Every day, and often in every way, the pond is startled at the way that illiteracy stalks the land, and what's more, in media which should know better.
Take this header - go on, take it, and with a bit of luck you'll be able to shove it where the sun doesn't shine, as Tamworth wags and wits were wont to say:
Now the story itself, People in the public eye deserve more self-respect, is a plaintive plea for people like the Duchess of Cambridge and Chrissie Swan to be given space and privacy, and never mind that the scribbler works for the HUN (oh okay post modern post irony posturing still has its place).
Now, now, hey hey, you clicked on the link, and you discovered that the header has been changed, to People in the public eye deserve more respect.
Too late. The pond was so shocked and horrified and disturbed, it pickled the original header, and it's now preserved in digital aspic, one more bit of detritus filling the full to overflowing intertubes.
Now there's nothing wrong with the theme, because the pond gives huge amounts of privacy and respect to the Royal Family, except maybe bonnie Prince Charley, when Chuckie, aka the talking tampon, gets to writing angry letters to government about the many bees in his bonnet.
And the pond has paid absolutely no attention to Chrissie Swan, despite Swan's best endeavours to make a media meal out of her fifteen minutes of fame.
But all that said, how on earth did the original header see the light of day?
When Ms O'Brien is saying this ...
I’m not saying we should just leave celebrities alone totally, but allowing them to have a bit more dignity wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us.
Really the hastily revised header should have read People in the public eye deserve more respect and a bit more dignity, not too much because we wouldn't want them to be too dignified and up themselves, but a bit more, or at least as much as allows the HUN and The Punch to put together a barely literate tabloid perspective on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, people in the public eye or the HUN can go to work on their self-respect by themselves or with their chosen therapist.
Sheesh, every day in every way the pond is visually assaulted by people who fail to give it the self-respect it deserves.
And another thing.
What on earth prompted the editors of The Drum to run a "think" piece by Warren Reed where thinking is only conspicuous by its absence?
Reed purports to be writing with an intelligence officer's understanding of the fuss over the matter of Prisoner X, Zygier publicity presents common interest for Israel and Australia.
(Above: that's the latest story? It's been up for days, since February 15th as the ABC stays asleep at the wheel)
It is in the interests of both the Australian and Israeli governments to do what they can to minimise the fallout from the case of Prisoner X, Ben Zygier, writes Warren Reed.
Minimise the fall out? At no point does Reed manage to flat out say it's flat out wrong for the Israeli government and its minion spies to misuse fraudulently Australian passports, obtained illegally and used in the past by people involved in actual assassinations.
Instead we get this kind of sob stuff:
An overwhelming majority of men and women who work in spy services like Mossad are just like people in the street. They're paying off mortgages, educating their kids and they all have their own ethical and moral standards like we do...
When they're not topping an enemy of the state in best Jason Bourne style using false Australian passports...
And then it's back to that punchline:
... When two governments find themselves lumbered with something like this it is clearly in the interests of both to work out how to minimise the fall-out.
Lumbered with it? Like they had nothing to do with it?
Minimise the fall-out? Like send up a smokescreen?
How about stopping the illegal trade in Australian passports? How about the Australian government stopping acting like a shlemiel, a schlimzel, a schmendrik, a schmuck, and start acting like a mentsch towards Israel's knuckle-draggers?
Dear sweet absent lord, even the Kiwis can walk taller in the matter of telling the Israeli government mis-use of passports is a no-no. All Reed can offer is a string of excuses about how it's all too hard.
And if you think that's where the kvetching ends, think again, because wouldn't you know, along comes Israel with another serve of chutzpah.
Cop this:
Israel has denied making secret compensation payments to the Melbourne family of Ben Zygier over his 2010 death in a maximum-security prison, amid claims he was about to give evidence on the use of fake Australian passports by intelligence agency Mossad.
