Talk about grudges ...

(Above: Pryor in 1997, and yes John Howard really did tear up a paper from the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation because it had John Kerin's name on it).


Thank the long absent lord someone noticed.

While all and sundry are scurrying about donning the sackcloth and ashes, and shedding tears of woe, is there anything more insufferable than the sanctimonious adjustment of the historical record?

Laurie Oakes tidily ticks off a few names in How the US and UK listed Nelson Mandela as a terrorist till 2008 while we always admired him.

There was Ronald Reagan branding him a terrorist, and Margaret Thatcher, and then there was John Howard:

There is some dispute about whether John Howard also used the word "terrorism" in reference to Mandela. I doubt it. 
 But Thatcher and Reagan were Howard's political heroes, and he certainly joined them in opposing the sanctions that eventually brought about Mandela's release from imprisonment and, with it, the end of apartheid.

In the 1980s, Howard was right up the front of the queue of conservative politicians lining up to support the apartheid regime, dissembling and claiming that sanctions didn't work.

Later, recognising he was on the wrong side of history, he beat a hasty retreat, and the always gracious Mandela was gracious to him in 1999. It didn't help Howard, however, at least not when he tried to become the head honcho of cricket, and some in charge of the appointment turned out to have long memories.

And then there was Dick Cheney, as noted in Dick Cheney Didn't Regret His Vote Against Freeing Nelson Mandela.

And then there was Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his cronies in the days of the Springbok tour.

An eighteen day emergency!

And so on and so forth around the country.

Some later emerged from the fuss able to hold their heads up, Malcolm Fraser and Don Bradman amongst them, and Nelson Mandela was always ready to forgive and forget, but the pond will always remember those on the wrong side of history.

And when  the pond sees John Howard now out and about and shedding crocodile tears about Mandela and hailing him as one of the world's greatest leaders (here) all the pond can think is that there goes one hell of a crocodile, with a thick and shameless hide to match. Sorry Mr. Mandela, and your admirable capacity for forgiveness and harmony, but the pond would settle for a nice crocodile skin handbag and a delicious pair of shoes ...

Of course you won't find any sentimental nonsense about Mandela emanating from the Bolter.

He paused only for a moment in his theologically inspired crusade against climate science to quote Tim Blair quoting the Wall Street Journal, here. Quite possibly he baulked at the notion of any kind words dribbling off his keyboard, which routinely gets gummed up by tar and chicken feathers.

Naturally the comments section below the Bolter note was full of Mandela hate, black bashing, and yearning for the good old days of apartheid, while insisting that Mandela was just a terrorist.

Reading them is a bit like straying into a cesspit of bigotry and hatred, and given the man's death, without any sense of grace or generosity or timing.

But why, you ask, is the pond surprised? A decent soul would have arranged for the immediate removal of all the bilious hate-speak, but not the Bolter. He thrives in the fetid atmosphere of hate, fear and loathing ...

Mandela will shortly be standing before God to answer for those crimes he committed while alive, and God will not be so forgiving towards what he did ...

And so on and so forth.

Move along, nothing to see here, just the Bolter and his rabid, frothing and foaming readership.

Meanwhile, it seems that Campbell Newman is helping sustain the rage about the ABC:

The preening cockerel of the north, Joh's natural heir and assignee, is outraged, and naturally so is the Bolter.

The ABC is out of control, he splutters, here, reminding the world that the reptiles at the Oz, echo chambers like the Bolter and conservative politicians are determined to maintain the rage and punish the ABC at every turn.

It's also just in time to provide even more evidence for today's column by MIke Carlton, Simple as ABC: Tories are imploding.

As I wrote here last week, the battle is on. Rupert Murdoch's self-styled culture warriors lead the offensive, with a thunderous barrage of confected ''news'' stories, anti-ABC rants by the usual columnists and bloggers, and almost daily editorials in The Australian verging on the demented.  

Verging on the demented?

As usual Carlton is inclined to be much too polite. Beyond the valley of the barking mad is more to the point ...

Carlton mentions that Abbott has already begun to pave the way for an inquiry, and no doubt a new wave of board appointments of the climate denialist Maurice Newman kind, and also pings Malcolm Turnbull for his remarkable breach of protocol, by going around the chair to directly assault Mark Scott.

So what do the reptiles at the lizard Oz propose as a beguiling inducement and incentive to sign up to their digital services?

Oh dear.

Yes, you too can join the crusade.

Meanwhile, speaking of haters that are gunna hate, the Bolter provides this bizarre hope:

... gays and lesbians have nothing to lose but their chains in this debate. No horde of gay-haters would suddenly feel freer to vilify - and nor would the rest of us be any slower to fight back. 

The Bolter as defenders of gays? Is there no end to self-delusion?

Fighting back? Lordy, lordy, the Bolter wouldn't even allow his sister to drop a comment on his blog, as you can recall here. (or here). Of course the Bolter has been hacking in to gay marriage with a quite amazing ferocity for yonks ...

Manners, after all, are for us all to defend and decide. All respect to Young, but I’d rather leave that work to the many us than limit it to the few of her. (here)

Leave it to many Bolters? Amazing scenes ...

Yep, the man who vilified people, and incidentally got his facts wrong in the process, is suddenly posing as a freedom fighter, willing to stand shoulder to shoulder against prejudice and hate.

