Keep polishing, knob polishers and the crony commentariat, or should that be keep digging?

(Above: Moir with the Fairfax cartoon of the day, here)

So on the weekend it became absolutely clear why the Bolter is always frothing and foaming about the ABC.

Talk about a conflict of interest, and come to think of it, talk about a whining, moaning loser.

You can ferret through 2013 Ratings: Everybody up at Ten's Expense at your leisure. Let's just quote the key finding:

...the real story is ABC snatching third place from TEN in Total People. 
 TEN has dropped in all its Demos. Almost without exception, everybody’s Demos went up at TEN’s expense.

Late yesterday afternoon, the ABC had an industry chin wag, and the first statistic the head honchos dropped in their presentation was this statistic. (They also wondered by nobody pitched for ABC2 shows, seeming not to understand that working for the whiff from an oily rag isn't that inviting in these troubled times).

It is pretty amazing, but truth to tell, it isn't what the ABC has managed to do, so much as how the Ten team - board and senior executives - have managed to fuck everything they've touched. As Alan Joyce is to Qanats, begging for a government loan, so Ten is to broadcasting.

As always, the pond blames the Bolter and the ideological tone that has seeped in here and there in the network. The attempt to be competitive was killed off - and it's never recovered - by pissing a substantial amount of money away on a ratbag right wing demagogue from New Zealand, and now each Sunday the network has an albatross demagogue around its neck ...

Not content with ruining the morning schedule of a Sunday, they repeat the Bolter, and ruin the afternoon too ...

And so the Bolter whines and moans, but his figures haven't improved, and the ABC is gloating, in a slightly disbelieving way at such an unprecedented event, and still Ten hasn't hired the pond as a consultant ...

But what cheek that the Bolter should be allowed to bash a successful competitor, on an almost daily basis. But the pond forgets, the Bolter has no shame ...

Oh it's as fine a way to start a Tuesday as could be imagined, but wait it gets better, because after the triple backflip of yesterday, almost everybody is aghast and agog at the futtocking ways of the Federal government. It's always the way with strutting bully boys and now a clear pattern has emerged.

Get the Indonesians upset, and what happens? The bully boy folds, belatedly, after much nudging, and sends off an apologetic, grovelling letter.

Get the agrarian socialists upset, and what happens? The bully boy folds, trying to kill off the fuss, and good old Barners wins, and the share price collapses, and the Black Knight stalks international takeover bids ...

Try to Conski the Gonski and what happens? The bully boy folds, after a huge and unnecessary fuss surrounding poodle Pyne, who clearly needs a little more training before being allowed indoors ...

And bizarrely they still haven't got it right. Now they're intending to allow the states to do what they like with the federal money, without let or hindrance, and if the states abuse the privilege, it will be left to the voters to punish the miscreant states.

Now this is beyond ideology, this goes to what the pond is always on about, which is the way managerial should always trump ideological.

Who could imagine anyone who imagines that a state government like the old NSW state Labor government would do the right thing? And now they're going to give the likes of Campbell Newman the keys to the federal candy jar? On trust? Oi bloody vey ...

Speaking of the Bolter, the poor thing was in melt down yesterday. There was talk in the comments section of Tony Abbott being the new Ted Baillieu, set off by this, which you can read here, but which the pond found so delicious, it couldn't resist snapping:

Delicious , ce n'est pas grave, isn't it.

Of course the Bolter thinks its all a matter of communication and the fault of Peta Credlin, which is so profoundly stupid, it explains a lot about the Bolter.

Credit where credit is due, and the cock-up belongs to poodle Pyne, and not even Alistair Campbell, spinning his way into the Iraq war, could spin his way out of this.  In much the same way as Ten management might try to spin their way out of The Bolt Report, but we all know who's responsible ...

Ah yes, it's going to be tough work for the spinmeisters, spin doctors, knob polishers and the crony commentariat. The Bolter is now back to his favourite pastimes, climate science and ABC bashing, as whining losers and dropkicks do, but every now and then, he has to lift his gaze from his fluff-gathering navel to notice the bleeding obvious ...

But you have to admire the diligence of the spinners. Look at this splash yesterday from the reptiles at the lizard Oz:

Yep, it's a good news story, and not a gigantic backflip with triple pike, and a classic coalition cock-up, it's all about fixing evil Labor's meanness.

This is why you can scare children with talk of witches and goblins.

The poor old lizards had to introduce a reality check in today's leading digital splash:

So there was an uproar, and the bully boy folded.

And there, tucked discreetly down at the bottom, "No strings attached".

In the old days of real journalism at The Australian, that would have been the lead ...

Of course the Fairfaxians have been making hay:

But why wouldn't you? The Hartcher has turned here.

You see, apparently we're still in the middle of a "budget emergency", a budget crisis of the first water, an impending national disaster, and still Abbott can pull a billion or so of loose change out of his hat to bail out his minister and replace the soiled carpet. And then like a spendthrift, offer the states plenty of wriggle room ...

It's been so much fun that the pond could barely restrain the glee at reading prattling Polonius, still busy polishing sundry knobs:

Yes, yes it's true. That bloody inner city, Grange-sipping, home chef cuisine lover, opera buff and general all-round wanker Andrew Bolter is clearly one of those inner-city types in the media that dislikes Abbott ...

Look you can read poor old Polonius prattling in Abbott's Anguish: inner-city types in media dislike him if you like,  but it's only for laughs, especially as you remember that Henderson dabbles in the media while perched in his Sydney Institute loft in Phillip Street in the heart of Sydney.

Like the Bolter, Hendo thinks it's all a media conspiracy, as if the media somehow managed to force poodle Pyne to wee on the carpet:

...no government in living memory has faced so much media criticism so soon after an election. According to Andrew Catsaras' analysis in his "Poll of Polls" segment on Insiders last Sunday, when the major polls are put together the Coalition leads Labor by 51 per cent to 49 per cent. Certainly the Abbott government's support has not collapsed. However, as Catsaras pointed out, "there's clearly been no honeymoon for the new government" when compared to that experienced by Howard in 1996 and Rudd in 2007. 
The tenor of intensity with which many journalists dislike the Prime Minister and his colleagues is evident in the note which accompanies the current edition of The Monthly magazine. Editor John van Tiggelen quotes "one of the magazine's most popular contributors" as declaring: "I don't think I've ever seen such a cabinet of creeps; I can't bear to take them seriously yet." 

