the Caterist fruitloop celebrating fruitloops ...

 

Was it just a sub-editor's profound sense of humour that put that fruitloop Craig Kelly at the top of the Caterist piece, as if to cast the Caterist in the same light as that totally out there loon?

The man's a walking, talking fridge magnet of chaos and stupidity, and headlines damaging to the SloMo cause ...

 

 

But that's the company the Caterist wants to keep... and the pond suspects that poor old Ming the Merciless would be rolling in his grave ...

 

Ah just more of the same old barely closeted anti-vaxxer routine the pond has expected to come from the reptiles in recent days ... so much freedumb, so little time.

As for that bunch of fruitloops in Canberra, the pond spotted one vehicle likely on the way there this weekend ...

Pretty cheap ass, doing it in the dust, but see on the back window, Q and WWG1 and all that crazy crap is right there for the world to see... yet, as for the dust art, what the fuck is all this blather about Trump having won?

Who cares, but then what can you expect when loons gather and their noise fills the ambient light of the setting sun.

So it's clear enough the sort of company the Caterist is keeping, and Ming the merciless is still revolving, and then that wondrous interpreter of the movement of floodwaters in quarries discovers that hindsight is a handy thing...

Rare honesty? Well that's one way to describe a horrible, horrible person, a notorious liar and hypocrite, a complete psycho ... who knows who said it, and the pond sees that the mutton Dutton says it wasn't him, but at some point surely we'll get to know the name of the truth teller.

And now, as the pond has been talking about the keeping of company,  the loving shown for the lesser Kelly and gorgeous George and all the anti-vaxxer loons clustered in Canbera, too dumb to realise that the more important art is to winkle cash out of Treasury and get it in the Menzies Research Centre paw, the pond would prefer to keep the company of Rowe, with more company to keep at Twitter ...