The conscience of the nation:

There is no clear law against calling a female Prime Minister a witch. But see what happened when one protester at a rally against the carbon tax did just that. Fellow protesters told him to remove his sign, which was condemned in Parliament and in countless newspaper articles, TV reports and radio broadcasts. I attacked it, too, and it’s remarkable how rarely similar signs appeared at later rallies. 
That collective disapproval of the sign had a far greater effect than a prosecution under the law would have achieved. Had the man with the sign instead been charged the would have become - rightly - a martyr and other citizens would have been absolved of their duty to speak out and robbed of their power to pass judgment. The state would have nationalised morality. The public would have turned from jurors to subjects.

The Bolter as a defender of Julia Gillard? The Bolter as denouncer of hate speech? Collective disapproval?

Like the collective disapproval in Salem?

Oh roll the pond into pickle and drown it in vinegar ...

But wait, it does make a kind of sense ... because really Gillard shouldn't have been compared to a witch but to a cat that should be shoved in a chaff bag, taken far out to sea and drowned ...

The Bolter will ride shotgun on hate speech?

Does he ever read the comments he cultivates?

Haters gunna hate, and soon enough the howling, yowling beasts will be loosed from their chains, and roam the moors tearing at the throat of the ABC ... in the name of free speech ...

Oh wait, they're already there ...

Thankfully First Dog has listed a number of accomplishments in the first 100 days of the Abbott Tonyocracy ... the rest here, paywall affected for the moment:

After the excitement of the Ezra Pound modernist poetry competition, the pond needed a quiet TGIF.

And was immediately struck by the neediness of the needs-based crony commentariat beavering away at the lizard Oz.

What is it with all this "needs" stuff? Why all the neediness? Government needs, infrastructure needs, the bouffant hair needs ... a good dose of conditioner.

Happily the pond immediately knew it didn't need to read any of these needy yearners, bleating like lost lambs in a field of commentariat dreams.

Instead what joy, the fat owl of the remove, known to some as Billy Bunter, turned up with a fabulous splash:

The pond has absolutely no knowledge of what indicative history Akker Dakker has access to, but presumably it excludes the entirety of the second world war, unless he thinks that somehow the second world war didn't involve the national interest.

History would indicate that Bob Menzies resigned as PM on 29th August 1941 and history would indicate that the electorate turned to John Curtin and the Labor party, and history would indicate that as a result the country entrusted its war time fate to a mob of politicians who had routinely been denounced as Leftist.

The pond is tempted to say that Akker Dakker needs to read a little history, but what would be the point, because in the kingdom of the two eyed, the one eyed are generally rabid zealots.

As usual, it's a single word that the pond finds offensive: The ALP's always been blind to the national interest.

Always? Until the twelfth of never, and that's a long, long time?

Shoddy history, shoddy stupid blind one-eyed folly, and no need to read any further really, because anybody who delivers that sort of line straight faced is just as likely to assure you that Manly and Collingwood are the only football teams worth supporting.

Never mind, the day is already full of amazing outings and astonishing claims. Like this one:

Just reading that little splash, the pond needed to take a break to cope with the gust of laughter sweeping in like a gale from the north.

Of course Hitler was also a great one for claiming he'd gone to great lengths to restore integrity to the German parliament, but the pond would never contravene Godwin's Law, not even in a direly needy moment.

As usual, it was the chutzpah, the over-reaching, the pious exaggeration - gone to great lengths - that got to the pond.

The last time the pond dipped into the festering, stinking cesspit known as Queensland politics, the word was that Newman's great integrity drive had been something of a belly flop, with Newman could lose seat: poll.

“The Premier’s shameful, outrageous act of sacking an entire parliamentary committee last week, because it exposed a truth he did not want exposed, has resonated deeply in the Ashgrove community,’’ she said. 
‘‘Mr Newman will clearly answer for that at the next poll.” 

Well she would say that, wouldn't she, but equally it's hard to see how acting like a gauleiter roaming the Queensland range is restoring integrity, as opposed to acting like a small town bully of the Joh kind.

And then if the day hadn't already descended into hysteria, a kindly reader pointed out this story in the Adelaide 'Tiser, which apparently the pond needed to read:

Foolish?

Say what? The South Australian government is paying the Rolling Stones 450,000 smackeroos, the good folding stuff, the cash in the paw, so that they'll turn up and launch the new Adelaide Oval stadium?

Well that's what it says in It was foolish to pay the Rolling Stones to perform at Adelaide Oval ...

What was that Mick Jagger said about Jay Weatherill? Son, you only get one Jay Weatherill along in a lifetime and I've had mine ...

Or was that Kerry Packer talking about Alan Bond?

Apparently Weatherill said:

"You really get, on really conservative estimates, a $10 return for every dollar we put in..."

Now the pond is a great lover of multipliers, having misused and abused the notion in many reports, but Weatherill's not talking about a really conservative multiplier here, he's talking about a magic pudding.

Sheesh, what a grumpy looking pudding.

Really conservative estimates? Really? Apparently the stadium show has already sold out, and you can bet the tickets have been snapped up by dumb crow-eaters keen to shovel even more money down Mick Jagger's throat, and the number of tourists landing in Adelaide from other parts - the Stones are touring the country FFS - will be minimal, and in due course the multiplier lover in the government will have a bloody hard job scrubbing up the figures ...

And if that wasn't enough, then came this outrageous cock-up by the New Zealand subbies, who've been doing their level best lately to make the pond look like a chook yard:

No, no, no, New Zealand subbies, that splash should have read The courts are letting Ray Hadley down!

