From Sarah to Warren, the pond can't get enough of the sickening and the disgusting ...

The pond is indebted to hawk-eyed correspondent DW, who rightly feared he might be helping Chairman Rupert make money by linking to a story on an actual Murdoch site.

The story was fanciful, and as it turned out, a lie, or at least an embellishment in relation to former chairman Abbott meeting up with Obama.

It turned out that he landed at a general gathering and he didn't come away with a selfie of himself and the man.

Instead he tweeted a couple of snaps of himself standing next to the man who elevated Sarah Palin in the world of politics, as well as that famous snap of two war criminals sharing a little quality time ...

Sort of like one of those old passport booths. Oh and there was a snap of Abbott standing in front of New York rubbish destined for recycling. Metaphor anyone?

Never mind, the footage discovered on Sky showed Abbott in heroic poses and sauntering through Washington in the manner the pond imagines is favoured by wall-punching thuggees ...

First the serious snaps ...

And then came the unintended punchline ... Peta trying to stay out of camera eye ...

And so on. The rest is just more of Abbott white-anting and undermining and sniping and posing as a fearless alternative leader to Malware, but there, just in shot on the left, is the reality, lurking ...

Truly, it was delicious, it made the pond's day ... surely we're now in similar territory to other famous matches, such as John Gorton and Ainsley, and Jim Cairns and Junie ...

And so to a little bonus filler ... every muesli needs its rolled oats along with its fruit and nuts ... and sometimes you can get the oats and the nuts in one delicious bundle ...

By golly, the stenographer knows how to copy it down. 

Is it wrong for the pond to point out that the last time the pond looked into it, there was no talk of banning people from going to Israel?

The talk was of sponsored trips to Israel, as you can Fairfax here.

If Warren wants to go, he can dust the red backs out of his wallet and get on the move.

It's a measure of how deep Mundine's nose is now in the trough, how accustomed he is to a decently subsidised and sponsored lifestyle that he should get so agitated about sponsored trips, which are designed to beguile and seduce.

The pond recalls being offered a 'sponsored' trip to North Korea and deciding there were better things to do in life.

How did talk of a responsible attitude to 'sponsored trips to Israel' come to be deemed as "verging on the anti-Semitic" and "sickening to watch."

The pond has to say it's sicking to read this sort of hysterical beat up.

The pond would be happy if all politicians and public servants were to be deprived of 'sponsored' trips. There's always an agenda, and it's always an implicit or explicit bribe. It operates on the same level sometimes as stars requesting that they can vet the copy arising from an interview, and even when it doesn't reach that level, the moral pressure to toe the line is strong. It's polite not to bite the hand that feeds you the junket.

This applies to both sides of that particular middle eastern aisle. Palestinians have better things to spend their money on than hosting junketing Australia politicians, and Israel should, but of course Israel is busy using its money for land grabs, and then offering 'sponsorships' to visiting politicians so that they can be sold on the deal ...

The rest of the stenographer's story shows where Mundine sits, and the pond found it quite sickening and disgusting, so naked was his pandering ...

Uh huh. Once again brave Bill is at the forefront, standing between the pigs rushing to the trough and brave Labor principles ...

So how does it go in Israel?

Don't trust the pond. Let's ask Ban Ki-Moon, scribbling Don't Shoot the Messenger, Israel for The New York Times:

Lordy lordy, has that and a few other sharp observations caused a ruckus.

There's more of course, and there's an attempt at a balanced consideration of the flaws on both sides, but the pond didn't need a sponsored junket from one side to learn a little about what's going down ...

There's a problem here, and when Mundine talks of disgust, perhaps he should share around the disgust a little more ...

Contempt's a two way street when it comes to pandering and pigs at trough ...

Which leaves the pond just time to celebrate the return of Rowe, and more properly framed Rowe here ...

Hmm, let's hope the folks travelling on that rickety craft are suitably sponsored ... wouldn't want them to be paying their own way ...

What to do with a Caterist parody that's beyond parody? Celebrate the return of the cartoonists ...

Thank the long absent lord, the pond's preferred papist is back with a papal bull and you can find more at the official registrum bullarum here.

However, it seems we must begin this day talking about the talking points rather than talk about the talking points, as the talking points went for a leak and took their subtle use of Photoshop with them...

Yep, the talking points are all here, though why they bothered is a mystery. 

Why not just make it official that Jay Weatherill is actually a covert member of the Liberal party, a talking point stooge in search of a conversation, always ready to talk to the talking point that a regressive tax on the poor and the hapless is the way forward?

