Taking a Friday tour through Murdoch la la land, with Naomi Wolf as a pleasant entree ...

(Above: Steve Bell doing over the gormless Nick Clegg. Bell was recently on the air with Andrew Marlton and the hapless Phillip Adams. While you have to get past the pompous prattle of Adams, it was a pleasant chat, including the revelation that Marlton is in his forties, and despite his name First Dog, is not a dog. Dreams shattered but still the best reasons to subscribe to Crikey and flick over to The Guardian).


Let's get the pond's set reading out of the way early.

The pond has never thought much of Naomi Wolf, and how pleasant it is to have prejudices reinforced.

Ariel Levy does a very funny demolition job of Wolf's Vagina: A New Biography for The New Yorker in The Space in Between (but sorry it's behind the paywall).

Let's just do a tease with the last par:

... Wolf would not be the first person to replicate what she means to castigate. In "Pornography" (1979), Andrea Dworkin catalogued the goings on in dirty magazines and movies in so much lewd detail that the reader never quite knew whether she ought to be getting mad or getting off. Porn's defining merit, Steinem maintained, was that "much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating another." To skeptics, those who presumed to police the erotic were merely taking up the whip themselves, and trying to assume a position of domination. Naomi Wolf has done her feminist forebears one better. She has found a mistress we must please, serve and honor. Resistance is futile and escape is impossible. There is a new dominatrix in town. And her name is Vagina.

And then there's Maia Szalavitz ravaging the book in Naomi Wolf's Vagina Aside, What Neuroscience Really Says About Female Desire (no paywall). Again the last par as a tease:

The brain and female sexuality are extremely complicated — and reducing them to simplistic formulations that deny women their humanity fails to do justice to either feminism or science. Properly contextualized, neuroscience can add to our knowledge of sexuality, but not if it’s twisted to support sexist ideas about women as “animals” who are so addicted to love that they become zombies. 

Oh dear. Feminists, please pay attention, there will be arguments and then questions.

What's that you say? The job of the pond is the back-breaking, grinding, relentless, never-ending, Sisyphean, Herculean task of observing the follies of the commentariat, and talk of vaginas is all very well but entirely beside the point?

Okay, okay, but can't we just sample one more par by Levy?

Watch what you say around the vagina. Over time, if a woman's "vagina is targeted verbally, her heart rate, blood pressure, circulation, and many other systems will suffer chronically," Wolf writes. Thus, if you "bully a woman by insulting her vagina," you are committing an act of physical violence. Wolf claims that vaginal slander - referring to the vagina by its "awful" feline moniker, for instance - "apparently affects the very tissue of the vagina." She bases this conclusion on a study of female rats whose vaginal tissue showed signs of change after periods of stress. The experiment did not, however, entail researchers yelling "Rat pussy!" at the animals; stress was manufactured physically. Wolf's interpretation of the science is, as usual, rather free.

Others have had a go - Vagina by Naomi Wolf - digested read sees John Crace reduce the book to a manageable 400 words, while the NY Times hied off to Wolf to see how she was handling the assault, in Naomi Wolf Sparks Another Debate (on Sex, of Course).

What's that? Talk of vaginas and sex and Wolf, and still you demand we turn aside and see what the commentariat is clucking about? How perverse is that?

Okay, okay, as if you didn't know. The Australian is maintaining the rage and the crusade, and today it's Islam bashing day (is that like "Whacking Day" in The Simpsons?)

There's Gra Gra - Richo to his many fried-rice munching chums - grouching about violent Muslims being recruited in prisons to wreak havoc - "CUT THE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" he sternly admonishes - and Scott Morrison joins with Cory Bernardi to demand Geert Wilders land in the country to stir up more trouble (Cory having done a bunk to stir up troubles amongst the Brits with his magnificent Bazza McKenzie impression, to the considerable astonishment of the Conservatives and the Poms).

The rag is also in a rage about useless advisers - like little Miss Echo Judith Sloan joins in the chant - and Dennis Shanahan lauds Tony Abbott for sticking to his nattering negativity about the carbon tax.

Never mind the news that the Arctic ice reached its lowest recorded level this year (Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets a New Low That Leads to Warmings), or what token gesture Abbott might make in relation to climate science.

Last the pond heard from Andrew Bolt on this matter he was urging Fairfax and the ABC be sent to the Arctic to see how healthy the sea ice was.

Perhaps next northern summer - on Andrew Bolt is a dickhead day - the Bolter could be sent to the Arctic ... and get his head out of his usual ranting about racism and the Islamics (he's so ashamed Americans must walk our streets in fear, and so appalled by the New Racism of restive blacks being up to mischief and wanting a nod in the constitution, the cheeky devils).

Over at the Daily Terror Piers "Akker Dakker" Akerman maintains the rage by demanding new arrivals understand the importance of Learning to be an Aussie, while Ray Hadley demands Muslims stand up to thugs (that's the ones recruited in prison presumably).

The pond got lazy with the links - surely you know your own way through the garbage dump of life - but isn't it reassuring to know nothing has changed in the universe?

Happily Miranda the Devine has lapsed into silence, but speaking of Hadley there's a wondrous beat up on the front digital page of the Terror in which a favourite piñata, Media Watch, is given a sound beating about a story .... it hasn't actually run. Allow a moment to study the splendid splash art work (click to enlarge):

Our Ray? What a defiant, heroic thugby leaguer he is, up against that ABC git.

Eek, and the ABC git drinks champagne. He's a champagne sipper. Say no more.

Did you feel the IQ slipping, as if in a mental earthquake? Oh they'd beat up their grandmother if they thought it would help move a few more papers off the shelf.

And now for keen followers of the current war on Greg Sheridan, in Eric Campbell v Greg Sheridan: it's not over yet, here's exactly what Sheridan wrote in Selective Cold War memories (behind the paywall):

So here, it seems, is how the political lexicon of the 70s works for Marr and many in the ABC. If you thought communism was a bit crook, you were obviously a reactionary fanatic. If you thought the Soviet Union abused and threatened human rights, you were obviously a wild reactionary. If you happened to be a Catholic - worse, a Catholic who played football - you were the most dangerous conspirator in the pack. 

 But if you supported Soviet foreign policy, supported Pol Pot, believed in violence, dedicated yourself to destroying the traditional family and promoted illegal drug use, you were a progressive intellectual whose heroism deserved the nation's thanks.

i.e. David Marr and "many in the ABC" were lovers of Pol Pot, totalitarian Soviet Union, family haters, and drug trade lovers. Was there ever a more ostentatious sweeping generalisation, even for a rag given to the art form?

The man now disremembers writing this drivel, a further sign that Sheridan's mind is unravelling. 

... certainly I don’t believe anyone in the ABC supports totalitarianism

So supporting Soviet foreign policy and Pol Pot doesn't count towards supporting totalitarianism? Because Pol Pot and the Soviet Union were so benevolent?

What a fool he is. At least if you resort to abuse, be consistent in your abuse. Why is it that Sheridan can only manage to be consistently silly?

And that's it for this Friday. All's right with the world, unless Collingwood and Manly win, and the house might not be safe for the pond. But at least the Murdoch mice are safe in their paranoid castles, setting the world, Islamics, the government, and the ABC straight.

Will it be the last time the pond trawls through the gutter of Murdoch land for signs of stupidity? Probably not ...

(Below: and now thanks to a reader, this image, as posted by the jocular Malcolm Farr on Twitter. Sure it's already done the rounds, but the pond believes if you like something, you should spread the ripples as far as you can. Click to enlarge).