It's a classic paranoid syndrome. When there's no one else at hand to blame, always shoot the messenger. (It's a step down from the Bolter, sulking about the ABC as ratings rivals ... the Bolter prefers just to shoot the opposition).

Oh the prattling Polonius is in a fine old dudgeon, and never you mind that he mistakes The Monthly for the media in general, something of a leap seeing as how the hapless magazine can only boast of a circulation of 30,955, subscribers 19,500, and the rubbery readership figure of 149,000 derived therefrom, here (another good old multiplier at work).

Yep, these flailing beasts are responsible for all that besets the Abbott government:

... Van Tiggelen ...referred to the Abbott government's "onanistic reverence for John Howard" and depicted it as "this frat party of Young Liberals who refuse to grow up". 
A considered person might well have regarded such language as redolent of frattish, undergraduate language. But Van Tiggelen is the editor of one of Australia's leading magazines and is happy to put his name to such infantile abuse. 
The cover of The Monthly claims the magazine contains an article by Greg Sheridan titled "My Beautiful Bromance with Tony Abbott". In fact, this is an attempt at ridicule by academic Russell Marks. Sheridan has known Abbott for three decades. To some, Sheridan's recollections in The Australian and elsewhere of the young Abbott have been of considerable interest. Not to the likes of Marks and Tiggelen, however, who regard them as a suitable case for sneering. Yet no serious commentator sneered when Blanche d'Alpuget wrote about the young Bob Hawke or when Jacqueline Kent wrote about the young Julia Gillard.

Which is a nonsense of course. Unfortunately the pond can't lay claim to being a serious commentator, but when Blanche d'Alpuget wrote about young Bob Hawke, the pond didn't just sneer, it sniggered and snickered, and when Blanche - who always favoured white when sighted by the pond - turned to Subud and reportedly barked like a god to get closer to god, the pond howled at the moon in delight  (Blanche's bizarre secret life, oh okay Woman's Day isn't a serious commentator either).

Even better, Blanche was doing it in Newtown, just a stone's throw away from the pond. Here you go, you Subud followers, share the joy here.

But back to Polonius, prattling away. Yep, for the billionth, squillionth time, old Polonius comes out with his favourite hoary old line:

The Coalition won the 2013 election in the suburbs and regional centres of Australia. Abbott, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Warren Truss, Barnaby Joyce and their colleagues focused on the unpopular carbon tax and concern in the electorate about unauthorised boat arrivals. They also presented the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government as incompetent. This pitch had lesser appeal in the inner-city areas where the Labor/Greens approach to climate change was not unpopular and where either Rudd and/or Gillard were admired by many. 
A problem for the Abbott government is that most journalists who report national politics are inner-city types. It's difficult to think of many members of the Canberra press gallery or key reporters in the capital cities who would support Abbott's position on, say, climate change or asylum seekers or same sex marriage. 

Does anybody at Fairfax read this copy, and note its rambling repetition about inner city elites and inner city types? These days poor old Polonius is sounding like a broken wind-up Hong Kong alarm clock with a snapped main spring, or an old hand-cranked 78 rpm gramophone producing lots of wow and flutter ...

Being behind the times, Polonius is still brooding about the Indonesian affair, and the unfair treatment copped by Abbott, as if Abbott's inept response to Indonesian concerns was somehow the fault of inner city 'leets. If only the 'leets did have control of Abbott or the media ...

And then, in the Bolter way, he reduces ineptness to a failure to communicate:

...the Coalition may need to consider whether its apparent tactic of low-profile engagement deserves reassessment.  

Yep, what we got here is a failure to communicate.

No, Polonius, forget the elites, forget the spin. What you have here is an apparent tactic to deliver a series of colossal fuck-ups ...

And there's the trouble. If you've fucked up, it's hard to communicate that you haven't fucked up, and it's even harder to hide it, and to blame it all on the media and dangerous inner city elites, showing their fear and loathing of Abbott, and not just in The Monthly, but letting it all hang out in Rupert Murdoch's rags, which by their own accounting, reaches 65% of the Australian readership.

So let's see how the front pages of various rags handled the story. Well The Australian featured the same digital splash - schools uproar - on its tree killer front page:

And the Fairfaxians also featured it:

So that means the lizards at the reptile Oz are a mob of dangerous inner city elitists dedicated to hating Abbott, just like the Fairfaxians, who for some inexplicable reason still feature that dangerous inner city elitist Hendo each Tuesday?

So what about The Courier-Mail - who could have imagined - which dared to do a proper tabloid response:

Yes corrupt Russian snow games, and the poodle Pyne backflipping makes a tidy joke. Could anyone confuse that with the dangerous workings of inner city 'leets?

But slowly the pond began to work out Hendo's favourite form of journalism. You can see it in the allegedly strident tabloids in the Murdoch stable. Why they're as meek and as mild as a flock of sheep far away in the top paddock:

And the rags dare to call themselves newspapers run by journalists ...

Well played, knob polishers. Avert the eyes, look away. Damned if Hendo's inner city 'leets will ruin your day ...

As usual, the wonderful David Rowe nails it, speaking of school bullies and Ripping Yarns as we were, and as usual, you can get your Rowe fix here.

Read the lips and the smirk and the nose, dummies ...

(Above: could this minor heresy by Eric Lobbecke have appeared in the lizard Oz? It did, it did, and more on the double crossing educational liars below).

So Tony Abbott's a liar.

The pond immediately braced itself for turbulent times. No doubt the shock jocks were shrieking, no doubt Alan Jones was demanding that he be placed in a chaff bag, taken far out to sea and drowned.

No doubt there were plans already being set in motion for a convoy to Canberra denouncing the liar for his lies. It might be difficult to construct a joke out of his name - Tonyliar doesn't have the flow or the form of Juliar - but surely there'd be signs saying Rupert Murdoch's bitch.

It was of course an idle dream, and the pond woke this morning to learn that it was everyone else who'd been confused and who'd misheard, and it wasn't Tony Abbott's fault if there were a lot of deaf as a post, dumb fuckers in the land.