Weatherill is one of those useful tools, obliging fools, the minor premier of a minor state, doing his very best to sound like Mike Baird ... who wants to turn over the GST to companies, because, you know, News Corp is doing it really tough ...

Please stay in the shallow end of the pool Mr Weatherill. It's where you belong ... a man who can produce sympathy in the pond for Stephen Conroy is by definition deeply sick and disturbed ...

But enough of issues of the day, and Obama desperately courting Tony Abbott to gain a little sunshine and a boost to his pathetic polling ...

Ah yes, the splendid reptiles doing yet another call to arms, a reminder that the pond's primary duty is to  pursue the sublime irrelevance of the commentariat ...

Not for it the joy of contemplating Daily Terror journalism at its finest. Waiter, the egg beater if you please ...

Oh that wall puncher, what a strong wall puncher he was.

Yes, the flappers are heating up in the Lodge today, and thank the long absent lord, Tony Abbott has stayed true to his promise not to snipe, white ant, grandstand or in any undermine. And if you believe that, the pond has a way to increase the GST without any pain to the poor? Interested? Just call Jay, he'll do you a deal ...

Get thee behind the pond Satan, such pleasures aren't for the pond, even if the Terror holds special fruits, rich enchantments, delicious temptations ...

Oh you wicked cultural 'leets, indulging in your wretched culture wars, when what's needed is direct action! Break a taxi driver's arm today and you'll feel better in your soul for having done something good... Then break another tomorrow, and the pond guarantees the world will be a happier and better place.

All the same, how poignant is that sight? Peter Costello, old irrelevant angry white male shouting at clouds and the Australian of the year, sitting plump cheek to well-fed jowel right alongside Mark Latham, bully boy, shouting at his own specially chosen clouds ...

Eyes averted, the pond scuttled off to the lizard of Oz for some of the guaranteed old reliable, and sure enough, the rag was doing the Lindy hop or the Charleston like a flapper, or perhaps jitterbugging like a bobby soxer in the Lodge ...

Who else but the chief stenographer would fling "anti-Semitism" around in such an exceptionally fine way? What with negotiations and dialogue having produced such fine results to date, the pond has to thank the stenographer for solving what ails Israel ... Sssh, don't mention Netanyahu ... that'd be anti-Semitic ...

And how right and proper of Dame Groan to point out that 0% tax for News Corp is a justified deduction ...

Oh well maybe she didn't phrase it quite that way, but the pond catches the drift. 

None of this will matter to pond devotees, because today is Caterist day, and the Caterist has produced yet another unnerving example of how the hive mind works ...

Now the pond has already noted Costello's bold thrust at the clouds ...

But when the bees get buzzing in the hive, they all pile on ...

The pond particularly liked the thrust of Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the remove, who when not throwing custard tarts in the tuckshop, prefers to be known as the liney line Akker Dakker ...

Such a petulant, vicious snark.

But back to the Caterist, because he wins the pond award for the day. None of the others had the common sense to link the ABC with Australia Day, and therefore they all missed a coup ...

It takes a dullard Caterist to show the confederacy of dunces how it's done ...

You see, you see? The man's a visionary, and tremendously agile, and he threw in a bonus "zeitgeist", the favourite word of the reptile commentariat this year ... because the ABC and the Australia Day Council are as one. 

Like pea minds in the pod. Unlike the pea minds of the Caterists which no pod can contain. Run wild, run free with fervid imaginings, Caterist pea.

It reminded the pond of an old joke. What's the difference between fuelling a jet engine and taxpayers funding a Caterist Menzies research institute? The Caterists' whining gets louder when it bleats away in the lizard Oz ...

But the Caterists make a good point. The Australian, as a broadsheet newspaper, was born way back on the 14th July 1964. By any count, that makes it a doddering, senile rag which has already turned fifty. Talk about an excellent candidate for retirement. 

Its tired format of most elderly angry white males shouting at clouds was invented in the days when Ming the Merciless ruled the roost, and the rag boasted of an alternative vision. Well with that alternative vision done and dusted and dudded, and the Caterists now celebrating the Menzies thingie like an Movietone newsreel, it surely is time to move on...

Hang on, Movietone?

Yes, typically the Caterists mention Movietone, controlled by the Fox invader, rather than dinkum Ken G. Hall's alternative from Cinesound, with legit, bonus, dinkum 'roo ... and the feud celebrated in Phil Noyce's Newsfront ...

Oh okay, reading the Caterists is such a dull and tedious chore, the pond will use the scribbling as a springboard to jump into any nearby pool ...

