(Above: Jon Stewart learns that he's going to be tucked behind the paywall in the antipodes and do his best for the anti-Christ with a perfect 666 score).
The word is that Foxtel has made Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert an offer they can't refuse, and they'll be migrating back from ABC2 to a life behind the paywall.
Damn you Stewart.
Second thoughts, nothing you can do can come between us, you sweetie, you campaigner for sanity. Why I even loved you in your prickly beard, you prickly thing.
So it's damn you Foxtel, you satanic representatives of the power of the beast down under. You think locking Stewart up behind the paywall will make me fork out a dime to support your satanic cause and enrich the House of Murdoch? Hah, I spit on your lavish subscription schemes, I churn before I can up chuck. It's back to online viewing for me ...
Meanwhile, in other news, Dr. No has bet 'all in' on beating Samuel Goldwyn's famous remark that an oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. These days, an actual contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. Well done, Tony 'the Dr. No of politics' Abbott.
Next up? How about taking on Sam's "Let's have some new cliches"? We await your first feral speech to the new parliament. And what about "spare no expense to save money on this one"? Yes, that's the way to put an argument about the NBN together.
Speaking of the NBN, it's another day, and so in The Australian this time you can find fear mongering compiled by Annabel Hepworth and Mitchell Bingemann under the header Delay to NBN laws threatens home building. Yep, it's a disaster if it happens, and it's a disaster if it's delayed, and the entire growth of Australia is threatened by utter devastation.
Sheesh, where's my Chicken Little costume. Have these young hacks - they'd have to be young to whip up this kind of mashed potato kowtowing to their master's orders on a daily basis - no sense of shame? Well I guess the pay cheque balances any guilt ...
Meanwhile, over in the opinion pages, there's tedious Henry Ergas scribbling like a cracked record about the NBN in More dodging of cost-benefits tests.
It's so utterly tedious and predictable that I almost nodded off to sleep.
But there's good news, because I happened to catch Ergas talking to Phillip Adams on LateNightLive. And if you have the constitution of an oxe and a cast-iron stomach and a lead-satured brain, you too can listen to City or Bush?
Adams tossed up a series of gentle under arm of a style and nature sure to outrage any New Zealander, and Ergas in his responses proved that he's perhaps the dullest radio talent ever to produce mind numbing tedium on Radio National. No doubt Adams felt pleased, after Ergas spent the entire time trashing the bush, to clamber into his car and head off to his cosy retreat in the Hunter Valley, while Ergas retired to Wollongong. Who knows, because lulled by the sheer monotony of it all, I nodded off to sleep.
These days Adams delivers up more than a solid dose of Tylenol. Which is great, because we disapprove of taking tablets to get a good night's sleep.
So far, so normal. But in the usual way we hungered for more, and found it in Leo Shanahan's deliciously desperate header for the punch drunk Punch So should we call Parliament off next Tuesday?
To save you the trouble, young Leo comes to the astonishing insight that we shouldn't call off parliament, and that lordy, lordy, wait for it, a speaker will be appointed. Golly, and I just had my Chicken Little costume dry cleaned for the occasion. Could someone give young Leo the job of counting the number of angels on the head of a pin, so innocents might avoid straying into this briar pit of verbal tosh?
Meanwhile, Paul Colgan scored 439 rabid comments for The burqa mural: should it be painted over? while Elizabeth Farrelly only managed 288 for Feminists should see through a garment that crudely defines women.
Both managed to generate more smoke and heat than fiery insight, but clearly the punch drunk Punch can do over the Herald when it comes to sensationalism and a rabidly responsive readership ... But are they making any money to pay their contributors?
Finally since it's Friday and therefore fish eating day for mug punters, we shouldn't overlook The Australian's capacity for regularly recycling Daniel Pipes indulging in the bashing of Islamics in We must not accept the Rushdie rules:
PastorTerry Jones's plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasised, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition.
That said, two other points need be noted: buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the US.
That said, two other points need be noted: buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the US.
Hang on, hang on. Can I just stop at the first point? Buying books (or looting them) and burning them was an entirely legal act in Nazi Germany as well ...
Yes! Take that Godwin's Law.
The brooding Pipes rabbits on yet again at interminable length about the Danish cartoons (without providing a link to them here) and Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses.
Here's a tip. Get on board with the new aggressive militant assertive upstart upsetting atheists. And then you'll be able to pull the giant sized mote from your eye, and mention the profoundly stupid and abject censoring of books indulged in by fundamentalist Christians and more specifically the Texas State Board of Education (More conservative textbook curriculum OK'd).
Treat history as an exercise in politics, and show Joe McCarthy in a more positive light?
Is this where the mad mullahs get their ratbag ideas from? How about a study of the sorry state of censorship around the world? We can offer up Stephen Conroy, and you can remind us how the loons in the United States decided that burning Harry Potter books would help cleanse the world (here) ... Yep, the mad mullahs have got a lot to learn from the mad Christians ...
What a wretchedly prejudiced person is Pipes. Come to think of it, that makes him The Australian's idea of the perfect contributor ...
Finally, it would be remiss not to note Julian Porteous' fine contribution to the cackle meter in Nothing hypothetical about papal persecution.
Yep, to prove that the paranoid sense of persecution felt by The Australian is shared by the Catholic church, the prattling auxiliary bishop gets agitated about Geoffrey Robertson in Nothing hypothetical about papal persecution.
You see, all this stuff about pedophile priests has simply been lathered up into a frenzy to persecute the church, which is doing its very best, and shouldn't have to suffer the cacophony of shrill criticism.
It seems all that's needed these days is a requirement to hate religion, which is amazing considering the very free and willing way the church consigns all disbelievers to an eternity in raging tormenting vile hell fire.
Sadly the Porteous piece could only attract six comments, all largely negative. Looks like burqa bashing and Islamic whacking is still the best end of the pond for whipping up the waves ...
And that, as they say in Tony Abbott's world, is that. The Sydney Symphony is back in town, after some nice reviews (The Scotsman), and all we've got to say about all the loons in this day's pond is "squirrel".
Not sure of the meaning of squirrel? Well as a farewell to Jon Stewart as it emerges he might be leaving free to air for the paywall, here's an offering from a breach in the paywall ...
Damn you Foxtel, damn you House of Murdoch. The redback spiders in my purse will never be harmed or disturbed ...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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"Damn you Foxtel, damn you House of Murdoch. The redback spiders in my purse will never be harmed or disturbed ..."
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I occasionally buy The Australian. I then shred it and spread the strips onto my weeds and they die within 24 hrs and it’s also a superb snail-repellent.
Well we use the SMH to line the guinea pigs hutch, and they do deign to poo on it, even on the occasions that Ms Farrelly has something interesting to say. But they do prefer Sheehan.
ReplyDeleteTragic news about Colbert going behind the paywall, as it was my 8 year old's favourite show. Still not going to pay for it though, 'damn you Foxtel' indeed.