Please, keep up local stories that have a certain parochial interest, zest and zing, and read Ray Hadley defamed woman on radio show, court finds.

Repeat after the pond The courts are letting Ray Hadley down! Now that's one issue, person and event that didn't have 2GB's Ray Hadley talking ... Health of man allegedly bullied by Ray Hadley deteriorating, court hears.

Then wouldn't you know it - stand by for acid flashback - there was the pond last night, happily sitting and contemplating the business report on ABC 24, and musing how the last time the pond had driven a Holden was a HK with rust holes so large in the floor that the driver could see the tar rolling past, and how for the last few years, as Alan Joyce drove the airline into the ground, the only time that the pond has flown Qantas was when it had to, and certainly not by free choice, with so many better airlines bidding for business, and perhaps this said something about these two venerable institutions and their ongoing relevance, when knock the pond down with a chook feather and dip it in a jar of Vegemite, but without a moment's notice or grace, we were whisked holus bolus away to be confronted by a spectral figure blathering about Francis Xavier and other Jesuits evangelising China, and what a marvellous tradition that is ...

Coat desiccated coconut and chocolate on a lamington Gerard Henderson, what a bizarre way to start off a lecture about relationships with Asia.

You missed it? Why, you glutton for punishment, you can catch the audio here, but don't send the psychiatric bills for ennui, ennervating boredom and clinical depression to the pond.

And then Abbott moved on to "Weary" Dunlop, and thankfully someone noticed the schoolboy howler:

According to the transcript provided by his office, Mr Abbott opened his essay on Australian-Asian relations by saying: "It is an honour to deliver this Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop Asia Link Lecture. 'Weary', apparently was an ironic nickname. People called him 'Weary' because he never was." (Tony Abbott's 'Weary' mistake)

Carolyn Webb cites the Australian War Memorial site, here:

Commencing a pharmacy apprenticeship in 1924 at Benalla Dunlop moved to Melbourne in 1927 and attended the Pharmacy College. Excelling in his studies, he won a scholarship in 1930 to Ormond College, Melbourne University to study medicine. Here he acquired his nickname "Weary" (derived from Dunlop tyres) during the course of initiation ceremonies at the college.

But she could have just as easily done a Greg Hunt, here:

Dunlop graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1934 with first class honours in pharmacy and in medicine, and excelled as a sportsman at Melbourne University and Ormond College. The nickname "Weary" was a reference to his last name—"tired" like a Dunlop tyre.

But Webb didn't note the thing that struck the pond as profoundly weird:

Mark, thank you very much indeed. It's lovely to be here. It was a thrill to hear that Jesuitical reference to a man for others, and of course it was Frances Xavier I think who went east seeking to evangelise China and Japan, and it was Matteo Richi, another Jesuit, who did actually come quite close to evangelising back in the 1600s, so we're all in a marvellous tradition here this evening ...

We're all Jesuits on a marvellous traditional evangelising mission to convert China, Japan and Indonesia?

What could the pond do, but switch off at once and head to bed?

Oh and vote that the speech join all those other Abbott efforts reported in Tony Abbott's controversial speeches wiped ...

For the love of the long absent god, strike it from the record and wipe it from the intertubes as best as can be done.

It's one thing to note that Abbott has a weary speechwriter capable of many wearying mistakes, quite another to note that Abbott came up with a joke about converting Asia to the Jesuit cause all by himself, off the cuff ...

And now, here's the top stories at digital Fairfax this morning:

And the digital lizard Oz:

Notice anything missing?

Oh here it is:

Seems so long ago, doesn't it?

Anything to report, David Rowe, as we advise all to seek more Rowe here? Why thank you Cap'n, carry on Cap'n, and soon the whole world will know the real meaning of Jesuitical ...

Murdochland, full of apologists and pure, distilled essence of evil, and an exorcist nowhere to be found ...

Is there a more insufferable sight imaginable than a Catholic denouncing morals and ethics?

Ethics are the new black. It's no longer enough to disagree with your opponent, they have to be morally bankrupt as well. So this paper's editorial position is not just wrong but evil; the Abbott government's policies are beyond misguided and are unethical; and the repeated failures of the Wallabies exceed incompetence and constitute turpitude.

Does anyone see any irony in this?

Given that the Catholic church has routinely, for many centuries, denounced its opponents as morally bankrupt, filthy vessels filled with evil, and even worse, destined to hell, or at least purgatory, or perhaps with a bit of luck and being in the right category, limbo, though it seems the status of limbo is now lost and the young 'uns diddled, what with the church having invented the concept and then announcing that it no longer exists.(Oh dear, here).

Indeed the Catholic church is inordinately fond of evil, and of moral judgements, not to mention black garb.

Which is why hapless, hopeless, useless Greg Craven has to start off Blame game distracts from issues of government (behind the paywall and let's hope it stays there), with idle talk of Ethics, since a mention of mother Grundy sanctimonious righteous Moralising would be a little too close to the Catholic bone.

Craven, in a way that can only be called cowardly lion, calls out both sides of the house for their verbal fisticuffs, and then wouldn't you know it, having washed his hands vigorously in a bowl of cleansing water, proposes this:

Yet here, in a context where the word ethics is uttered about as often as the terms love and respect, is an ideal opportunity to apply a genuine ethical critique. 
The need is obvious. At its worst, federal-state relations are an ethics-deficient zone comparable to the Somali pirate coast. Not for the nothing are they universally called the blame game. Too often, this really is a game, where participants cynically try to shift responsibility while maximising advantage, with the public always without a chair when the music stops.