It turns out that the Bolter was entirely sympathetic, and listened patiently as the Abbott extended the notion of core and non-core promises, and the unknown unknowns that we don't know, into quite another area of double-speak political gobbledegook:

'We are going to keep the promise that we made, not the promise that some people thought we made or the promise that some people might have liked us to make. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made,'' he said. (here).

Brazen, cheeky, chutzpah of the first water. Don't blame me, blame the broken hearing of the dumb fuck listeners.

Appearing on Channel Ten's The Bolt Report, Mr Abbott was played a clip in which Education Minister Christopher Pyne said: ''You can vote Liberal or Labor and you will get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.'' 
"I think Christopher said, 'Schools would get the same amount of money'. And schools, plural, will get the same amount of money. The quantum will be the same,'' Mr Abbott said. 
Pressed on the apparent clear-cut promise to individual schools, Mr Abbott suggested there was confusion. 

Yep, your average dumb fucker Australian got it wrong. Stupid confused mug punters ...

Meanwhile, it seems short term memories are disappearing ... Tony Abbott's more controversial speeches disappear.

Naturally the pond went looking for disturbed editorials, shocked reporters and an alienated public voicing deep disquiet.

In the usual course, once  upon a time when this sort of thing happened, the word "Orwellian" would be dragged out of the cupboard by the crony commentariat, dusted off and flung about like a rag doll.

But in their print editions, the Murdoch press was off in other lands.

The Courier Mail was pleased that teachers' pay was going to be linked to kids' ratings, the Daily Terror was plastered with sharks and Pac-Kerr, the HUN featured Better Belieb It!, Packer Kerr in Love Twist and Justice for Dean, while the 'Tiser excelled itself:

Oh Adelaide, Adelaide, you went the bikini top!

And doubtless the wisteria on the back verandah is still blooming and all the great aunts are either insane or dead, though apparently Kensington Road remains in a right old mess at the wondrous new roundabouts ...

Never mind, the reptiles at the lizard Oz were nervous about new leaks to test Abbott in Asia, and the Fairfaxians concentrated on jolly Joe Hockey and the Greens and the debt ceiling.

And what did we cop from generally grumpy Paul Sheehan, the crony commentariat Monday man for the Fairfaxians?

Spluttering indignation, outraged howls? A stern lecture on when a promise is a promise, and not a promise about a different sort of promise?

Of course not. Instead he was on his moral high horse in Tony Abbott must fight the baby boomers' debt explosion.

On some days Sheehan adopts the tone and posture of a Methodist minister. Or perhaps a member of Opus Dei, with a particularly fine and expensive assortment of cilices:

Sweeping judgments about generations are dubious but the statistics do tell a story about one generation which stands out for all the money it has spent and all the debt it has racked up - the baby boomers. I am a member of that generation and I'm not happy about the boomers cost-shifting to generations X, Y and Z. Never before in peacetime have we seen one generation spend so much. Generation Spend. Generation Debt. Generation Second-Home.

This from a man who published a story about how he delighted in dropping ten bucks on a loaf of bread because of the fragrance of the sourdough. This from a magic water man who delighted in taking round the world junkets ...

Move along nothing to see here folks, except moral rectitude so far up its own bum it made for a pitiful and nauseating spectacle.

But there wasn't anything to see anywhere else either. No indignation, no agitation, just the dutiful knob polishers and hagiographers going about their important business at the start of the week:

Amazing scenes. Here's the Bolter urging Abbott to take up the jawbone of an ass and smite his enemies. What a remarkable, astonishing header Tony Abbott should stop being Mr Nice Guy.

Yep, a proven liar is being Mr. Nice Guy. Calling dumb mug punters confused and hopeless and useless and not listening and getting it wrong is playing nice ...

Yep, no chant of Abbott liar, liar, pants on fire, on fire on my very own TV show. No, it's all hate the haters, and hate the lefties and hate Fairfax and hate Quentin Bryce and hate hate and hate, and above all:

His enemies will scoff, but Tony Abbott's problem is he's too nice. He really does think the Left could learn to like him. 
So he shies from reforming the ABC, telling me yesterday he doesn't need more enemies and joking his job was "to be as appealing as possible".

Oi vey, hate the bloody ABC yet again.

Well the pond suspects that the relentless dripping of the Murdochians will in due course see attention turn to the ABC - Abbott has already put a cautious toe in the water by criticising the joint venture with The Guardian on the spying matter, but he'll hold off until times and the Senate are a little more propitious.

Right now, he's pleased to have got away scot free as a proven liar ... while the editorialist at the Daily Terror gets on with even more yowling and the howling, in ABC funding needs quality guarantee.

How spiteful, nasty and childish can you get? Well as a starting point, the anon editorialist want cuts, reinforced by this kind of petulant calculation:

By way of illustration, a 1.6 per cent reduction in Tony Jones's salary would mean the Q & A host is paid $350,097 rather than $355,789. He'd still be able to get by without resorting to half-price movie days and searching supermarket shelves for cheaper cuts of meat.

So how much do the Murdochians pay the Bolter? What sort of friend drops a stray bottle of Grange behind the lounge? How much does he spend on opera each year?

Yep, it's play the man day, and berate the ABC about the standards of its reporting, as if the Daily Terror, a crude photoshop propaganda sheet of the lowest, basest, yellowest, gutter tabloid kind, had the right to say a single thing about quality journalism.

Why, as the Walkley awards noted, you'd be better off reading the Newcastle Herald if you wanted some decent investigative reporting ...

In the end, in desperation, the pond hied itself off to the reptiles at that castle of lizards, The Oz.

And what do you know, there was Mr. Bouffant himself explaining that it was all just a matter of communications, and plainly what we had was a failure to communicate:

You can check it out if you like, here, if you break the paywall, but truly it was pathetically short, and painful to read, a real non-opinion opinion piece.

Is it an indignant howl of pain about an Orwellian government manipulating the media in a cynical and - dare we say it - Orwellian way by withholding information, limiting media contacts, and degutting any pretence that the Australian media was on hand to hold the government to account, a safe pair of hands once the Murdochians had succeeded in their aim of degutting the ABC?

Of course not.