Hey nonny no, back we go ... have you suited up with your feigned outrage and supercilious, sardonic, Ming the merciless sneer?

Indeed, indeed. There's a wondrous vision embedded in that last sentence ... at the stroke of a pen or perhaps the click of a mouse or a tap on a keyboard, re-categorisation has been consummated, and tens of thousands of Australians have been re-categorised from unemployable to simply unemployed.

"Simply unemployed".

The simple unemployed simpletons...

How simple is that?

And so the problem of the simply unemployed is simply solved in a very simple and agile way!

No doubt the Caterists could also help Mussolini in making the trains run on time. Just redefine what running late means. Oh wait, they've already done that with Sydney Buses, formerly known as Sydney Trains, which sometimes operate when buses aren't available ...

But again the pond digresses from the Caterist spleen, splendid though it is ...

Let us return to the splenetic ...

Indeed, indeed. It's shocking that they talked to a German MP, when they really should have rung up the Caterists for a much more informed, on the spot, on the ground report ... because what would a useless German MP know up against a well-informed Caterist?

But what's really astonishing is that the shameless, shocking program should devote its time to things like droughts, floods and bushfires ...

Why that and the endless blather about the weather is just an excuse for climate change catastrophism.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the way people might actually be interested in the droughts, floods and bushfires that sometimes ravage the landscape.

What an astonishing betrayal of priorities. Please ABC, henceforth, no mention of bushfires, droughts and floods. Instead the pond would much prefer some idle chatter about Sherry's coffee shop, and if you must, an analysis of the Jewel Box and its impact on the thinking of Akker Dakker ...

By this point, any fair minded reader would think that the Caterists couldn't come up with a topper to the notion that talk of weather events is actually a dangerous climate science conspiracy, and it's true that the last few pars peter out, but troopers must troup, and so we troop on ...

Indeed, indeed, and it must be added that the Boston Globe's shocking and relentless crusade against the Catholic church, linked in an international conspiracy with the ABC - uncovered only here at the pond thanks to the Caterist - is just one more example of the zealotry doing the rounds ...

Thankfully the pond recently watched Spotlight and became aware of the way that the Gobe had joined the ABC in conducting a vendetta ... apparently it's the same degree of zealotry that led the Irish to conduct the Ryan Commission ... and set the local one running too ...

Who could have imagined that the zealots at the ABC could, with their international conspiracy, do so much wilful damage to the Catholic church?

No, no, no, it's got nothing to do with the newsworthy behaviour of members of the Church.

An alternative theory - that the Caterists are barking mad loons howling at the moon - can be dismissed out of hand with the contempt it deserves ...

Because who else would manage to conclude in those final few pars that somehow the Australia Day Council is now the ABC in disguise ...

Paranoia, moi?

What do you do with a parody which is so parodic it defies parody?

Why you simply turn to First Dog with a huzzah ... and nominate the Caterists as worthy of a cartoon ...

The full cartoon is here and huzzah, another favourite, David Rowe, is back, so that the two Davids might once again draw in harmony ...

All is forgiven, you holydaying wretches, but don't let it happen again.

More Rowe here, but meanwhile, the Caterist tennis balls still flop around on the deserted court, the sound making a dull echo in the reptile stands ...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ... or once a dumb dog botherer, always a dumb dog botherer ...

Thanks to a correspondent, the pond was reminded of this aspirational role model ...

But it was only a temporary high, because then thoughts had to turn to Mark "got a taxi driver who needs his arm broken?" Latham, and the reptiles' determined desire to see him maintain steady employment ...

A little while ago they tried to fix him up with Fairfax ...

Now that's failed, the reptiles have decided to help the bully boy out ...

Spiking copy is tantamount to a breach of contract?

By golly, and the reptiles managed to type that without a smirk or a shrug of irony ...

And they're hot to trot, but there's only a gentleman's agreement between gentle men?

Well the pond can't wait to see how this natural fit for the paper's audience in western Sydney turns out.

Of course another natural fit is thugby leaguers who piss on couches and soccer fans who riot in the streets, so Mr Latham should be right at home ...

One of the reasons the pond wants Latham in a new home is the predictability of the current crop ... look at what the Daily Terrorists offer today ...

Oh not little Timmie Bleagh bleating about his lost man love for the manly Tony, and the Devine bleating about the feminists ...

Talk about plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Even the Bolter is in subdued form, off his oats, an unappetising nag still bleating about his lost man love for the manly Tony ...

Talk about a whining, petulant, querulous tone, and a stamping of the feet ...