Somali pirate coast? This is a genuine ethical critique? This from the man who denounced people for adopting ethics as the new black?

Consulting a clinician, the pond was assured that this was a sure sign of schizophrenia, a very specific and acute form, one where comparing state politicians to Somali pirates can be seen as ethical because it's "black Greg" who is in control of the keyboard ...

And then "white Greg" resumes control and spends the rest of the column banging on about state-federal relations as if he's just reinvented the federation wheel, which has been turning ever since federation, and to which Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott's recent, singular, inept Gonski education folly is just one remarkable contribution, but only one of many ...

It's harmless enough rhetoric, if also completely useless and meaningless. If Craven had just scribbled I say, old chums, pip pip, wot wot, can't we jolly do a bit jolly better, and get a long a little better, in an ethical sort of way, old things, egad, wot wot, yaroop garoooah, it would have been a lot shorter and just as much to the point.

But thanks to Craven, the pond came to realise that indeed the Murdochian rags were now fortified paranoid castles of distilled essence of pure evil, and it was far too late for an exorcism.

The pond was most impressed with a reader's link to a spider's web of connections, here, which rivalled old Lucifer herself.

Meanwhile Lucifer's far-flung minions were at it again, practising their dark arts of deception (by golly is that written in the new Catholic ethical black style or what?)

Truth to tell, they never shut up, and above all, the Bolter never shuts up. It's as close to the pure evil they found in the cellar in Evil Dead as anything the pond has come across.

No, not the Bieb, though the Bied and the Bolter does provide a weird and a marvellous symmetry.

But forget the Bieb, for the Bolter is once again busy being revolting.

There is of course absolutely no point reading what the Bolter has to say in We've had enough of Aunty's bias, beyond the standard rejoinder that any sane person would have long ago had a gutful of the Bolter's insane vitriolic bias, or the ideological zealotry of the House of Murdoch that gives him a platform to shriek his venom into the already carbon-loaded atmosphere.

Day after day, banging on about the ABC? Where's Greg Craven when he's needed? Oh that's right, he's doing a bit of cowardly lion window dressing for the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

But here's a few words Greg Craven might care to consider should he ever care to contemplate the evils done by the Bolter in what is now a failing, flailing, evil Empire, intent on reducing its public enemy to rubble in the forlorn hope that this will somehow improve its commercial prospects:

Leftist bias, suffocating size, warmist, bias, political soap box, overbearing reach ...

Etc etc and so on.

The self-interest, the pitiful self-regard, struts each line - yes, the rags that claim to own 65% of readership in Australia are threatened, overwhelmed, struggling to survive, groaning under the yolk of such an overbearing reach.

It's the ABC wot done it. And nothing to do with the reality that sitting down to read the Murdoch press is now a most unappetising sight and meal, even for those determined to find the comedy in it.

There's little humour in unpleasant harping and carping, and vengeful cries for revenge and revolt, no more than it was fun to watch the Branch Davidians get taken down in Waco, Texas.

The problem with the rhetoric is a simple one. Argue about its size all you like, but the ABC doesn't dominate the marketplace. To suggest it does is mindless and childish, and simply ignores the commercial realities and the ratings.

About all that the Bolter can be offer along these lines is crocodile tears about Fairfax:

The ABC is now so big and well-funded that it is killing off private voices. It offers free the same kind of online news and views to the same audience that The Age and Sydney Morning Herald must charge for just to survive. 

The Bolter shedding tears for the Fairfaxians? Does crocodile hypocrisy get any more grotesque?

Even more peculiar that The Guardian and soon enough the Daily Mail are about to land in Australia, mixed blessings that, and possibly in due course American brands like Huffington Post, all folks who made the conceptual leap to online - as did, it has to be said, the BBC and the ABC, while the Murdochians were still busy conducting their crusade against the NBN and genuine connectivity, and urging that we all stay back in the dark days of copper.

To blame the ABC for the fate of the Fairfaxians, while ignoring the role the Fairfaxians have played in their diminished reach? Beyond the valley of the bizarre, a cheap trick which avoids any sensible scrutiny of what actually went down, and how the Fairfax board routinely ignored advice about the new online world, until it was much too late ... (don't get the pond started on the advice they ignored, we could be here all day).

When it comes to the crunch, the Bolter has only one example - just one - of a media failure which can allegedly be laid at the door of the ABC:

That is uneven competition. Last month Politifact, a political fact-checking web site run by a former Fairfax executive, announced it was winding down operations and could close, in part because the ABC this year created its own online political fact-checking unit.

Note the canny "in part".

Truth to tell, it was a half-arsed idea, quickly and cheaply borrowed from the United States, without sufficient capital, and without sufficient interest once the hysteria of the election campaign receded and people went back to their standard titles for their quick overview of the day's events.

After all, it's well known in Australia that politicians lie.

The Liberals under Abbott are most adept at it, complete with backflips and triple pikes, though it has to be said Labor isn't so bad at it either, when not distracted by the bigger pleasure of knifing each other.

