In which the pond takes in the latest step in a reptile culture war saga, before seeking light relief with the Angelic one and a keen upmarket restaurant diner ...

 

The pond has been indulging in a study of how a reptile culture war starts, which admittedly isn't as interesting as climate science, but this is the reptile herpetology studies silly season ...

Yes, it is an indulgence, but who can resist, especially as the latest step came late yesterday, in an EXCLUSIVE for the ages ...

It was trimmed down in size this morning, stripped of the snap, and the last two stages of the disease are best seen if put side to side ...

You see? Lure in a sucker to the culture wars - and Captain Spud, Mr Mashed Potato is perfect for the role - then head out to do sundry stories about him being an all-day sucker who swallowed the culture war beat up whole ...

Here the pond would like to pause to give credit to the lead reporter on both those stories ... come on down Sarah ...

Then it's on to the latest in the saga, which might be milked all the way up to Oz day ...

They had three eager beaver reptiles working on the latest instalment?

Here the pond should note that there were any number of angles they might have pursued, as can be found in other publications ...

But instead reptile readers copped this ...

To give an indication of the high hopes the reptiles had for the beat-up, the story was festooned with large snaps of mugs lured into the beat-up, and when the pond says large, it means large, not withstanding the pond's downsizing of same ...

That's an incredible amount of photographic effort, for very slim reward ...

How did Minns end up in this reptile beat-up? 

Simple, Minns has already revealed himself to be a twit of the first order, and his form continues, but sadly this is the last gobbet ... to this point ... but as someone once said about reptile beat-ups, tammarah is another day ... with the reptiles out and proud that they have been indulging in a culture war ...

As a result of all this, it's unlikely that the usual herpetology studies can resume before Oz day ... it seems the silly season still has a long way to run ...

Meanwhile, as an interim effort at conventional reptile studies, the pond commends the Angelic one, suddenly a fierce republican ...

The pond has already noted repeated bizarre efforts by the reptiles to put a republic referendum on the agenda, though the reason is obvious enough ... it's just another stick with which to beat Albo's mob, as the Angelic one makes clear with that line about it being "the fault of the government itself..."

Why does the pond find this vastly amusing? Well it wasn't so long ago that this staunch repuglican was fawning all over the Queen ...

Yes, back then it was a subtle constitutional role, but now the repuglican in the Angelic one is on fire ...

And yet, and yet, not so long ago ...

..we don’t admire the Queen for her supposed graciousness, although her beautiful manners are legendary, and who cares if she is funny or humourless (I suspect her sense of humour has that sharp derisive English edge like Prince Philip’s) or if she loves dogs (I admit it, I do). 

She is admired partly because of her personal qualities: she puts her hat on her head and one foot in front of the other. The values she exemplifies are crumbling in the world of Oprah Winfrey and Meghan Markle, but she carries on and does the job while doing her best for her self-absorbed, lazy, mixed-up brood.

So, the Queen’s extraordinary popularity is indeed partly because of her personal qualities of character, but also, and I think more importantly, because she is a symbol of permissible conservatism in a world that has junked most conservative values. It is OK to hold the Queen in regard, even though you don’t really hold the values she has lived by, especially her Christian faith.

This is particularly evident in the popularity she has among the young. Woke Gen Zs (including my own) are fascinated by her. Young people, especially in Britain, who in general have discarded most of the intrinsic values of family, religion, even democracy, sometimes become very defensive of “our Queen”. Criticise her at your peril! Perhaps for many young people she is a sort of granny figure. She represents something that is often missing in the lives of the young today, stability and continuity.

The Queen being an institution is also different things to different people. For women she is a wife and mother and grandmother, and we can all identify with her struggles with her difficult family, their hopeless marital situations, their truly tawdry scandals. Every household has this sort stuff. As the jubilee spotlight focuses on her, she exemplifies determined equilibrium in the face of private anguish; the virtue of duty. Hence, she has perfectly succeeded in marrying her public and private lives. She has turned into a venerable embodiment not only of the nation and its people but also of a time and a supposed set of mores, the last remnant of “the spirit of the Blitz”. The Queen doesn’t whinge, although we sophisticates of the third millennium, enmeshed in a more morally fluid world, have made an art of whingeing.