Of course, the Coalition in opposition made the fundamental shift in control of the operation to the military command which gave Defence and Customs control but the reasoning behind the limits on disclosure is from the operational commanders. 
Defence and Customs simply didn't want a media release issued every time there was an illegal boat arrival, especially one identifying the ships involved and where and when the interception took place. Morrison has hit back at the "grassy knoll" conspiracists and pointed to the success rate so far on stopping boats. 
What Morrison has realised is that the argument over the government's media relations were burying the message about 80 per cent reduction in boat arrivals since the change of government. 
Abbott's appearance on the Andrew Bolt program yesterday was hardly a departure from limited media appearances and there wasn't really a message that he conveyed from the interview but it is a sign there is going to be more direct prime ministerial media appearances. 
Just don't expect a shift back to a 24-hour news cycle.

That's it. That's all folks. You see, the Abbott government and its ministers are just hapless pawns, under the strict control of their operational commanders. Don't blame them, they're just following orders from the operational commanders. It's the Nuremberg defence, and what a good one it is ...

No doubt Tony Abbott lied because he was told to do so ...

But then at last, the pond reached its holy grail. Finally, it seems, someone had noticed:

That's it, that's all?

Broken their promise?

No, they lied going into the election, and now they've lied coming out of it. Let's not put a fig leaf where the spade meets the shovel on a pagan Roman statue in Vatican City ...

Abbott and Pyne are treating voters as if they are mugs. The difference between what they told voters before the election and what they are saying now could not be more different. The voters have been betrayed...
This is dangerous territory for a new government. Abbott has undermined one of his core commitments to voters: to be a government of "no surprises" and to restore "trust" in the political process. 
Labor now sees an opportunity to expose this multi-faceted hypocrisy. 

Dangerous territory Troy? With a clutch of supine Murdochians mainly obsessed with cashing their pay cheque from the government, said cheque for services performed being the degutting of the ABC?

Never mind, at least you tried, at least you noted the fig leaf.

At least the pond doesn't have to mount an attack on Tony Abbott for being a liar, not when there's a reptile at the lizard Oz who can talk about broken promises:

Labor, however, doesn't need to lead the attack on the Coalition for breaking its promise to voters on school funding; it has the conservative state governments to do the job for it. 
NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell wasted little time in lashing Abbott and Pyne. 
"This issue has escalated because of the poor way in which it has been handled," he said on Tuesday. "That is not acceptable when we are talking about the education of future generations of Australians." NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli accused the Abbott government of being "immoral". In damning words, Piccoli told this newspaper: "There's no doubt that what seems to be happening is that states that signed up are being punished and the states that didn't are being rewarded." 
 Not only are a majority of state and territory governments offside with the Abbott government, so are advocates for the public, private and Catholic school sectors. So much for another of Abbott's promises: to usher in a new era of co-operative federalism. (here, behind the paywall) 

By golly, that sounds good Troy, do go on. Have you got anything to say about the poodle Pyne and the failure to discuss, foreshadow or debate the issues in relation to the alleged Conski?

...Abbott and Pyne extinguished the time for that debate during the election campaign when they pledged a "unity ticket" with Labor to implement the new funding model and the agreements already signed. 
Moreover, Pyne has comprehensively failed to articulate why this model he promised to keep is now a complete "shambles", as he puts it. 
 Has he even read the Gonski report? One of the myths propagated by Pyne is that the Gonski report "had little to say" about matters such as teaching standards, school autonomy, parental choice and accountability. This is plainly wrong. 
 Not only does the Gonski report deal with these aspects of school education, so do the agreements now in place that guide how the funding will be spent. 

Okay Troy, now let's wrap it up. Can we end with the "L" word for lies, from liars?

Oh please, pretty please:

Playing politics with education is fraught with danger. 
Anybody who has been within cooee of a school recently knows that teachers, parents and local communities are behind the "I give a Gonski" campaign. 
Now schools are worried that an Abbott government will take money away from them. Rarely has a government elected with such goodwill and popular support squandered so much of it so soon. 
For the Abbott government, the political lull that coincides with the Christmas break could not come sooner.

Ah well, it's better than nothing.

Perhaps the old days of calling politicians liars, and drowning them at sea and talk of ditching pricks and pictures of Chairman Rupert's bitch are best put behind us.

Except the pond - call it the Catholic lingering in the pond - doesn't like seeing a liar get to call himself king of the castle courtesy of purgatorial fibs and hellish monstrous lies ...

(Below: wasn't Pinocchio a born liar? Remind us David Pope, and more Pope here).

You might not believe this, but some of the pond's friends have been Anglicans ...

(Above: is there an irony in this splash page? The pond merely asks, and as always you decide).


The good news this meditative Sunday is that the Pellists don't seem to have made it into the Sunday Terror.

The bad news is that this leaves the angry Sydney Anglicans front and centre.

How offensive can they be?

Well David Mansfield does his darnedest to be truly offensive in Tragic Confessions of a True Homophile.

It begins with the clueless header and the appropriation of the word "homophile".

ho·mo·phile  adj. 
1. Gay or lesbian. 
2. Actively concerned with the rights of gay men or lesbians. 
3. Advocating the rights and welfare of homosexuals. 
Noun
1. homophile - someone who practices homosexuality; having a sexual attraction to persons of the same sex ...
Adj. 1. homophile - homosexual or arousing homosexual desires (and so on here)

So what do we cop from a clearly confused Mansfield?

The usual yadda yadda about some of my best friends have been ...

I have had, and have, same-sex attracted people amongst my closest friends, acquaintances and parishioners (I have spent many years as a parish minister) for almost as long as I have been an adult and as long as I have been a follower of Jesus.


It always reminds the pond of the title to an album by George Clinton: Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends.

More to the point, it's a routine that's been around for a long time, as outlined by Bradford Plumer, in Rick Santorum: A Brief History of the 'Some of My Best Friends' Defense.

Plumer pinged Santorum for deploying the defence:

Yup, Rick Santorum went there. The former Pennsylvania senator, known for his less-than-enlightened views on gay rights, has opted for the “Some of my best friends…” approach. Earlier this week, when CNN’s Don Lemon asked him if he had any gay friends, Santorum replied enthusiastically: “Yes! In fact, I was with a gay friend of mine just two days ago. So, yeah, I do. And they respect that I have differences of opinion on that. I talk about these things in front of them, and we have conversations about it. They differ from me, but they know that I love them because they’re my friends.” Naturally, mockery ensued, but mainly because the self-serving line has become such a grizzled cliché.