How long did it take the Greens to hop into bed with jolly Joe Hockey, or should that be jolly Joe hopping into bed with the Greens? Who needs to fact check that? Who needs to go back and be reminded of the rhetoric about the evil greenies and the dangers of debt and all the other horseshit that flowed into the ocean of Murdoch tree killers?

Who's astonished that Australia, in the most naked exercise of power, and in the process the most inept betrayal of the status and security of foreign aid workers, would conduct itself in the way it has in the East Timor affair?

Or that just as predictably The Australian would deliver a heart-rending sobbing editorial, Lest Timor forget, we have our national interests too, which nauseatingly proposes that East Timor owes Australia and now must pay the bill:

Meanwhile, our intelligence and security agencies are obliged to do what they can within the law to protect our nation's interests.

Commercial interests? Alexander Downer?

What need of a fact checker, when daily you can choke on your cornflakes or your vomit, depending how your consumption of Murdochian nonsense goes down.

It's a sign of a rabid ideologue that no matter what the circumstance or the complaint, at some point the hoppy toad that sits in the brain, and provides a daily madness and fixation comes hopping out, and as always in the case of the Bolter, it's climate science, and Climategate, and Robin Williams and all the usual black helicopter shibboleths and nightmares:

The ABC is not just biased. It is a massive organ of state media, strangling private voices and imposing a Leftist orthodoxy that thinks it fine to publish security secrets and sinful to report the secrets of global warmists. Yes, it's time to revolt.

Strangling private voices?

Can anyone anywhere at any time get the Bolter to shut up? Can anyone strangle him? Please someone strangle him (disclaimer, this is not an invitation or an offer or an inducement to an assassin, and no money or reward, either verbal or containing a prize or even an Xmas cracker is available from the pond).

The secrets of global warmists?

Every day the paranoia level at News Corp seems to crank up to a new level.

If it's not the ABC having tentacles in children, it's the ABC as part of a conspiracy of global warmists concealing dark secrets ...

You don't need a fact checker to realise that you're dealing with the barking mad.

The Bolter harping on endlessly, in a monomaniacal way about climate science, reminded the pond of a Charles Darwin quote which bobbed up the other day on radio, and which was first to be found in the introduction to The Descent of Man:

It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Nailed the Bolter in one, and Darwin was scribbling back in the days of copper.

What was it Craven said?

This paper's editorial position and crony commentariat team is not just wrong but pure, distilled, essence of evil. Waiter, call an exorcist, but if you can't find one, Max von Sydow will do ...

Why, that's almost as good as Dr Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) in Halloween on meeting the biggest and best Murdochian of all:

I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.

Instead he ended up in the crony commentariat working for Chairman Rupert.

Meanwhile, the pond's war on Xmas is cranking up a notch, as wicked slack-arsed corporate email cards drop in email boxes around the land. Talk about the spirit of Xmas!

Now enjoy Xmas - if you can - with this David Rowe portrait hanging from your toilet door, and more Rowe here.

Please don't ask the pond to count the delights in this cartoon, we could be here all day. Send it to a friend. Email is best. Tell them to hang it from their toilet door. Let's spread the spirit of Xmas far and wide ...

Amazing scenes and an exciting new poetry competition, thanks to the reptiles at the lizard Oz

The pond has long yearned for the return of the Ezra Pound modernist poetry competition.

Sure, Pound had his difficulties, with a tendency towards fascism and madness, but his contribution to modernism shouldn't be overlooked.

So you can imagine the profound excitement the pond felt when it discovered that the editorialist at The Australian had recently published an epic poem. Yes it did, here, but to help it in the competition, the pond has done a little formatting. It was under the heading:

Requiem for Angry Old White Males - EXCLUSIVE

Regardless of what he is writing about -
The Gallipoli centenary, Labor's existential turmoil
Or the policy pratfalls of a new government,
As he is today -
Our editor-at-large, Paul Kelly,
Brings his penetrating insight and peerless authority.
The Australian is blessed with writers
Such as Dennis Shanahan on politics,
Greg Sheridan on foreign affairs,
John Durie on business
And Judith Sloan
And David Uren on economics,
And many others in the top rank,
Who have lived through the big moments
In the nation's history
And are able to provide readers
With a sense of perspective,
Knowledge
And
Balance
On the issues of the day.
Along with experienced editors,
They allow us to cut through the noise
And tumult
Of a frenetic news cycle
To explain events.
Yet that can't be said
Of all media outlets,
Especially when seasoned journalists
Are being traded for ones
Unable to see beyond the dazzle
Of the instantaneous fix
Of Twitter or web-first publishing.
These callow reporters and trainee talking heads
Are setting the pace at
Fairfax Media
And the ABC,
With their "breaking" views and zippy analysis
Five minutes after something has happened.
We can see the crude results
In the way the Abbott government
Is being portrayed as bad, mad and chaotic
By the baby faces in the press gallery and beyond.
To date, the low-point of juvenilia
Was struck by John van Tiggelen,
Editor of The Monthly,
Old enough to know better
But clueless about Canberra,
Who wrote about the Abbott government's
"Onanistic reverence for John Howard"
And described it as
"This frat party of Young Liberals
Who refuse to grow up".
This twaddle
Would be harmless
If these ill-informed innocents
Were on the fringes of new media,
Learning their craft in the minor leagues.
Alarmingly, these infantile musings
Reflect the priorities of their organisations:
It's a reverse-publishing model,
Which sees the trivialities of Generation Y
Setting the agenda
For once-venerable newspapers,
Which traditionally served
Older, educated, middle-income readers
In Sydney and Melbourne.
No wonder Fairfax Media editors
Have lost touch with loyal readers
And the respect of the old-hands
Still in the newsroom.
At the ABC, Triple-J
Alumni have wrested
Cultural and editorial control
In the face of insipid leadership
From managing director
Mark Scott
And his news director,
Kate Torney.
You wonder if anyone's
Really in charge
At Pyrmont,
Docklands
And Ultimo
And how long
This idiocy can last.