What we admire about the Queen is her endurance, her solidity and her old-fashioned refusal to allow the changing mores of the world and her family to seem to affect her and the sacred trust she undertook at her coronation. Her character is the secret of her popularity. It is the element that isn’t supposed to matter for heads of state, as long as they follow the constitutional rules – but it does. Ironically, her most important personal quality is the thing that makes her a sort of non-person, an institution – her unflinching sense of duty. The root of that sense of duty is her Christian faith. Many people don’t realise how religious is the Queen. She took the anointing seriously.

For the Queen the monarchy is not a just a privileged echelon you happened to be born into. It is an appointment for life as a service to the state – but, more, it is a vocation from God. 

Dear sweet long absent Blues Brothers, she was on a mission, or perhaps a vocation, from God?

 But apparently the long absent lord has no interest in King Chuck, and certainly sees no vocation in a talking tampon, and the Angelic one apparently seems shattered that her god no longer exists, or at least isn't interested in this motley crew ...

At least with the Angelic one you can always have a laugh, because she's too thick to know how thoroughly stupid she routinely sounds ... and for sheer vacuousness, is it possible to top "he has said he liked attending school here."

And with that wittering done and dusted, it's on to a final offering reptile offering for the day. 

Usually Dame Slap picks up a red card from the pond, but her rant is so typical that the pond thought it might offer it for reptile lite weekend study ... what with it being a prime example of railing at what used to be called pc, back in the day ...

Yes, as Dame Slap does her best to insult and belittle women, minorities, tg folk, pesky, difficult uppity blacks, whatever comes her way, the pond is shamelessly going to take the chance to deliver a cartoon-led recovery ...

At this point, as Dame Slap is warming up, the pond likes to remember that, amongst many other Slappian follies (including "Lord" Monckton), she once donned a MAGA cap and slipped out into the New York night to celebrate an authoritarian wannabe dictator's elevation ... and just recently he showed how to do sympathy ...

The pond is perfectly happy to slip in a little snorter of Slap gaily slapping away ...

... if the pond can remind Dame Slap of her ancient, heathen idol ...

Meanwhile,  what with the pond having already recorded that Dame Slap was something of a 'leet eastern suburbs ponce diner, it was enough to stand back and watch her roll out her old routines ...

Of course the reptiles have supplied their own illustrations, and naturally that included a chance to revive an old culture war issue, with the chance of a little tg/tranny/whatever bashing ...

That ad went out way back on 1st April last year, or so the wiki says, but when indulging in the culture wars, you need the memory and the hide of elephants ...

The world has moved on, but not on planet Janet  ...

Meanwhile, it's back to the MAGA cap wearer for a stream of consciousness, or is that a stream of bile?

Oh for FFS, not the double barrel, not corporate wokery and virtue signalling all in the one sentence ... and as for the insurrection-loving SCOTUS ...

Meanwhile, the jury isn't out on DeSanctus ... according to the latest about the high heel wearer and mouse sympathy generator, his campaign is on life support, lurching, momentarily due to collapse, thereby  leaving the country safe for an authoritarian wannabe dictator ... while he's become a staple for cartoonists ... 

...not to mention an endless set of jokes about the banning of dictionaries ... perhaps a prelude to the banning of sex ...

Sorry, the pond just wanted space to take a big breath, and DeSanctimonious was the perfect chance, before we move on to the tg and gay bashing ...

Meanwhile, on another planet far removed from that of Dame Slap, collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and genocide continues apace, and the best the reptiles can offer is a snap of a couple of lesbians ...

Is it fair to say that when it comes to reptile journalism, the head simply rots?

Sadly the chance to throw in some more cartoons is dwindling away ... but can we have one more vaguely up to date joke?

Then it was on to some routine black bashing ...

Meanwhile, the pond mourns that it must lump together a set of boing, boing jokes ... (yes, the mango Mussolini is adept at boing and bing bong noises) ...

The pond should probably feel guilty about opting for a cartoon-led recovery, but the pond has heard this sort of guff so many times before from the bigoted blonde with a taste for fine dining ... 

What a relief to reach the end, and in relatively good spirits, thanks to the caring support of sundry cartoonists ...

Sure, she's spiteful, malicious, snarky, mean, and sublimely unaware that average Australian couldn't give a FF about the IPA, but no matter, at the end of all that twaddle, there was a TT to sum up the game plan ...