Of course if you actually read Vanstone here, with forced video - the pond counsels against it, and suggests a lamington for lunch instead - sweet Amanda actually sort of answered the Bolter's question by using herself as an example ...

Unless I have been lied to, and that can happen, Abbott has told a number of people that he is young enough to have another crack at the leadership. Even if that is meant in the most pure and innocent form, as in "Well, the Prime Minister might be hit by a proverbial bus", it does not augur well for the future. It shows an incapacity on Abbott's part to see what went wrong and how much of that related to his own behaviour. It also reveals a failure to recognise that there are others who have come up in the ranks and will continue to so do. It is not a static world through which only he progresses. 
Sadly, it would also mean every decision Abbott makes will be firstly about positioning himself for that opportunity rather than firstly about securing a team win now. 
Political teams are like rose bushes – you have to keep pruning or there are no new blooms. When John Howard gave me the flick in 2007 he offered to say that I had decided I would move on. I declined the offer; the truth is what it is. My press release thanked him and the Liberal Party for the opportunities I had enjoyed and others had missed out on. My spot was filled by Malcolm Turnbull. Pruning delivers results. Bronwyn Bishop, Philip Ruddock and a few others should stop being so selfish, start showing a bit of gratitude for all they have enjoyed, and allow some new blooms to burst forth.

Of course, the art of the selective Bolter quote is to take the last few words of the article and to ignore the implications of the preceding pars, such is the yearning for the return of the manly man so generous with his love for lovers of manly men...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Now for the confession.

All this has been a studious way to ignore the dog botherer.

It seems to the pond that the dog botherer is another pundit off his oats and a little lost.

It must have seemed like a jolly whiz and a clever idea and a jolly jape amongst reptile chums to start up a column that each Monday watched the media, which is to say exposed the ABC to the full withering wit of the dog botherer.

The trouble is, for this task, you need withering wit, and the dog botherer is a sheep shy of  top paddock wit.

This day the reptiles at first didn't bother putting the dog botherer on the front digital opinion page, burying him in the columnist section.

He turned up later, but the google splash established what's wrong with the entire enterprise ...

It verges on the obsequious ...

Yes, when there's a taxi driver who needs a broken arm, don't bother calling the dog botherer. 

The man's a genuine Malcolm in the middle, a centrist of the old school ... and even worse he has a soft sport for Chris Uhlmann ...

Oh dear.

So that's where Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose came from...

As for Uhlmann, when you stupidly tweet a stupidity, it's natural that a few might take note ...

But rather than pile in and pile on, in the proper manner of a media watcher watching the watchers, the dog botherer prefers to be obsequious to the sheep of like minds ... in much the same way as he supported the ABC in the matter of the NBN.

Perhaps he's even looking for a job opportunity at the new ABC ... well it's understandable, what with the reptile business model being such a fragile thing, and it would explain the obsequious thingie ...

Even worse, there's something rote about the dog botherer these days.

Oh sure, there's the ritual incantation of fuck the climate science, fuck the gays, fuck the prevailing winds of the fucking love media, but it feels a bit like the way that one parish priest in Tamworth used to speed up around the Angus Dei, and positively gallop to the end so he could make sure he got in a full round of golf ...

After the obligatory touching of the forelock to the long suffering Uhlmann, the dog botherer padded out the rest of his column with a tepid fulmination about a former comic interviewing a current actor ...

Yep, he had a chance to get stuck into serious matters, and instead he settled for an item as light as froth and bubble and squeak ...

That's the best he's got? That's the best he can do? 

Now the pond must confess it never listens to what in Sydney is 702, nor does it care much for the thoughts of actors, even on the subject of acting. Let them read Stanislavsky in private and leave the pond alone ...

But this sort of conversation happens every day of the week, in all forms of media - television, radio and the print, most frequently when an actor is out and about, peddling his or her latest work. 

When this gets a little too tedious, some other distraction will always turn up in the conversation, unless, as the pond once did, you happen to interview a sweet bubble-headed young actor like Christopher Atkins and no one's at home ... except a puppy (can anyone remember The Blue Lagoon?)

Now what's irritating about the dog botherer's work is that it took the pond only a few seconds to discover that Roxburgh fronted Harmer to talk about his new feature film Looking for Grace.

This isn't an ABC television drama. It's a feature film, and it has the usual assortment of government and private funding, as anyone could read here ...

There's no "presumably" about it. You just had to fucking listen, you silly man.

And there's the dog botherer's problem in a nutshell. He's bored, and bored leads to being sloppy ... 