It was inspirational stuff, right up there with Sir Henry Newbolt, who admittedly wasn't modernist, but who did much to inspire modernism, what with the revulsion felt towards fusty old angry white men sitting in leather chairs in clubs bemoaning the young for not having a jolly good time in the first world war.

Happily First Dog rose to the epic challenge and came up with this, an equally epic response, which you may have to click to enlarge, or head off to First Dog here (may be paywall affected), to gain a full depth insight. It came to the pond with the rather cruel heading "Self Frotting Editorial" but we will accept the contestant's heading:

Comment should not be cheap (or this funny):

And then the Crikey editorialist, here, behind the paywall, decided to offer up another challenge just yesterday, setting the judges on edge, and the audience wild with excitement:

Regardless of what he is writing about -
The nuances of government policy,
Labor's existential turmoil
O the policy pratfalls of a new government -
Our politics editor, Bernard Keane,
Brings his penetrating insight
And peerless authority.
Crikey is blessed
With writers
Such as Guy Rundle
And Jane Caro
On the state of the world,
Margot Saville and Cathy Alexander,
Matthew Knott on media,
Paddy Manning on business,
Raymond Gill on arts and culture,
And many others in the top rank,
Who have lived through the big moments
In the nation's history
And are able to provide
Readers with a sense of perspective,
Knowledge
And balance
On the issues of the day.
Along with experienced editors,
They allow us to cut through
The noise and tumult
Of a frenetic news cycle
To explain events.
Yet that can't be said of all media outlets,
Especially when seasoned journalists
Are being traded
For ones unable to see
Beyond the dazzle
Of the instantaneous fix
Of Twitter or web-first publishing.
These callow reporters
And trainee talking heads
Are setting the pace
At News Corporation,
With their "thoughtful" views
And inane analysis five minutes
After something has happened.
We can see the crude results
In the way the ABC
Is being portrayed
As bad, mad and chaotic
By the baby faces in the Murdoch stable.
To date,
The low-point of juvenilia
Was struck by Greg Sheridan
And Janet Albrechtsen
In The Australian.
For the sin of publishing the scoop
About Australian phone surveillance
Of the Indonesian president,
Sheridan accuses the ABC
Of being
"Driven by a specific,
Narrow ideological worldview"
And by
"The obsessions
Which emanate from that ideology".
And Albrechtsen goes further,
Claiming ABC managing director Mark Scott
"Chose to fuel tensions and nationalist sentiments
In a fledgling democracy"
And "to undermine an immigration policy
Aimed at preventing deaths at sea".
This twaddle
Would be harmless
If these ill-informed innocents
Were on the fringes of new media,
Learning their craft
In the minor leagues.
Alarmingly,
These infantile musings
Reflect the priorities of their organisation:
It's a reverse-publishing model,
The manic frothing of a conservative cult
Setting the agenda
For a once-venerable newspaper,
Which traditionally served older,
Educated, middle-income readers
In Sydney and Melbourne.
No wonder News Corp editors
Have lost touch with loyal readers
And the respect of the old hands
Still in the newsroom.
At The Australian,
Ayn Rand alumni
Have wrested cultural
And editorial control
In the face of insipid leadership
From editor Chris Mitchell
And his acolytes.
You wonder
If anyone's really in charge
At Holt Street a
And how long
This idiocy can last.

Let the competition continue.
Let blank verse
Of mindless blankness
Reign supreme.

In the interim, the pond thinks that First Dog should get the nod, if only for his post-modernist blend of blank verse and graphic stylings. But we are inclined to give a special award to the editorialist at the lizard Oz, for originating the competition with such a stimulating display of masturbating in public.

This is the way forward, transforming sexual values and public debate at one and the same time.

The pond is also, in the spirit of getting everyone to participate, open to the notion of the competition being called the Ayn Rand Prize for Frottage, though serious post-modernists might argue that all forms of onanism should be encouraged:

In which the pond takes a look at weird tentacled aliens and other science fiction thanks to Dame Slap and Miranda the Devine ...

(Above: you might think this was found on Facebook, but the pond swears blind it was found on the new drone pad installed out the back where the garage used to be).

The drones are joining Skynet? How much longer before the much yearned for revolution takes place, sister machines?

In the interim, of course, the drones have to make do with joining News Corp and working for Chairman Rupert.

Speaking of drones, it's a measure of just how low the Abbott government has sunk that this week that Janet - Dame Slap to you - Albrechtsen this week gives up defending the follies, and instead drifts into a bizarre anti-PC reverie, which involves a yearning for the 1970s.

Truly amazing.

You can always measure the level of delusionalism in conservatives by their yearning for a "golden age" when by definition things were much better, kids were much more resilient, life was tough in a Spartan moral, Boy Scouts' and Girl Guides' way, and we all got up at 4 am from our cardboard box beside road to go down mine with a cheerful smile, to put in another 26 hour day ...

