Out-manouevred in the race to the bottom, the pond goes slightly mad and rolled gold ...

                          

 (Above: the pond takes a stand!)


The Terror has had great fun - as have other rags - with hapless One Nation party candidate Stephanie Banister, and her knowledge of assorted religions, including the wonderful notion that Jews follow Christ.

Sam Clench displays tremendous sophistication and wit in One Nation candidate Stephanie Banister 'doesn't oppose Islam as a country', but could someone explain how Banister is any more cretinous than a rag that thinks dressing up the three stooges in Nazi Hogan's Heroes gear is an intelligent contribution to any form of political debate?

In the old days - when John Hartigan routinely made a fool of himself - that sort of stuff would have been sniffily dismissed as best left to the wild and woolly fringe world of social media, bloggers and all the other cesspits on the full to overflowing intertubes.

It's about as clever and as witty as ... Mad magazine ...

Yep, that's the back cover for the January 1975, issue 172 edition:

Of course the Terror has tried to dress its recent "Spring time for Hitler" routines as just a jolly jape amongst chums:

If you want to give the rag a click, you can rush off to read about Jessica Rudd's twitterings, but be warned there might be a sudden rush of nausea if you click on Jessica Rudd revealed her delight at Daily Telegraph's 'Thommo's Heroes' front page.

Delight?

Oh well you have to put your best and bravest face on a street mugging or a convenience store hold-up or being the object of contempt by former journalists now happy to trade as Murdoch's monkeys.

Continuing its vein of social satire - why Alfred E. Newman has nothing on this mob - the Terror also ran a quiz to go with its Albo beat-up:

It isn't that funny, in fact it's childish, adolescent stuff of the kind that was usually restricted to the antics of blogger Tim Bleagh. 

What's interesting is that the Terror could only rustle up less than 2,000 votes, though the poll was up for almost a day by the time the pond sampled it.

Sure it proves that the rag has almost 2,000 readers who are as child-like and as dumb as the Terror's editorial team - did Lara Bingle vote? what about the Australian cricket team? - were there any thugby leaguers? - well there must have been some thugby supporters at least....

Speaking of 1975, and Mad magazine, it reminded the pond that in 1975, there were actual real journalists working on the Murdoch rags:

Murdoch's overt interference in the 1975 campaign was so bad that reporters on the Australian went on strike in protest and seventy-five of them wrote to their boss calling the newspaper ‘a propaganda sheet' and saying it had become ‘a laughing stock' (Wright 1995). ‘You literally could not get a favourable word about Whitlam in the paper. Copy would be cut, lines would be left out,' one former Australian journalist told Wright (1995). Alan Yates was a third-year cadet on the Daily Mirror and recalls the dismissal ‘shocked the entire newsroom'. Yates was on the AJA House Committee and says that while Murdoch was not necessarily in the newsroom, ‘his editors and his chiefs of staff were certainly involved in day-to-day selection of editorial content'. Alan Yates has said that he felt powerless as a ‘junior reporter', but remembered his copy being altered to favour the Liberal Party's viewpoint. (more here).

What chance we'll see reptiles at the lizard Terror or the Oz go on strike? 

What chance someone will note the rags have become a laughing stock and propaganda sheets of the basest kind? 

Why you might as well wonder if there are prostitutes brave enough to stand up to Mr. Sin ... but truth to tell in these perilous times, the brothel pays well enough, the decor is reasonable, and it's way better than life on the streets, where many have already headed. 

And if you stand up to Mr. Sin, well you'll never work in 59% - or 63% - who knows, not even News Corp can report its readership accurately, even when speaking to US authorities - of the media in this town again. That only leaves Fairfax and the ABC. Better the brothel you know ...

Yes, the pond has deep sympathy for sex workers and journalists, but since we're playing the game, and since this is a blog, rather than a supposedly noble part of the mainstream media, hey, what the heck:

Oh dear, it feels empty, feeble. The Terror is now lower than the pond, you simply can't get any lower. Send in the clowns, there ought to be clowns:

Uh huh.

Sounds of pond scrabbling in digital desk. Okay, we can match you and see you on that one:

What's that? Just wait until tomorrow?

It's just not right. The pond feels displaced, alienated, uncompetitive. The Terror, the HUN, the Courier Mail, they've gone lower than the pond.

Remind us, John Hartigan of the difference, in your speech here:

In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. 
It really is time this myth was blown apart. Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification. 
Radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence are common.