He's also wrong. That "He's a Liberal" was, given the tenor of Roxburgh's previous conversation, posed as a question, as if to say "what do you make of that?" It should, with just a shred of honesty, have been transcribed, "He's a Liberal?"

Just as the opening bit of the conversation about the republic was a natural segue - after a fluff with the mike - from a previous item on the show. 

Even worse, that bit of Harmerist Roxburgian chatter went to air back on the 25th January. It's now so old it's about to expire on the ABC website here ...

It's old, stale, chat and talkback radio. 

It was old and stale the moment it hit the airwaves, and Roxburgh chats on just as happily about the painterly quality of the West Australian wheat fields featured in the movie as he does about republics. 

Sure the conversation gets on to him being a bottle-o in Avalon Now, but that's an entirely different matter, as outlined in Fairfax here. 

And eventually he gets on to talking about an actual ABC drama, and the French loving Rake, but then, when Roxburgh says he can't talk about an ABC show, he's there to talk about Looking for Grace, Harmer cuts him off, saying they've run out of time.

And even worse, the pond had to suffer through all this chat just to discover what a fuckwit and a bad reporter the dog botherer was ...

As if anyone needed to do that, when the bleeding obvious is apparent each time the dog botherer scribbles for the reptiles.

He couldn't even be bothered getting right the name and nature of the show Roxburgh was peddling ...

And he assumes that somehow the ABC is responsible for what Roxburgh says when it comes to politics and the republic.

Presumably on his own show Kenny argues vociferously with his guests the moment that they disagree with him.

Conclusion: It might have seemed like a good idea to write about the ABC on a weekly basis, but the dog botherer's heart isn't it. 

He's always been an ultimate waste of space, but now he's a total, complete and comprehensively useless tool ... and he's causing actual pain to the pond by making the pond go check up on him.

He should stop it, or he'll go as blind as he is dumb ...

Never mind, the pond caught the real drift of the conversation and so can report that the feature film was out in Palace cinemas last week. 

That's what it was all about, you useless dim-witted dog botherer ...

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ... is that a way of saying, dumb then, still dumb now?

Behind every smirk, there's a really stupid dog botherer ...

Put it another way, as the poster did in its tag line ...

Well you might find grace if you go looking for it, but the pond's buggered at the thought of anyone trying to find wit and intelligence in the dog botherer ...

This year over summer, he put science in its place, and laughed and danced and laughed with glee ...

It's a new month, a new era, a new world ... 

Which is why the pond clings so devotedly to the dinosaurs, those brave souls determined to provide continuity and ongoing awareness of conspiracies afoot, and ever willing to laugh at the fools for thinking they might get away with it, when a sharp-footed, top notch, world class climate scientist is hot on their tails ...

Yes, thanks be unto the reptiles, because once more this day we are blessed by a visitation from Maurice ...

However, you cut it ... reptile splash ...

Or google splash ...

... this top notch climate, world class climate scientist - some say he's numero uno now that screaming Lord Monckton has faded away into the folds of barking mad Christian fundamentalists - can sniff a conspiracy at a dozen paces ...

Please allow the pond to sniff with him ...

Indeed, indeed. Needless to say, the pond is reduced to a humble awe and a revered silence by the stringency and deadly accuracy of Maurice's observations.

It goes without saying that as scientists without peer or parallel, Quentin Letts and Maurice Newman are a perfect fit, and it is to the utter shame of the BBC's trustees that they should have replaced the show online with a pdf here, claiming that the program was a serious breach of the editorial guidelines for accuracy and impartiality.

This is shocking stuff. As Letts himself admits, he's a perfect model of accurate impartiality:

Sometimes you got the impression its forecasts were being written by the same hand that authored the Book of Genesis and its chapters about Noah’s flood. Gosh, they did love to whip up a storm about a few isobars. 
The same hyperbolic desire for attention saw the Met Office meekly agreeing to dumb down its presentation techniques and allow broadcasting editors and producers to turn the Met’s once dry forecasts into melodramatic, matey interludes fronted by autocuties. 
The men and women telling us the weather long ago stopped being dispassionate boffins. Instead they grinned, cooed, empathised, screwing up their eyelashes when they told us it was going to rain and advising us to wear sun cream during heat waves. 
Do I think here of the likes of the infuriatingly simpery Helen Willetts, twisting her face in agony when she warned us of showers? Do I think of Tomasz Schafernaker, a tweeting turnip of a Met Office/BBC weather presenter who posed on the front of a magazine as a sex symbol wearing only his shorts? You bet I do. 
Sheer meteorology of the forecasts was crushed by modish silliness, in an ill-guided quest for egalitarianism, a stupid horror of sober scientific delivery. It damaged both our society and the good reputation of the Met Office. (and more, perhaps too much more, here at the restless daily wail)

Indeed, indeed. This is tremendously scientific stuff, and it reminded the pond that it too has a passing skill at scientific endeavour.