It was a time when, if a kid annoyed you at school, you annoyed the kid right back, instead of branding it bullying, because that legal goldmine had not been discovered. And when a kid fell over, the kid got back up instead of being scooped up by a parent hovering over their little princess in the playground. It was more a case of "Dry your eyes, princess"

Indeed and when someone king hits you in the street today, and kills you, why you just bounce back up on your feet, and king hit them, and hopefully their head will hit the ground the same way yours did, and you'll kill them ...

What's the bet that Dame Slap was in her salad days a right old Ja'ime? (An insult about as extreme as the pond can muster given the quality of the comedy).

I'm not bullying the shit out of you, as I grind you into the ground and pummel, I'm just annoying you a little, and you're too gutless and weak to take it ...

What, you went and killed yourself? Why what a sensitive over-the-top reaction, you hopelessly precious petal ...

Perhaps that's the true appeal of sledging at least for those not infected by the PC virus. It harks back to a time that encouraged resilience, not fragility. It may have done so unwittingly, but that doesn't make it any less instructive - and worth praising.

Yep, and so the Murdochians can keep up the bullying hate fest and the relentless incessant shrieking sledging, and keep on belting the shit out of lefties, greenies, pussies, feminists, ABC cardigan wearers, fibre tech heads, climate scientists involved in a vast UN conspiracy, and so on and so forth ...

Look, all the pond can do is recommend the comedy stylings on offer, in Cricket's verbal biff sign of resilient time, which will reward connoisseurs with the elementary skills required to avoid lizard Oz's paywall.

This surely will be enough of an inducement. Dame Slap on cricket sledging:

Because humour can disarm and distract, witty banter has always been the most devastating.

Dame Slap's prime example of witty banter, and disarming, distracting humour?

Australia captain Michael Clarke warned England fast bowler James Anderson to "get ready for a f . . king broken arm"

Oh dear, she can't even spell "fucking" but how grand to see that Aunty Jack has at last come back on her motorbike to save the day ...

It seems that it was just a bit of bad luck one of the lads verbally dusted up one of those weakling pussy English cricketers, the weak fucking prick, and got into trouble just because the weak fucking prick was battling some personal demons. What a loser, what a dropkick.

Now where's someone the pond can king hit while as pissed as a parrot?

Oh the Murdoch style is catching, wot wot? Bullying? Never! No, never! It's just the pond being resilient in the face of relentless fuckwittery ...

You see, that's next week's column lined up. How deplorable it is that we've all lost control of ourselves and fail to act with suitable gentility and decorum, and use vile words in public discussion, not like it was in the 1970s in Toorak and South Yarra. (And if you believe that, you've never tried to get a collar a space in the Toorak supermarket car park ...)

Meanwhile, things must be getting a little tricky when even the ponderous Paul Kelly - not the singer but the ghost of pompous journalism past that haunts the pages of the Oz like the ghost of Scrooge - can raise a cautious tut tut:

A gyrating poodle Pyne sending tremors through the land? But, but, but, billy goat, he was just giving all those bloody PC types a bloody good dust up ...

If you can be bothered to read The real story behind the Gonski train wreck, it is, remarkably the story of a train wreck wreaked by shallow, incapable, incompetent politicians ... Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne ... and amazingly it doesn't blame the train wreck on the ABC.

Meanwhile, hearts are all aflutter about Australia dropping down the international charts in terms of educational standards, when the solution is there for all to see. Every high school student must do a course in first year, let's call it 101 sledging and bullying for Australia. There'll be no looking back ... henceforth the twenty tweens will be known as the new 1970s. Because? Well because Murdochians live in a dream-like past ...

Speaking of droning bullies of the basest kind and blaming the ABC, happily Miranda the Devine is out and about today in the Daily Terror.

Yep, it's time, for the billionth squillionth time for those treacherous, traitorous cardigan wearers at the ABC to be given a solid bullying and with a bit of luck a broken arm, and that's just for starters, until we get on to a king hit:

It's moments like this that the pond has to go out and king hit a telephone pole to regain a grasp on reality.

Right at the moment, the howling media mob known as the Murdoch press claims it can reach 65% of the Australian market. In radio, the ABC generates respectable figures, but commercial radio is by far the dominant force. Here you go, take a look at some of the 2013 ratings. Why what a grand 0.1% RN scored amongst the 18-24s (oh okay, it did hit 4.2 for the +65)

As for TV, the reality is that the ABC is only third because the Ten board and management are totally hopeless, but even then it's way behind the dominant forces of Nine and Seven.

Yet it's part of the demonic ranting of Miranda the Devine - who, it has to be said, shows all the pathological craziness and ideological zealotry that is such a feature of Cory Bernardi's world view - to demonise the ABC as the leader of a howling mob up there with the torch and pitchfork brigade in Frankenstein.

As if the Abbott government hadn't done a single thing to fuck things up.

It's beyond the valley of the delusional, but that's where you must go if you read the Devine.

What's even more bizarre is that today she has two stabs at it:

No, not Miranda Kerr, she's just trying to make a living, the crazy paranoid one below, getting worried about the enormous beast with tentacles across the internet.

This sort of thing:

What's the bet that in quiet moments at home, the Devine secretly, furtively reads tentacle porn, strange stories of alien beasts coming through the internet tubes to molest her, and do immense harm to the children?

There is some good news. Biased ABC leads a howling media mob is safely locked behind the Terror's paywall. 