Israeli television station Channel 2 reported that no payment would be made unless negligence could be proven in Mr Zygier's alleged suicide, which occurred while the 34-year-old was under 24-hour surveillance in a ''suicide-proof'' cell. (here)
24 hour surveillance in a "suicide-proof" cell, and yet he's dead by suicide, and there's no negligence, and no compensation to his family?
And now they don't even look after their own and instead sneak out stories denying compensation?
Enough already ... what a corrupt and disheartening state its become under its current crop of raving ratbag right wing warlords.
And now, to end on a lighter note, the Ruddster is continuing his campaign to woo voters, this time by scribbling Therese's triumphs and my failures balance out for the Sunday Terror.
It contains what the pond is assured by experts can be called 2MI, or TMI, or more forcefully, TMFFI, which is to say too much family fucking information.
The pond turned to acronyms after being inspired by the Ruddster's sage advice:
So the principle is pretty basic guys (yes it is the MALE gender I'm primarily addressing here). It's the JDSU principle. Just Don't Screw Up guys.
JFW.
Can the pond humbly suggest a variation? JDSLTFFCR guys, or just don't sound like the fucking former chairman Rudd, guys
But do go on with the sage advice:
Don't go to the footy on your anniversary and DON'T buy a slightly ragged bunch of flowers from the local supermarket on your way home from work on the afternoon of her birthday (hint, she shops there too and will know within a 5c margin how much of a cheapskate you've really been). Because if you do guys, the marital equivalent of the cordial relationship that exists between North and South Korea awaits you.
Uh huh. Well there's as stereotypical and as mercenary a vision of relationships as any the pond has seen in recent times, with bonus shouting caps thrown in.
Should the pond now burn the roast as punishment? Perhaps bung on a frosty silence? Go into a gigantic sulk?
Perhaps the most nauseating moment came with this:
As I said, keeping our family close is still a work in progress.
But our kids have now become our closest and best friends.
Sure, our family has been lucky because Therese's success has offset her husband's failure, so it is easier for us to have the kids travel home to Brisbane.
Never mind the family stuff - everybody gets soppy and sentimental sometimes - the big news is that the Ruddster's a failure.
Thank the absent lord he's not beavering away trying to get himself back into the highest office in the land. Who'd want an abject failure, a nattering narcissist, in the top job?
But is he a failure? As poor buggers on the pension understand the concept ...
Even if Therese kicked him out on his ear right here, right now, for writing such a maudlin, pathetic column, he's a former PM with a substantial parliamentary super package, and right at the moment, he's hauling in a base pay of $190,550 (quick, check out your salary, super, travel allowance and other entitlements and allowances here).
Does he have even the remotest idea how clunky he sounds? How forced, how superficial, how tedious?
And then we cop this as a closer:
... our experience is that all families in this crazy modern world of ours are going through the same sort of pressures in trying to hold it all together.
And it is important for our individual and collective sanity that we do.
Actually in this crazy modern world, whacky and zany as it is, a kind of mad, mad, mad world, just like that old movie, the only thing that's affected the pond's individual and collective sanity in recent times has been the reading of the Ruddster's remarks.
Somehow the Ruddster thinks this sort of family jibber jabber will earn him some kind of respect, as opposed to being tagged as a narcissist.
All it suggests to the pond is an abundance of self-respect, dressed up as humble sackcloth and ashes failure, a pose right up or down there with Dickens' Uriah Heep.
Lordy lordy it's depressing, trapped between the Ruddster racing all over the country like a rampaging failure, while that epic failure, Tony Abbott is waiting in the wings to deliver his own "dam the north or be damned to ye" version of Heepish failure.
Uh oh. That was supposed to be the up ending.
Oh well, better luck next time, and may you have all the self-respect the world can heap on you ...
(Below: for those who came in late, a couple of portraits of Uriah Heep).
A Sunday bonus! Thank you Dorothy. And thanks too for the Savage Chickens. LOL.
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