That's why it can call Quentin Letts a remarkably funny looking man - he possibly even wears his trousers rolled in the English way - especially when he's inclined to wear a hankie to keep his beetroot brain under control ...

Oh dear, the pond has been quite distracted from the more important science of the master Maurice.

And here we have to turn a little Freudian.

What drives Maurice on? What motivates this master scientist to each week bring forth new revelations, and astonishing new insights?

Could it be that he is still in grieving, still mourning the loss of his hero, even though it is now many months on, and it's a new month in a new year?

So it seems, because he still yearns for the days of Tony, while deploring that wretched walri lover, a bungling incompetent incapable of recognising a conspiracy, except when brought to heel by his now departed, much lamented master ...

Yes, the walri man is in the thick of the conspiracy concealment, a friend in high places facilitating the conspirators ...

Now there are a few that would suggest Lamar Smith is about as good a scientist as Maurice, and a barking mad McCarthyist delusional luddite to boot - Update: Rep. Lamar Smith Ramps Up His Climate Conspiracy, but the pond was outraged to learn that this expert had been subjected to mockery and ridicule, as can be read in Lamar Smith's Climate Views Win Flat Earth Award.

Why that would be as cruel as awarding Maurice a tin foil award:

In response to his Flat Earth award Monday, Smith indicated he would continue his efforts to subpoena the NOAA scientists. 
“I will continue asking tough questions of this administration because the American people deserve to know the truth about its extreme environmental agenda,” he said. 
At Monday’s demonstration, Jere Locke, program director for the Texas Drought Project, said he felt Smith’s concerns were baseless. 
“Lamar Smith isn’t peer-reviewed,” Locke said. “The scientists are.”

Outrageous. Maurice is of course peer reviewed by the many scientific experts employed at News Corp.

Memo to The Australian's editor: There is an urgent job to be done, and Maurice is just the man to do it. The pond notes with admiration the way the comments section below Maurice's readership suggests that your rag is now only read by barking mad right wing loons of the demented, delusional kind.

The pond relies on this continuing. Keep up the good work. Have you thought of publishing Maurice twice a day, or in lieu, making him the editor of the paper?

Just thinking on feet, in an agile way.

And so to a little ditty the pond always remembers when Maurice is on the prowl ...

Cat Stevens, Pellists, Jensenists, what have you got, because the pond's agin it, unless it happens to feature manly men in frocks ...

The pond realises that it's been failing in its duties in relation to meditative Sundays ... we simply haven't been pounding the keyboard hard enough.

This came upon the pond while watching Spotlight last night.

It isn't a particularly good film. The reporters at the Boston Globe are each given haloes, and Mark Ruffalo is given an obligatory intense speech to ensure nominations, while good old Stanley Tucci acts the socks off him. And then there's the banality of the underscore, which frequently delivers bouts of "doing" music to accompany montages of activity (a Christmas carol also performs this duty).

And poor old Rachel McAdams is given the job of becoming a female beagle, such is the intensity of her winsome looks (punters will recall with affection that Anthony Lane awarded Ryan Gosling the title of male beagle when he noted a sure way for the local animal shelter's fund-raising leaflet to raise oodles of money was to have Gosling as the beagle on the cover. It never fails ...)

And yet the sheer enormity of what the Catholic church got up to in Boston, the cover-ups and the abuse, carried the pond through the movie, and made it wonder whether we will ever see the Pellists back in Australia ...

North Coast Voices here carried news of the full, active and rich life the Pellists are currently enjoying in Rome,  and soon we will hear whether that will continue or whether the Pellists will take the trip back to face the music. If the movie is any guide, it's not likely.

Here's one of the end titles for that film ...

So it goes, and so the pond isn't holding its breath ...

And then who should bob up on the Huff but Cat Stevens preaching Guff ...

What a doofus. What an addle-brained ratbag.

Try Greg Hunting Cat Stevens' comments about Salman Rushdie and see if you can forgive this wretch and would want to get on a peace train with such a sorry and pathetic dissembler ...

But the pond always looks for hope alongside sorry tales of despair, and before we get on to despairing about that other axis of weevils, the Jensenists, it's time for a little hope.

It involves a story some months ago in The New Yorker, happily at the moment outside the paywall concerning the redemption of one member of the Westboro church.