Plumer goes on to dig into the early history of the defence in the United States, and its effectiveness as a ploy, but while suggesting it made be okay if that's all or the best you've got, adds a rider:

Of course, there are caveats. Michele Bachmann, for one, has a lesbian stepsister, Helen LaFave. Surely LaFave could be useful to Bachmann’s stated quest to prove to the world that she doesn't hate gay people, right? But there’s a hitch: By all accounts, the stepsisters are estranged, in part because of Bachmann’s rabid insistence that, for example, legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to school kids being brainwashed into homosexuality. The moral? Better to get your stories straight before enlisting that best friend.

If you're into tropes and memes, naturally you can find plenty of examples at tv tropes, here. This one from Catch-22 caught the eye:

Colonel Cathcart: Do you really think it's a good idea to let the enlisted men in? 
The Chaplain: I should think it only proper, sir. 
Cathcart: I'd like to keep them out. Oh, don't get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn't that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and inferior. It's that we just don't have enough room. Frankly, though, I'd just as soon the officers and enlisted men didn't fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that's as close as I care to let them come close. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn't want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you? 
Chaplain: My sister is an enlisted man, sir.

Oh sheesh, there we go again. The pond got so interested in the "some of my best friends are x" defence, that we quite forgot about David Mansfield. What a pity we remembered.

So what sort of friend is Mansfield to his very best gay friends? Does he wish them the pleasure of a hearty fuck and a cheerful ecstatic come?

Steady, let's not get carried away. It's chastity for the filthy deviant perverts, or a lifetime in hell to teach them a bloody good lesson:

Early in our marriage Helen and I lived with someone for several years who experienced same-sex attraction. Throughout life this person sought to be chaste, believing, as we believe, that the place for the expression of our human sexuality, and the procreation and nurture of children, is within the safety of an acknowledged, exclusive, permanent male/female relationship. 
 I have also urged people who are actively and stridently pursuing same-sex sexual activity that there is forgiveness, help and a better way. As I have urged them to repentance I have never withdrawn my love or commitment to their welfare. 
The Bible is very clear. We have been created to express our sexuality within an acknowledged exclusive and permanent male/female relationship.

That's being a true homophile?

You'd have to hope that Mansfield was joking, but of course, being a Sydney Anglican, he's merely deluded and delusional.

Could Mansfield be any more offensive?

Of course he could. Why on earth do you ask?

It’s a theological, anthropological and physiological first principle. 
 God made us to be sexual people. That’s by far not the sum and total of who we are, but it is a part of it, and the key part of it for this discussion. We are either male and female. We have been created to complement one another. We have been made so that our spirituality, psychology, sexuality and physicality meet and match. 
This is not resorting to some oppressive, archaic and cruel religious dogma.

It is of course...

A bit like the 'best friend' routine - as soon as that line is led in an argument, you know where you're heading. This isn't some oppressive, archaic and cruel religious dogma ... now let me lay some oppressive, archaic, cruel and ignorant religious dogma on you.

Gender and sexuality isn't, of course, simple black and white. It's cheerfully diverse. It allows for transexuality, it allows for bisexuality, it stretches and gives ... It isn't a simple binary, a 1 and a 0, and it isn't a theological, anthropological or physiological first principle - unless your imagination and your physiology only extends to the missionary position.

But, but, but you say, in a billy goat mood, surely Mansfield can't get any more offensive? Of course he can, and the next line is a typical moan, a whinge and a whine:

It’s simply getting back to first principles. But in the debate that rages, where any minority view is at least given an airing in our culture that, we are told, celebrates diversity, this is the one view that is vilified and not tolerated on an otherwise diversity spectrum. 
Our sexuality is one of the casualties and consequences of our foolish rebellion against our Creator and his design for how life is to lived in his world. Our world is now flawed, broken and this brokenness even extends to our genetics.

Sheesh, we're back with Adam and Eve again.

Even if same-sex attraction is ‘nature’ rather than ‘nurture’ (and despite the protesting of some, most respected research leans towards nurture); if it is genetic, then is it not the genetics of a flawed universe? We recognise that there is a whole range of genetic ‘abnormalities’. 

Now there's a cunning ploy. Notice how we've slipped "abnormality" into the discussion. You know, because it's quite likely, almost certain that there's a whole range of genetic 'abnormalities' and 'pathologies' that help explain angry Sydney Anglicans fixation on homosexuality. Obsession really. Beyond the valley of the neurotic into the pathological ...

Ah, so that's what somebody means when they say "doing a Mansfield" ...

But on a recent episode of Q and A our former prime minister, overreaching his expertise on a number of subjects, savaged a man who was seeking to make a stand on the framework for human sexuality that is taught in the Bible and has been the bed-rock principle for marriage and family for societies and cultures for thousands of years. 

Uh huh. It is of course too tedious and tiresome to wander yet again through the history of human sexuality, and point out the examples that make a nonsense of this offensive exclusionary rhetoric. Like the good old days in Greece and Rome where you could take your sapphic and young boy pleasures as you found them ...

Never mind, let's keep on with the offensiveness:

As a follower of Jesus who is completely committed to the teaching of the Bible, I want to make it absolutely clear that same-sex attraction is not a sin. Nor is the temptation to infidelity by an opposite-sex attracted person. As a follower of Jesus who is completely committed to the teaching of the Bible, I want to make it absolutely clear that same-sex attraction is not a sin. Nor is the temptation to infidelity by an opposite-sex attracted person. 
Temptation to sin is not sin. 
But acting out those attractions in the mind (lust) or on the mattress (sexual activity) is. So heterosexual sex (outside marriage) and homosexual sex are both wrong.

Of course you can see how this plays out. Get yourself hitched and you can fuck. You can even get divorced and embark on the serial monogamy merry go round. But if you're gay and have a fuck, why then you're off to hell, and you certainly don't pass go or collect any cash in the paw ...

You usually find this sort of blather in people who are full of self-loathing, negative about their sexuality and the sexuality of others.

Cue Mansfield:

My heterosexual lust, for I have often failed to overcome temptation, and another’s heterosexual activity (outside marriage) or homosexual activity are symptoms of the same failure to obey God. 

Too much information, but it seems he's as guilty as sin. Is there room for cilices in the Anglican community?

