Where would the reptiles be without the bromancer?
Even worse, where would the pond be without his cheery presence and his "world" commentary, soon no doubt to turn galactic, or perhaps someday reach the point of the big bang …
The pond knew even before it got going that it had to celebrate with a cartoon …
And so to the weird business for the day …
From the get go, it seemed pretty much like the weird news the pond watches on the tubes from time to time …( a shout out to Eliot and Ricky for keeping the weird alive) …what with the weird bromancer weirdly attempting a defence of the NY Times which weirdly doesn't turn out to be a defence of the rag, but rather is a weird defence of Trumpist lickspittle lackey Tom Cotton ...
You could not possibly describe Cotton's piece as offensive?
Dear sweet loveable bromancer, of course you could. You might call it authoritarian or autocratic or totalitarian or despotic or draconian or tyrannical or oppressive. You could at a pinch bring out proto-fascist.
Better still, you could describe the Donald loving, arse-licking Cotton as deeply offensive … or you could settle for a cartoon …
That's what the pond loves about the bromancer. Almost everything he scribbles is, in some way, truly grotesque, bizarre, weird, and therefore in its own way, bromancer wunderbar (wunderbra if you must) ...
The bromancer still doesn't get it, perhaps because he's not so cleverly disguised as a closeted Trumpist.
The bromancer is always explaining how he dislikes some Trumpian opinion, some nitpicking of this or that, but in the end, he stays true to his Fox kissing cousins. He hopes, he imagines, he sees Trump re-elected and the GOP going on its merry way … and yet …in this case there's no time for both siderism or pretending that Fox News has the slightest interest in free speech or that News Corp isn't a dire threat to the United States, but more importantly, the world …
But leaving the bromancer and the chance to run a few cartoons aside, what slim pickings there were today in the lizard Oz …
Carole Overington reduced to doing strewth? Anxieties about China continuing to dominate?
A couple of politicians acting yet again as "contributors" to the Murdochian fortune? As usual, scribbling behind the paywall instead of communicating with their voters, and yet the reptiles couldn't even get out of bed to give Paul """" Fletcher a thumb portrait …
The pond did think that Callick's piece earned at least an honourable mention for its illustration …
What appeared deeply weird to this Australian was that illustration … and yet despite Callick's assurances that Chinese tourists would return in droves, and Loosley's assurances that Xi was in deep trouble domestically, the reptiles elsewhere displayed some anxiety about the China situation …
What else? Well that left poor old Ben Wyatt assigned a low rent Tom Jellett ...
Not a patch on the cult master, but it was extraordinarily pleasing to see that the reptile readership knew how to keep racism alive …
Well played strict Rod and mystery cat, your Surry Hills overlords will be mightily pleased …
But sadly that only left the pond with Dame Groan …and the reptiles didn't even bother giving her an illustration ...
It's a classic ploy of course … bash the bureaucrats and distract from Josh … and to be fair, Dame Groan is pretty good at the bashing …and instead of taking the usual reptile line, of celebrating the saving, and the consequent reduction in debt, Groan kept on, as she always does, with the moaning and the groaning ...
Ahh, at last… the real problem, Keynesianism still stalking the earth …
But is that the fault of the cardigan wearers? Didn't the government enact all the recent measures. Surely they should take the rap, isn't that why they were elected.
Surely if Keynesianism is still out and about, the fault lies with the Minister? If Dame Groan wants the peasants to live without cake, surely the Minister should introduce them to Groanian Hayekianism?
Prhaps the Minister should also accept responsibility for the works and deeds of his department, unless he's just some kind of political sock puppet who gets up and spouts off whatever he's been told. Perhaps if there was any honour amongst thieves, the Minister should resign.
In the dim distant past, the pond recalls that a set of sheets or a TV set was enough for heads to roll, rather than a lazy $60 billion or so … but nope, in Dame Groan's world, it's all the fault of the cardigans, and they're the only ones that should suffer …because apparently Treasury is a world unto itself, and the Treasurer has nothing to do with its operations, or day to day activities ...
Treasury's not up to the job? But what about the Treasurer? What about Scottie from marketing? Will we all bear the consequences of their inability to run their departments, let alone the economy and the country?
It's too deep a mystery for the pond, but it must now report on a further update in the Rowe affair, with the Australian Jewish News declaring victory …with an amended cartoon, which still kept poor old Josh out of uniform …a mere lickspittle lackey ...
That might explain why Josh is so impotent when running Treasury - not even up to lobsterback status - but the pond again wondered whether the Australian Jewish News spent as much time and energy and space attacking the deeply corrupt Netanyahu, or the proliferation of gulags through the state of Israel.
Sadly the pond already knew the answer, and so instead decided it might as well just run another Rowe, with more Rowe here …
But should the pond forget that other champ'een, that sustainer of the bromance, now lost in irrelevance and consigned to the status of gong collector (perhaps one day he too might wear an Order of Lenin medal to please Major Mitchell)? Of course not, let's hear it for the onion muncher …
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“After the revelation that there had been a $6bn costing error in relation to the JobKeeper program, I was expecting to read about the resignation of the Treasury secretary or the deputy secretary heading the fiscal group. I’m still waiting.”
If you are going to write a column complaining about somebody else’s dodgy maths it would be advisable to check your own figures first.
I’m pretty sure the error was $60bn not $6bn.