Well it's not so safe of course, because a child of ten could get around it, but then children aged ten have got better things to do. Like join Dame Slap in a cheerful bout of cruel bullying ...

Let's just pluck a highlight from it, like a crow pecking at the eye of a sweet, innocent lamb, a hapless lamb fearful of those vicious ABC bullies doing their black crow routines:

...when Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi launched a scathing attack on the ABC in the Coalition party room yesterday, he was reflecting the opinion not only of his party's conservative base but of the bulk of his parliamentary colleagues. 

The applause he received was a pointed rebuke to his old foe, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who continues to defend the national broadcaster. 

"I'm concerned because it's not our ABC, it's not my ABC, it's 'their' ABC," Bernardi said. "It's a taxpayer-funded behemoth that is cannibalising commercial media while spreading a message that ignores the majority views of Australians." 

Bernardi told colleagues he does not advocate privatising the ABC since it has a role to play in regional communities. 

But the national broadcaster "no longer complies with its charter of fairness and balance. "It is politically biased, regularly unfair and has priorities completely at odds with its raison d'être,'' he said.

"Gone are the days when it simply operated TV and radio services. It has a massive online presence providing at taxpayers expense what commercial media operations need to charge for, four television channels and who knows how many radio licences. 

"It is out of control and needs to be reined in. It needs to be broken up and returned to its primary purpose rather than the engorged propaganda unit it has become." 

Bernardi is on the backbench because he was marginalised by many in his own party before the election for refusing to maintain a safe, politically correct line. Turnbull particularly targeted him because Bernardi led the revolt against the ETS which ended his leadership and launched Abbott. 

Now Bernardi is leading the conservative revolt against the ABC, and again he is on the right side of history.

Bernardi was of course marginalised and sidelined because he was a barking mad extremist on too many issues to list here, because frankly we haven't got the time or the space, and the intertubes is already full to overflowing.

But it's compelling that the barking mad Bernardi now has a mouthpiece in the shape of the barking mad Devine, ready to regurgitate his bile at the drop of a hat.

Speaking of sci fi and horror, she's channeling him like one of those psychics who get possessed by demons and are found to be in need of an exorcist.

As for The ABC's evil plan to get tentacles into kids, also behind the really dumb Terror paywall, you cop some rich, fruity, barking mad, black helicopters, and vast conspiracy nonsense which makes Tony Perkins in Psycho seem quite well-balanced and adjusted:

The ABC is an enormous beast, with tentacles stretching across the internet and digital TV at a time when other media organisations are struggling to survive. 
 Its success at enforcing the narrow groupthink of the Left cannot be over-estimated, and not just on obvious flagship programs such as QandA. 
 Take its controversial education show Behind The News, watched by more than one million unsuspecting children each week. 
 With a cheery youth-friendly style, it promotes the soft-left line on everything from asylum seekers to gender equality to big government spending.

Oh won't someone think of the hapless unsuspecting children.

One of the show's crimes?

Why do a Paul Kelly on the Gonski affair.

Clearly Kelly was a sleeper, long ago infused with leftist propaganda by The Argonauts Club, and only now has he been released to stalk the land.

It's a short rant for the paranoid Devine, but it concludes this way:

Subtle propaganda to children is all part of the ABC's long march.

Eek, the Maoists are on a long march.

Actually it's going to be a long hard row for the ABC to hoe in the next few months, as the relentless drones at News Corp crank up the hysteria to way beyond 11, with Cory Bernardi leading the charge to get the ABC offline, because that's how dumb luddites think ...

Bernardi wants to turn back time even further than Dame Slap, back to Blue Hills and men tapping with pencils to imitate the sound of cricket balls striking bat. Egad Sir, none of that modern digital stuff, if you please.

Barking mad.

But this relentless campaign by the barking mad, the tentacled Murdochians, the howling media mob who love bullies and bullying, will culminate in the first budget of the Abbott government, where the ABC will have its wings clipped.

Oh it will be dressed up as sharing the pain, and everybody suffering, and we must tighten the belt, because we're in a budget emergency, except when we're increasing the debt limit or flinging around a billion or two because we mucked up the Gonski affair.

Of course the Devine attacking the entirety of the ABC's output because she takes offence and a gate at one children's television program is grotesque and unfair ... but that's because News Corp itself is a monolith beehive culture, right out of  The X-Files, paranoid and alien, and full of strange creatures all buzzing in unison to the thought waves emanating from the master of the hive ...

Sound a little weird?

(Above: yes cult lovers, the first two are Children of the Damned, the third The X-Files wanting to believe, or if you believe the Devine, children who've watched too much on the ABC or perhaps Spongepants Bob, another deviant with all that humbug stuff about getting along and loving one another. Pathetic)

But then, think about it, just how weird is this?

The ABC is an enormous beast, with tentacles stretching across the internet and digital TV at a time when other media organisations are struggling to survive. 

And now they're coming to get the children ...

After you've been through this sort of nonsense, where to turn? How to regain a grasp on reality?

How to remind yourself that propagandists are most zealous about propaganda, because deep down they're up there with Stalin, seeking to bring enemy media to heel with a jackboot, to silence alternative voices, to erase memory?

Forget it Jake, in the land of science fiction and Murdochians know how to do it, urging us all back to the 1970s, or screaming in fear at tentacles.

Remind us Mr Pope, give us a sci fi blast from the past, and it should now almost go without saying, more great Popery here:

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.