Sex outside of marriage may reap more bitter social consequences and more devastating family upheaval than lust (lust is not harmless but that is another issue) but both are sinful and symptoms of our fallen humanity and flawed sexuality. 
 For most of my Christian life, almost every Sunday, I have exhorted others and been exhorted myself with these words: 
You must not commit adultery. 
This has not just been a call to repentance for the adulterers in the congregation, or those in the congregation engaging in same-sex sexual activity. It has also been for the loving benefit of people guilty of lust, like myself. 

Guilty of lust? Oh FFS.

So here's what you cop from Mansfield's homophilia:

I have responded, with my brothers and sisters in Christ, with the prayer: Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. This prayer, we can pray with confidence, relief and joy, only through the sin-bearing death of our life-giving Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
And it is Jesus, the true friend of sexual sinners of every variety, who calls us all to a life of repentance and faith, of sexual purity and Christ-like love for others.

Sexual purity?

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids....

God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all." ... We're still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.

And so on and so forth, and after reading Mansfield, and feeling strangely unclean, the pond came away with a burning desire for a hearty fuck and a profound sense of regret and sympathy for any young person confused about their sexuality, gay or straight, who ends up in the grip, the punishing, guilt-tripping maw of the angry Sydney Anglicans.

A confused and unhappy life is surely certain to follow, besieged by lusts, unhealthy desires, and above all, a bucketload of guilt, right up there with the Catholics ...

Let's hope the young things read the Song of Songs of Solomon at some point and understand that everyone can sing a song with their sexuality ... Song of Songs: The Bible's Gay Love Poem ...

(Below: the sexual compass of the Sydney Anglicans? Encapsulated in an Archie comic? We merely report and you decide, but there's more on the history of Christian Archie comics here).

The pond has a natural Sunday high, thanks to the crony commentariat ...

The pond has recently been reading over the breakfast table Patrick Radden Keefe's long piece for The New Yorker, Buzzkill (currently still outside the paywall), as Washington State struggles to work out how to create a workable legal marijuana economy.

Good luck with that, it's beyond the pond's pay level, though it's clear that in the United States, prohibition and punishment has now produced a situation rather worse than the worst days of Prohibition, with private prisons the chief beneficiary of the system.

It set the pond to wondering why the pond no longer felt the slightest desire for a hit of the noxious weed (yes, we once inhaled), and apart from the nausea induced by smoking, there seemed to be another reason.

Substitution! A kind of marijuana patch.

You see, a hit of the crony commentariat in the morning is certain to fix what ails you. Reading the Murdochians is a guaranteed way to start the morning with a laugh, or at least a wry smile, right up there with the medical use of marijuana.

I mean, there's Akker Dakker and what's he banging on about today?

The bloody ABC ...

It's like watching a cracked record. You know, that sublime moment when the needle judders in the groove. It has the same charm as a hamster wheel, the poor creature turning and turning ...

Damn you aunty, it's just so cruel, but let's see what our favourite hamster - yes, yes, he's really much closer to Billy Bunter but for this morning he's a hamster going over and over the same old ground - has to say while on his favourite wheel, here:

Oh okay, he's got absolutely nothing new to say, it's just Akker Dakker doing some fluff gathering as a result of intense self-referential navel gazing, but did you spot it? 

No, not the bizarre header, which somehow tries to mangle the English language, but this:

Jones reverenced my view ...

Damn you NZ subbies, damn you to hell.

Sure, it's childish, it's just a typo, but it's no more anal than Akker Dakker getting anal about when he wrote freedom is absolute, or his idle paranoia (how dare a broadcaster research and prepare in advance, when you can look like an unprepared Akker Dakker idiot), or the bizarre way Akker Dakker is surely about to scribble on and to explain how freedom isn't really that absolute, at least not when it comes to the ABC ...

Jones reverenced my view ...

Truly, it made the pond's morning, and we've gone about with a smile on our face. Little children fearlessly approach the pond with a sense of joy, and run away with lollies to rot their teeth. Dogs run wild in the sunshine in Camperdown park and warm sitting spots with a piddle of pee ...

Sadly the rest of Akker Dakker is entirely predictable. 

It set the pond to wondering what the crony commentariat and the Murdochians would do if they ever lost the ABC. 

What would they write about? What would occupy their minds? Who could they rage about? How else to fill in the day and give vent to their spluttering spleen and vinegar waspish tongues? Why the commentary section could slim down to nothing ...

Naturally there were more comedy stylings, of the pompous kind:

The point that needs making for people like Jones however, who are more than willing to play the idiot if they think it will portray conservatives in a poor light, is that even a free press must be responsible.

Freedom, it seems is absolute, except it must be absolutely circumscribed by responsibility. The usual twaddle. Absolute means relative. The sort of stuff an idiot scribbles trying to retrieve past idiocies and absolute twaddle.

And then there was this:

Meanwhile, the ABC continues its attempts to smear the Abbott government over the spying allegations. 
On Wednesday, the AM program began its report of the Indonesian response to Prime Minister Tony Abbott's letter to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono thus: "Mr Abbott's initial refusal to explain documents showing Australia spied on the President, his wife, and senior ministers, angered Indonesia, causing the President to suspend cooperation." 
Get it? Most reasonable people would think the Indonesians were angered by the spying but the ABC wants its audience to see Abbott as the villain. 

So why is this piquant and funny, with a bit of chilli sauce on the good old taco?

Well occupying the very same rotating digital whirl of death at the top of the page is one Peter van Onselen, who seems to have been smuggled into the Sunday Terror from the ABC:

Get it?

Most reasonable Akker Dakker readers would think that the ABC wants to see Abbott as the villain, but most reasonable Sunday Terror readers would think that it's Peter van Onselen who wants to see Abbott as inept and so the villain of the piece:

Two weeks on from the breakdown in Australia's relationship with Indonesia and I'm yet to hear anyone convincingly articulate what damage an apology (privately, but perhaps publicly also) by our prime minister to the Indonesian President would have done. It sure would have done a lot to send a good will message Indonesia's way after we got caught eavesdropping. 
The initial claim that an apology would have opened the door to demands by Indonesia that Australia restrict its intelligence operations has been shot out of the water because Tony Abbott appears to have all but given that pledge without the issuing of an apology. At least that is how Indonesian President SBY (as he is known) interpreted the letter Abbott sent him. 
In fact because tensions rose so quickly and so dramatically given Abbott took his God given time engaging directly with SBY on this issue the pledge Abbott made - thereby restricting our future intelligence operations if we stick to it - needed to be all the stronger.