Unfollow, How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs, is a long read, and the pond must deliver a spoiler alert, because we're cutting to the chase with the final few pars ... as Adrian Chen and Megan Phelps-Roper returned to the church of hate and its hate signs:

Directly across the street stood a house painted in bright, horizontal rainbow stripes. The house had been bought, in 2012, by Planting Peace, a nonprofit group whose mission, according to its Web site, is “spreading peace in a hurting world.” The Equality House, as it’s known, is home to a group of young L.G.B.T. activists. Planting Peace has worked with former Westboro members to spread its message of tolerance. Megan first visited the house in 2013, after her cousin Libby encouraged her to visit. She sneaked in the back door, for fear of being spotted by her family. 
Today, Megan and Grace’s only connection to Westboro is virtual. Although Phelps-Roper no longer believes that the Bible is the word of God, she still reads it to try to find scriptural arguments that could encourage Westboro to take a more humane approach to the world. Sometimes she’ll tweet passages, knowing that church members will see them. After they left the church, Megan and Grace were blocked from Westboro’s Twitter accounts, but they created a secret account to follow them. Sometimes, when her mother appears in a video, Megan will loop it over and over, just to hear her voice. 
Fred Phelps died in March, 2014, at the age of eighty-four. Former members of the church told me that Fred had had a softening of heart at the end of his life and had been excommunicated. (The church denies these claims.) Zach Phelps-Roper, Megan’s younger brother, who left the church later that year, said that one of the precipitating events in Fred’s exclusion had been expressing kindness toward the Equality House. At a church meeting, Zach recalls, members discussed the episode: “He stepped out the front door of the church and looked at the Rainbow House, the Planting Peace organization, and looked over and said, ‘You’re good people.’ ”

Westboro is a particularly hate-filled version of extreme Calvinism, which naturally brings the pond to the hating of the angry Sydney Anglicans and the Jensenists ...

Lately the Jensenists have stopped turning up at their old haunts, and Michael Jensen can be found scribbling away at The Drum ...

Sad to say, The Drum - much like the ABC in general - isn't what it used to be, and even though this particular piece of rotting fish is days old, it was still top of the digital page ...

Now anybody with the requisite cast-iron stomach can attend the page here, but please allow the pond to set the tone of the discourse with this stomach-churning gobbet ...

This is classic Jensenism.

It involves either a deliberate lie - as with some Islamic fundamentalists, it is considered legitimate to lie to infidels - or a confession of profound ignorance and stupidity.

Of course it could be just a mix of the two, and so let us now set off to judge by word and by deed ...

Why not head off to Meet Alliance Defending Freedom, Fox's Favorite Anti-LGBT Legal Organization ...

How about How An Extreme Anti-LGBT Legal Powerhouse Is Working To Enact "Religious Freedom" Laws ...

Why not dabble in This Right-Wing Legal Powerhouse Wants To Make Gay Sex Illegal ...

Of course in the world of Jensenism, wanting to make gay sex illegal isn't "gay hate", it's just saving gays from hell ... or making practitioners get their deserved comeuppance.

Either way, it isn't hate. Just as a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye is a jovial form of barter. Or some such thing ...

Why would the Jensenists not think working in assorted countries around the world to get gay sex criminalised, or re-criminalised, or to stay criminalised isn't an example of gay hate?

Why, it's because angry Sydney Anglicans have been in the thick of such activities in Africa, as recounted many times by the pond in the past ...

The angry Calvinist Sydney Anglicans stand, if the pond may borrow from the Jensenist phrasing, against the encroaching of tolerance and a liberal 'live and let live' philosophy, with a fierce form of Calvinist fundamentalism, which is anything but liberal, since it actively seeks to eradicate homosexuality from public life entirely ...

This is how radical extremism and bigotry works. It seeks to pretend that extremists are moderates just going about their moderate daily business of discrimination in a godly way ...

It's a lie, built on lies, and perhaps that's why there's a shortage of respect.

You can't pretend you're doing one thing, while off doing wicked things.

Time then for a little Elmer Gantry Holy Roller judgement:

For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

And this is what requires judging. It's the half-baked apologetics. See if you can recognise the classic equivocating Jensenist style ...

Now, as it happens, I don't agree with everything that the ADF says, or with its approach to church-state relations ...

....these are serious people who make sustained legal and intellectual arguments for their positions, and use legitimate tactics to pursue them

....Even a passionate pro-choice advocate should surely recognise that the issue of abortion is extremely morally complex. It deserves argument, whatever your position ...

...The place and shape of the family is likewise a matter for serious debate, whatever one's views.