Yep, Harto was always a kidder, always playing the clown. 

Of course dressing up the PM as a Hogan's Hero isn't personal vilification, it's just exemplary satire ... right up there with Mad and Cracked ... and on about the same level of attention-seeking and getting.

But there are two things to be noted, which might turn out to be unintended consequences:

1. the readership of newspapers - those that bother - already have more than fair contempt for newspapers, and for journalists, who turn up at around the level of used car dealers in certain polls. 

The gravitas they once carried has been swept up in scandal. Heck the Irish version of the Sun has even got rid of the page three girl because of "cultural differences" to the perverted Poms in a bid to regain some form of respectability;

2. if Tony Abbott actually wins, it will now be forever tainted by the too obvious special pleadings, and not the nudgings, so much as the bludgeonings. 

By going in so hard, and making their political preferences so obvious and so adolescent - no, scrub that, so childish - Abbott will be tainted and marked as Murdoch's man, and any policy decisions bearing on Murdoch's empire will similarly be tainted by the smell of the bog swamp.

The denialism is already running strong with the reptiles at the lizard Oz, as per their two front page digital leads:

Look how the hookers turn their tricks - oh okay, the pond apologises profusely to sex workers, who are just in the business of doing an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. It's entirely wrong and inappropriate to demean sex workers by comparing them to Murdochian journalists ...

But speaking of clowns, is there a resident Murdoch clown we can celebrate before we head off to the weekend?

Yes that's his actual splash in the digital carousel of doom, but even more amazing is the actual header - No happy ending for Kama Sutra Kev.

And here's the Eric Lobbecke illustration they provided for Gra Gra's piece:

The rag seized on Gra Gra's reference to the Ruddster having more positions the Kama Sutra on asylum-seekers and turned his rather open remark "He is, however, not guaranteed a happy ending" into the more definitive "No happy ending."

The rest of Mr. Swiss Bank account's piece is even more remarkable. The first half is a paean of praise to the easy, confident, relaxed, comfortable John Howard, and after some brooding about the election and the Ruddster, came this:

His mood will not have been helped by Sydney's The Daily Telegraph and its notorious "kick this mob out" front page editorial on Monday. The other News Corp Australia tabloids are taking a less strident line but are also "agin" the government. His exchange with Rupert Murdoch this week may have made him feel better but it did little to aid his cause. News Corp will be here every day until this election and beyond. On the other hand the truly chilling thought for the true believers is that there is no guarantee that Fairfax Media will be publishing newspapers into the future. All newspapers are declining in circulation but none more so than the Fairfax mastheads. It may well be that Murdoch is the only game in town in the near future. Labor can't beat him nor can it join him - best to live with him.

Which is to say, join the brothel like Gra Gra. 

Now the pond is all in favour of reclaiming the word "slut" - there's nothing wrong with women enjoying sex and dressing how they will, and there's nothing wrong with payment for sex, for men and for women. It's a more honest line of work than being a merchant banker, or working for Rupert Murdoch ... but surely it's about time Gra Gra retired to count his earnings? Does he still have a Swiss bank account for same?

Best to live with Rupert Murdoch? 

There goes a man with no sense of shame, and no self-respect.

Finally, please forgive the pond for getting agitated and pedantic. 

Now that standards have slipped into the abyss at newspapers around the land, somebody has to be the resident pedant.

Yesterday and today, th Ruddster has been all over the papers describing Peter Beattie as a "rolled gold Queenslander".

Here's a dictionary definition:

(Engineering / Metallurgy) a metal, such as brass, coated with a thin layer of gold, usually of above 9 carat purity. It is used in inexpensive jewellery. Also called (US) filled gold

Yes, rolled gold is a cheap-arsed, poverty stricken form of gold, used for trinkets and knick-nacks of the most wretched, cheap and pathetic kind. It's an imitation, a fraudulent bit of trickery, the sort of gaudy decor you use in a two bob watch.

The pond naturally blames the Murdoch press. They could have used this arcane, witty insight to assault the Ruddster and Beattie, but instead they went the old clown, Hogan's Heroes, Kama Sutra, bit of two be four routine. 

That's because the young pups that these days pass as journos know all the whore tricks required by their master, but they never get out a dictionary.

So it goes, Kurt Vonnegut always said - and Bob Ellis also said, being prone to shameless imitation - and indeed, so it goes ...

(Below: here, get some of these into you).