On and on van Onselen goes, expanding on Abbott's inept villainy:

To douse the flames of anger burning within Indonesia all that Abbott had to do was apologise. To be sure it wouldn't have put the flames out - nationalism and anti-Australian sentiments run deep within our nearest neighbour. But it certainly would have helped, with no foreseeable downsides, other than a little humility. 
Remember: it wasn't even on Abbott's or the Coalition's watch the tapping which was exposed occurred. Labor was in power in 2009. Apologising for the misdeeds of others is easy, just ask Kevin Rudd who gave the much overdue apology to Indigenous Australians shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Attempts to defend the way the government responded to a failure not of its own making ignores the escalation that occurred because Abbott didn't contact SBY directly immediately. 
The crisis which followed could have been better contained. (here)

Give that man a job at the ABC.

Dear sweet long absent lord, and won't someone pass Akker Dakker a dose of the smelling salts.

Poor old Akker Dakker ended his bleating and moaning and whining and whinging in the usual way:

The ABC sucks more than $1 billion from the taxpayers. 
What's more, Labor rewarded it for its support with more money and was prepared to twice ignore a tender process and award it with the Australia Network to pursue "soft diplomacy" on Australia's behalf in our region. 
The ABC is a bloated failure in the hands of ideologues. It should be stripped back to its charter, at the very least, or broken up and sold, if possible to commercial interests. 
In a world of expanding media, the notion of a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster is anachronistic. Those who want to keep "our" ABC, should fund it. 
Those who don't should not have to pay for it.

On the evidence, and with a Murdochian having the cheek to talk about a responsible press - oh hypocrisy where is they sting - it would seem that the confused, bloated failure known as News Corp should be at the very least broken up and sold, or if possible nationalised in the national interest ...

Was there any other comedy material in the Sunday Terror?

Well it's true they kept Cardinal Pell off the rotating digital splash at the top of the page - did the pond's cruel visualisation of the Pellists sauntering through fields of tabloid sexist trash have an impact?

Of course not, but at least that cleared space for Miranda the Devine:

This one's truly weird, more a dry hollow chuckle than a laugh.

You see it's a warm-hearted story about a lesbian couple who've helped a neglected child to find herself.

Good luck to them all. But here's the funny thing:

I've had my differences with Dr Kerryn Phelps. As a high-profile activist she has challenged my stance against same-sex marriage. 
But on the urgent issue of adoption we are as one. The ideal might be for a child to be brought up in a married family by a biological mother and father, but the epidemic of child abuse does not give us the luxury of making such distinctions. 
A loving home with two competent adults in a committed relationship is infinitely better than the Hobbesian hell suffered by tens of thousands of children as an accident of birth. (here)

Say what?

Next week Miranda the Devine scribbles a piece about the health-giving benefits of bicycle riding?

How soon before the Devine finally manages to scribble:

A loving home with two competent adults in a committed marriage ....?

It is of course exactly the story of story you'd see on the ABC, perhaps on a Monday night on Australian Story ...

With the added wonder of seeing the Devine do a backflip, flip flop and cartwheel with double pike ...

Watched, no doubt, by a spluttering, indignant, fuming, defiant, tottering-towards-complete irrelevance Akker Dakker, as the crony commentariat split and divide in the most peculiar way ... 

Thereby ensuring another hit, whack, dose, whiff, toke of Sunday laughs from their splendid comedy stylings ...

(Below: I know, I know, it's addictive, the craving, the hits, the highs, the laughs, you want more, another sweet little toke. Here's a golden well-rolled oldie from Deltoid, Akermangate: Piers Akerman fabricates some more. Now you can take a walk in the park singing it's the dawning of the age of Aquarius with Miranda the Devine).

Cranking up the war on Xmas. Watch out Sinterklass ...

Okay, we're in the final stretch, it's the final month of the year, the count-down has begun, and already the pond's intrepid correspondent in New York is reporting that Black Friday is madder than ever, while the intricacies of Thanksgivingukkah were completely inexplicable to any outsider, and perhaps even to Americans, except that you had to eat dry, cardboard-tasting turkey in abundance and think about rules in relation to Thanksgivingukkah sex.

This silly correspondent was more concerned with a smackdown between Vladimir Nabokov and the original and unique Dorothy Parker, as concocted in Vulture here, than the deeper issues doing the rounds. Like the war on Xmas ...

As usual, in that story, the woman misses out, but it contained a great photo of the immortal original Dorothy which we shamelessly replicate (click to enlarge):

But the pond isn't bitter, because we've got other fish to fry, and this being meditative Sunday, why not recommence the war on Xmas, in a lull these past eleven months?

Show us an Xmas, and we'll have a go at it. Bah, humbug.

You can never start too early - just like Xmas shopping - and besides, where would Fox News, and Bill Orally and other craven Murdochians of the Foxian kind be without fighting a war on the war on Xmas?

But enough of the Americans, who are generally so far up their fundament that they don't have a clue.

Well except for New Yorkers, who have clustered with excitement at the latest exhibition of Yakoi Kusama. Apparently, the pond's correspondent advises, the queues have been around the block. 

Something about having arrived in heaven, as you can read here:

But enough of this bizarre hedonism, even allowing for a meditative Sunday, because the pond has other fish to fry.

You see, the pond unfortunately has to have a spam catcher - after seven days, the comments go into the digital void because the amount of spam the pond catches is remarkable. The pond rarely pays attention to this void, the main focus of attention being the fluff-gathering of navel gazers like the Bolter.

Never mind, it seems a correspondent of the Dutch kind got very agitated about a previous pond mention of the peculiar Dutch cultural fetish for Sinterklass and the racial components thereto.

Luckily we saved the agitated scribe from the spam basket, and here's what he or she had to say:

"Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight, along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared." 

Where are you getting this crap? 

Dearie me, you silly goose. Incoherent and seemingly incapable of reading. Why we got this from David Sedaris, don't you know, and you too can get it by downloading this pdf here.