...We seem to have lost the vision of a genuine pluralism, in which competing points of view on serious moral issues are both allowed to coexist so that the arguments for each may be put...

...Rather, we resort to tweeting and shouting.

Of course there's rich pickings there. A genuine pluralism seems to consist of one side being cast into hell for all eternity ...

And the issue of having an abortion is easily understood ... if you happen to be a woman, with the right to be in control of your body.

As opposed to men, such as angry Anglicans and fundamentalist Islamics wanting to control it for you ...

In the end, Westboro's hardline haters are more intellectually honest than those who claim they use fancy legal and intellectual arguments and legitimate tactics... while pursuing exactly the same homophobic, hate-filled outcomes that the Westboro mob want

The Westboro mob - what's left of them - just hate. The rest is fancy dressing and frippery and airy talk of legitimate tactics, of the kind Calvinists should really disdain ...

As for tweeting and its wickedness?

Perhaps the angry Anglicans should get out into the world and tweet a little more ...

On December 20, 2009, Phelps-Roper was in the basement of her house, for a church function, when she checked Twitter on her phone and saw that Brittany Murphy, the thirty-two-year-old actress, had died. When she read the tweet aloud, other church members reacted with glee, celebrating another righteous judgment from God. “Lots of people were talking about going to picket her funeral,” Phelps-Roper said. When Phelps-Roper was younger, news of terrible events had given her a visceral thrill. On 9/11, she was in the crowded hallway of her high school when she overheard someone talking about how an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. “Awesome!” she exclaimed, to the horror of a student next to her. She couldn’t wait to picket Ground Zero. (The following March, she and other Westboro members travelled to New York City to protest what they described in a press release as “FDNY fags and terrorists.”) But Phelps-Roper had loved Murphy in “Clueless,” and she felt an unexpected pang—not quite sadness, but something close—over her death. As she continued scrolling through Twitter, she saw that it was full of people mourning Murphy. The contrast between the grief on Twitter and the buoyant mood in the basement unsettled her. She couldn’t bring herself to post a tweet thanking God for Murphy’s death. “I felt like I would be such a jackass to go on and post something like that,” she said.
...Her hesitance reflected a growing concern for the feelings of people outside Westboro. Church members disdained human feelings as something that people worshipped instead of the Bible. They even had a sign: “GOD HATES YOUR FEELINGS.” They disregarded people’s feelings in order to break their idols. Just a few months earlier, the Westboro Web site had received an e-mail arguing that the church’s constant use of the word “fag” was needlessly offensive. “Get a grip, you presumptuous toad,” Phelps-Roper had replied. She signed off, “Have a lovely day. You’re going to Hell....”

...As Phelps-Roper continued to tweet, she developed relationships with more people like Hughes. There was a Jewish marketing consultant in Brooklyn who abhorred Westboro’s tactics but supported the church’s right to express its views. There was a young Australian guy who tweeted political jokes that she and her younger sister Grace found hilarious. “It was like I was becoming part of a community,” Phelps-Roper said. By following her opponents’ feeds, she absorbed their thoughts on the world, learned what food they ate, and saw photographs of their babies. “I was beginning to see them as human,” she said. When she read about an earthquake that struck off Canada’s Pacific coast, she sent a concerned tweet to Graham Hughes: “Isn’t this close to you?”

Perhaps angry Anglicans might be better off not scribbling for The Drum in support of bigotry and homophobia and hate ...perhaps they should take to twitter, and perhaps then they might even end up seeing others as human ...

And so, just to complete the circle, and having dissed an Islamic, Catholics, and angry Anglicans, the pond would like to thank a correspondent for helping complete the circle.

The pond has always loved to end its meditative Sunday pieces with sightings of men in frocks.

Usually this has featured the Pellists, but there are some excellent frock sightings elsewhere, thanks to Cardinal "manly man" Burke.

Here, for example, and here, and at the pond correspondent's link here, while you can find the manly Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke's manly man insights here in an interview ...

Cardinal Burke: First of all, be manly yourself. In other words, cultivate your own manly qualities, because the priest is first and foremost the spiritual father; he is a man. You need to have manly qualities of selflessness, chivalry and discipline to avoid situations improper for a priest. A priest must have the manly confidence and credibility to be a spiritual father to his flock, giving clear firm guidance with kindness and charity.

What a hoot it is, unless of course, you happen to have been a child growing up in Boston, or in certain parts of Australia, or elsewhere around the world, and caught up in a pandemic of evil ...

Never mind, let's end with a few manly men sightings ...