The pond's double bunger day comes to a close with a Tuesday reptile catch-up...

 

The pond was so agitated that it missed its day with the Tuesday reptiles that it decided to do a double bunger day, with a little catch-up post late in the arvo for reptile specialists ...

Not that the pond intends to go all the way ... some of the reptiles the pond was happy to miss ...

The pond has no idea why the reptiles are obsessed with New Zealand. 

The days of the wide comb war are long over, and last the pond checked the population was just a tad over five million ... yet somehow they seem to pose a threat more vast than the sociopathic Vlad the impaler ...

Well the pond has no time for Brendan's brand of tosh, he'd be better off tending to the home fires of increasingly little, bewildered and befuddled England ...

Instead the pond had wanted to do a clever intro by turning to the rabbit warren known as Crikey, with one Warren leading off with https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/10/03/media-whitewash-italys-embrace-of-fascism/  (sorry, paywall might apply)

While we’re waiting to find out what’s going to happen in Brazil, the world’s media is still struggling to explain what just happened in Italy.
Here’s Australia’s establishment voice, The Sydney Morning Herald, giving us some certainty: “The Fascisti represent the best elements in Italy.” There’s nothing to worry about as “not a single organic institution will be challenged or a single function of the state abrogated”.
At least, that was the Herald on November 1 1922, (courtesy of Trove), reporting last century’s first coming of fascism. But it could just as well be today’s complacently conservative media reporting Italy’s latest election.
Here’s Greg Sheridan in The Australian: “Meloni’s program is a perfectly legitimate centre-right amalgam.” In British broadsheet The Telegraph, Allison Pearson wrote: “When I listen to the new Italian prime minister speak, I hear mainstream conservative values that millions of people share.”
Meanwhile, in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, James Morrow explained those values: “Her politics is … a rebuke to an establishment liberalism that has lost its way since the end of the Cold War and now demands high migration, low emissions, and fealty to woke ‘men can have babies’ gender ideology.”
It’s a step back in time: the SMH’s 1922 “special correspondent” similarly situated the politics of the incoming Mussolini in the conservative mainstream: “Government must be decentralised, finance reformed, education extended, Italy’s foreign influence more decisively felt, and mealy-mouthed internationalism and class war purged forever.”
Ah, “mealy-mouthed internationalism and class war” — the “woke” of a century ago.
For news consumers, it’s disconcerting: a global media with a business model dependent on catastrophising events into “NEWS!” is now “nothing to see here” over the political re-emergence of a defining event of the 20th century.

Splendid stuff, and a splendid mention of the bromancer ... 

The pond loves it when the bromancer is MID, and the piece also produced a splendid comment...

Chris, don’t expect me to reject a Fascist Political Party if the alternative is worse. I am used to choosing the ‘least worst’ party to vote for – it is something that I have been doing for the best part of 40 or so years.

Indeed, indeed, and every day the pond imagines political parties that are worse than Herr Hitler's ...

Meanwhile,  Warren was wrapping things up ...

The 1922 Herald did it better, recognising (even applauding) the violence against the “other” powering the first rise: “The Fascisti cleared the Communists out of the factories, harried them onto the streets, repaid murder by murder and smashed and burned their clubs and newspapers.”

Now, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet told the Italian Senate earlier this year, the targets for hate are “Italians and non-nationals of many origins” including “women, Muslims, people with disabilities, Jews, LGBTI people and migrants”.

We saw under Trump (and expect to see this week in Brazil) how violence against the “other” increases when the far-right takes office and empowers its supporters. We see too that it’s most dangerous not on the way in, but when it risks going out of office.

To be fair to the 1922 Herald, they were relying — as all Australian papers then did — on a feed out of Fleet Street, in this case the Daily Chronicle. And to be fair to the Chronicle, it had a later life, beginning in the 1930s, as the staunchly anti-fascist News Chronicle (with its correspondent Arthur Koestler captured and jailed by Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War). It was a 1950s opponent of Britain’s Suez occupation before it sadly ended up absorbed into that most Tory of tabloids, the Daily Mail, in 1960.

A hundred years ago, fascism was just another movement in a far-off country of which even the educated backbench of the Herald would have understood little.

What’s the excuse now?

At which point some party pooping spoilsport and wag popped up with ...

You might add Crikey’s own Guy Rundle to that list of mainstream commentators who have said that Meloni is not actually a fascist of the Hitler variety.

Indeed, indeed, what's the excuse for being grundled now Crikey?

The pond will concede that this was a very long and elaborate detour but the bromancer had been mentioned and the pond would have got to the bromancer in due and proper course, because yesterday he produced a splendid piece ...

The central fact that is never allowed into the reptile debate? The planet is fucked. That's right. Planet fucking is booming, and the reptiles are helping with the fucking ...

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.   
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.   
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,   
And the coalwayman came riding—
         Riding—riding—
The coalwayman came riding, up to the old coal-fired station door.
He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,   
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His coal-blackened boots were up to the thigh.   
And the bromancer rode with a coal-jewelled twinkle,
         His coal-shaped butts a-twinkle,
His coal hilt a-twinkle, under the coal-jewelled sky. (Good on ya Alfie)

Who'd have thought that the bromancer would get back on the coal, dinkum, clean, innocent, sweet Oz coal, when everybody else is busy nuking the planet, but how he loves the stuff, how he loves to help fuck the planet ...

By now it will be easy to see why the pond was agitated that it had missed out on this bromancer classic. When he gets into planet fucking, lordy lordy, sweet long absent lordy, he knows how to do it in style ...

Climate-change happy talk? Zap goes climate science. Moral panic? Just say the rosary and you'll be off to heaven to enjoy an eternal patriarchy ...

Oh it was rich luddite stuff, and you can see why he just had to be a Meloni lover, a kissing cousin with the grundler ...

Actually shouldn't we just allow coal to completely fuck the planet? A few Hail Marys should see the bromancer in heaven, and that's all any climate science denialist could ask for as a form of redemption ... it looks like a pretty sweet place for grundlers and bromancers ...

What else? Well in the triptych at the top of the comments section there was the Oreo and a good groaning ...

The Oreo was pretty standard stuff - you know, Commie Labor party falls for the devious Chinese Commies, and only a valiant reformed recovering feminist on hand to avert the tragedy - but the pond was moved to tears by the Groaner's pious concern for the needy ...

Heart warming or perhaps heart rending, as Dame Groan immediately showed why Scrooge was a much misunderstood and wrongly maligned man ... she's deeply concerned for the little children, just like he was ...

Oh come unto her, little needy children ...

The pond just knew that the Groaner would be agin it, she's very canny when it comes to anything threatening the red backs in the purse ... but all the pond could think of was the devastation if Groan devotees hadn't had the chance to do a catch up on her via the pond ... 

Well the pond has at last been able to do its duty, despite the very worst flung at it by Malware and the onion muncher's monstrous NBN ...

And now duty done, time for a tidbit from the reptiles kissing cousin, the WSJ ...

Now they discover he's a rabid ratbag, and a racist to boot? Where have they been for the last decade?

Naturally the pond had a few US-themed cartoons standing by ...

And then there was just a further short gobbet to go, as if the pond should care for the turtle when he had his chance by way of impeachment, and refused to go there ...

You'd expect the WSJ to entirely forget about the likes of Gabby Giffords, and so it was, and so the forgetting was good, and so the pond could turn to a few cartoons for closers, with the highwayman back in action ...