He's very popular in The New Yorker, though that piece was published in Esquire, and he's a humorist (no need to mention he's gay for fear of inflaming your prejudices). Why you can even cop David Sedaris reading the story live at Carnegie Hall on YouTube here.

Did you miss the bit about the slaves?

Don't get so paranoid. He sends up Michigan too ...

Now we know the Dutch are reputed to lack a sense of humour - yes, the pond has spent many a bizarre cross-cultural hour watching Dutch sitcoms. It must be like a Dutch person forced to endure Paul Fenech doing his pizza routines on SBS. Completely inexplicable.

But deep down we're all Algonquin Hotel lovers aren't we? Why even those trashy Warholians and their downmarket Chelsea Hotel fixation know when they're licked.

Settle, Nabokov back in your cage.

Never mind, do go on indignant (possibly Dutch) person:

It must be hard to live in your world, because in mine Sinterklaas is a holiday kids spend months looking forward to, preparing for, and then having a blast for the week or so it lasts. It has candy, presents, and some weird dressed dudes handing them out. What's not to love?

And yea, sure, the dudes(or dudettes) are black, hence the name ZWARTE Piet. Wouldn't make much sense to have that name if they had any other color. Not that it's a natural black color, or that it's referenced in a negative way anywhere. Except by people like you who insist on making it a racial matter. 

When Sinterklaas arrives, go out in the street and look around. You'll see white, black, asian kids. Muslims, atheists and Christians alike... Is it really weird for the Dutch to defend a tradition that makes kids all across the country happy?

Dude, or dudette - the pond is, as ever gender blind - we live a normal life here. Just like the greatest dude of all:

Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback. 

It's not hard to live in this world at all.

But here's the flash from the flashback. The dudes and dudettes aren't black, they're in black face.

And black face is common and garden racist. It was racist when they were doing it in vaudeville, and in silent films, and on Broadway, and in the talkies, and yes, gloriously, when poor old Ed Devereaux had to don a bit of blackface to star in Journey out of Darkness, and never mind that we had Kamahl dressed up as an Aborigine too:

You see, it's nothing personal. All the dominant cultures have done blackface for yonks. Why we even offered up Michael Pate to play an Indian, because when he wasn't  playing a Crawfords cop, he looked kinda funny in Hollywood. Kind of exotic, alien, foreign...

Heck the pond grew up in a country town where the blacks where herded into a ghetto, and in school their children were consigned to a portable across the oval, yet nobody thought twice about having a blackboy in the garden:

This fear of the alien and the other bobs up everywhere. The pond recalls fondly being told by both Chinese and Japanese executives, in unguarded moments, that gaijin - Gwai Lo - spell it and say how you will - stank to high heaven because they ate too much dairy food.  

You can just imagine the pond's pleasure to read that China is now the number one Kiwi milk importer. The stinking Chinese ...

You see, we all grow up conditioned to fear the different and the other, and for a long time the Dutch had quite a tidy empire - no doubt you wander in to check out how grand it was from time to time at the Amsterdam museum, and the Rijkmuseum. Though we note that it seems Zwarte piet seems to have taken a powder and been kicked off the front page:

Look it's nothing personal. The pond loves the Dutch and their peppermints and especially their hot chocolate.

But if you talk to any sensible Dutch person, at least the ones to the left of Geert Wilders, and thankfully now that's most of the country, they know that Sinterklass is racist in origin, at least as far as the Zwarte Pieten routine goes. Most get it, though generally helps if they've travelled and see how things go down in other parts of the world. Like they've spent a half hour in Mississippi or back of Bourke ...

It's okay. Santa Claus is also a sexist. Poor old Ms Claus is always out in the kitchen whipping up a scone, a lamington, and a lovely sponge cake with cream ... when she's allowed to exist at all, since many push a bachelor Claus routine, too busy to bother with an interfering woman.

The Dutch have been fed their own vision of this nonsense - a queasy mix of superstition and Xianity - in much the same way as Australians have been fed the routine that it's all the fault of the pesky blacks. Or Americans thinking that showing a picture Obama with a watermelon in his paws or dressed as an African witch-doctor is just a bit of satirical fun.

Now I know you might be thinking it's a bit more complicated than that. Like the Dudester himself, who found thinking a little hard:

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head. Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.

But it's not that hard. Limber up.

Just think of Xmas as a devious alliance of the mighty Xian retail industrial military complex, which might or might not involve black helicopters on any given day, but which certainly involves squawking geese at Faux Noise.

Then you might realise that Xmas Dutch style is fucked, but no more fucked than Black Friday in America, or the run up to Xmas in Australia, as Liberal politicians work out the very best way to pander to Harvey Normal with GST just because he didn't have the first clue about online shopping.

Or is that Hardly Norman? The pond gets terribly confused at Xmas time, especially when the angry Sydney Anglicans berate people to buy their books and hand over their credit cards, while telling them to abhor filthy lucre.

You see, the Dutch have been fed this sort of stuff for generations, and have long had a taste for it, in the same way as the Chinese have now developed a taste for milk.

If you can't see that, you really need to get out a bit. And don't give the pond any of that crap about Muslims and atheists and whites prancing around in glee and happy harmony.

The Dutch still have a few issues to sort out. We won't mention the Jews in World War II - that's below the belt and unfair, a bit like mentioning the Stolen Generation at a Liberal party meeting. Or Australia sending boat people to remote locations.

Sure it's settled down since Wilders has dropped in popularity, but even now, who'd have imagined that a trip to Lelylaan is still seen as some kind of journey to the Islamic dark side?

Now we do apologise for the Dutch being the first to get involved in the pond's war on Xmas, but down below, just for fun, unless you happen to be black, we've thrown up a little of the nonsense surrounding a Dutch Xmas ...

Sorry for the extended tour  - weird shit dude.

Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Yep, Due, say what you want about the tenets of Zwarte Piet, at least it's a fucking ethos ...

Not to worry, the pond has to think of anguished Dutch hits, and the ongoing war on Xmas everywhere, and right at the end, you can have a drink on the pond. Why not don black face to make it go down better? And do get out a bit dude ... I mean, David Sedaris went to live in West Sussex, England, in search of comedy ... and no doubt found plenty.

After all, it'll soon be Xmas, a pagan festival, but sssh, don't tell anyone, it gets the Xians and the Pellists and the angry Sydney Anglicans and the Murdochian Foxians so agitated ...