It would also appear that it’s not only the opinion editor at the NYT that doesn’t bother reading his correspondents’ columns prior to publishing.
DiddyWrote
I think the reptiles have maybe never heard of, and certainly don't know how to spell, "proofreading", DW Of course they once had lowly paid minions to do that for them; now all 'retired' in the interests of expanding Roopies billions (compared to some real billionaires: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, Buffett and even the Waltons and the Kochs, Roopie is really quite poor, and apart from maybe Fox News, his sources of income are failing).
DeleteWhat a hoot DW, and nicely spotted. The pond is a bit like the NY Times editor - why bother reading Dame Groan when the pond could compose a Groanian column in its sleep? - and sees itself more as a recorder of reptile history, a bit like a Gibbon on the spot to note the decline and fall of the Murdochian empire ...
DeleteOur thanks again to Dorothy for preserving the Dame's original text. My source tells me that it took a couple of hours, with several comments from others who go early to the electronic version of the Flagship, before that version was adjusted for the teensy, weensy, error of the forgotten zero.
ReplyDeleteWise persons caution us against schadenfreude. Given that the Dame had also charged that 'a figure of 6.5 million individuals on JobKeeper was always far-fetched' and 'Do the numbers on the back of an envelope and the figures always sounded wrong.' - but had not drawn the attention of the world, or at least the shrinking readership of the Flagship, to that anomaly, schadenfreude is tempting.
Of course, she may try to dismiss it by claiming that it was just SO obvious, that the select readers of the Flagship could see, immediately, that the numbers were wrong. But, if that were the case, on past form the entire readership would have rushed into 'comment', to call for Treasury to be reduced to a smoking ruin, within the day.
An alternative, simpler, explanation is that the Dame simply did not have a slightly-used envelope to hand to 'do' the numbers. Occam takes the trick.
Chadwick.
I'd definitely go for the last option there. After all, the Groan is an elegant lady, surely not given to storing used envelopes in her Louis Vuitton du jour.
DeleteGB - with Dorothy's tacit approval - a personal message to you. A bleak day here has been brightened by finding a book in the PO Box. It is the Andreas Faludi on planning theory that you mentioned in an earlier discussion. This copy is in good condition, and has made its way from the UK in reasonable time. It has spent much of its life in the library of the University of Surrey, before, it seems, being turned out onto the streets when it reached its 40th birthday.
ReplyDeleteChadwick
Good news, Chad, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I encountered it nearly 40 years ago.
DeleteFrom the Bromancer's blowhole: "However, in a truly grotesque development, 800 staff at the NYT, journalists and non-journalists, decided that merely publishing the piece was profoundly offensive and put the lives of the paper's black reporters at risk."
ReplyDeleteOk, so the Bromancer once again wants to declare the wingnut/reptile self-serving "definition" of "free speech" to be the only definition that could possibly apply. Now the Bromancer, being even less professional that Dame Groan, obviously hasn't noticed the conspiracy theory rubbish circulating around the USA. For instance:
Rightwing vigilantes on armed patrol after fake rumours of antifa threat
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/rightwing-vigilante-armed-antifa-protests
So yes, articles apparently bearing the concurrence, if not the actual approval, of the "respected" NYT could seriously be considered as a provoking and promoting mob violence. And therefore put all black journalists' lives at risk.
But clearly such an obvious thought would never occur to the highly sophisticated Bromancer, would it.
As for the Groaning, how about this: "Perhaps wounded by the poor advice Treasury has provided in the past - pink batts, school halls ..."
Ok, does that really say that it was Treasury that actually proposed pink batts and school halls to the Gang of Four ? Really ? Not that Rudd's team came up with that based on Ken Henry's clearly sensible advice (Go early, go strong, go household for those who may have forgotten). And furthermore, the ideas were good: pink batts to insulate homes and reduce energy demands, school halls because they were all pretty much 'shovel ready' immediately, and were even of some general, multi-generation use. It wasn't the Rudd government's fault that the regulations covering such things as pink batts installs - which were State responsibilities - were so poorly administered.
So, another great day from the ophidiarium.
If there's one thing the reptiles do right, it's when making a mistake, they make a right and propper whopper.
DeleteThe Bromancer would have it that Bennet was forced out because of the column. BARP BARP!! Error detected - this was the straw that broke the camel's back, the mouse that sank the boat as it were. Disgruntlement over his content decisions had festered at the Grey Lady for years. I read this repeatedly in days past.
The entire predication for bro's blow is as rickety as the reno keeper scheme - one puff of wind, and it all falls over.
Do try and keep up brother bro!
Yes it generally takes quite a while and a lot of subscription cancellations for the likes of the NYT to actually admit a mistake and try to fix it. Maybe it was Bennet candidly admitting he hadn't actually read Cotton's article that did it. Which was kind of a serious omission to admit, but maybe it was less serious than admitting he had read it and thought it was just the kind of article the NYT should be publishing.
DeleteIf anybody is interested, there's a lovely hatchet job here:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21281309/new-york-times-op-ed-editor-tom-cotton-is-trump-authoritarian
Next will be admitting that employing the boy super-Karen, Bret Stephens, was at least as big a mistake.
Ophidarium! Plus GB and VC on a rag the pond refuses to read. More blushes please ...
Delete(blush) Ooops.
Delete