When I was a child, I read the tabloids and Gemma Jones ...

It won't surprise anybody to discover the Daily Terror wielding the egg-beater today in another Ruddster beat up ...

Like that frog and the scorpion joke, it's in their nature ...

But what was surprising, even to the pond, who follows the perversity of the Murdochian scorpions with an almost obsessive compulsive perversity, was to see all the sins neatly paraded in Media Watch last night - you can catch up on the episode here. You can even download it as an mp4 election coverage souvenir ...

Paul Barry dared to wonder out loud whether the opinions of a Brisbane make-up artist should have been front and back and middle page news, and one of the handy aspects of the website treatment of the show is that they've put up some pdfs showing off the Terror's ways, as in the Gemma Jones and Jessica Marszalek story titled Ruddbo, with its portrait of Rudd as a crazed Sly Stallone.

Sly Stallone! And they say it wasn't defamatory? Of course Steven Seagal would have been crueller and cleverer - perhaps the Ruddster as a chef in the kitchen of an aircraft carrier - but the Terror really doesn't have much idea of genre flics or genre jokes. Crudity and baseball bats is all the go and the more obvious the better ...

What was more interesting however was the way Barry was willing to finger a few of the players, most notably Gemma Jones, who had a finger in, or a byline on a number of stories:

This is hardly a surprise, nor is it a coincidence that Jones is leading the pack in the Crikey race to the bottom:

The Crikey campaign honour (or is that dishonour?) board, reported by Richard Farmer, behind the paywall here, shows signs of being soft and not being able to keep up, and it's no sure guide, because of the Terror's spreading the egg beater around - today's Chinese fake-out eggbeater, for example, belongs to Lanai Scarr and Sarah Michael.

Nevertheless, certain techniques emerge, and one of them is relentless repetition, with a front page story picked up elsewhere in the rag and then given a going over by the rabid musings of the in-house commentariat pack, which can see the foam and the frothing spread from a Miranda the Devine to a Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen in a a nano-second.

Here's how it works. You see the pond has already noted that Gemma Jones has some glorious bylines, but perhaps you didn't get the message.

So we'll say it again.

According to Tony Barry and Crikey, Gemma Jones is one of the faces of bias at the Daily Terror:

Now do you get it? Would you buy a used tissue from this woman, let alone a newspaper story?

Oh no doubt she's just doing a job, just following orders, just doing what she's told, showing initiative, but within the instructions issued within the building, and no doubt getting a pat on the back every so often for a job well done.

Hmm, where else was that line about "just following orders" trotted out?

We keed, we keed (and if you don't know about Triumph, the insult comic dog, wiki his keeding here).

In no way, in absolutely no way, is the pond proposing or suggesting that Gemma Jones is comparable to a Nazi war criminal - think of huge amount of fines the pond would have to pay into the Godwin's Law swear jar - in much the same way as it would be absolutely impossible and completely unimaginable for the Daily Terror to reduce the federal political campaign to a pathetic LCD by dressing up the Ruddster as a Nazi in an American sitcom ...

What's that you say? It was Gemma Jones herself, who in company with Simon Benson and Patrick Lion, scribbled the unseemly, pathetic follow up story, Jessica Rudd revealed her delight at Daily Telegraph's 'Thommo's Heroes' front page.

Oh so it is all just keeding. Why a comparison to Nazis just following orders to carry out a Holocaust is all just jolly good fun, a jolly jape amongst chums ...

No doubt we can all look forward to Gemma Jones and the Terror mob running a gloating headline at election's end:

Any chance that we'll see a follow up headline?

Like we lied, we distorted, we exaggerated, we fear mongered, we abused our privileged position in the media, and without regard to consequence and without holding one side in the political game, or their policies to account?

Fat chance. In your dreams.

Remember, everyone's just following orders, dancing to the sounds of their master's voice:

Oh look, really, please be assured the pond is making absolutely no connection between a cute, if somewhat dumb dog, peering into a horn to listen to a Murdochian command on a crackly 78, and Gemma Jones ... none whatsoever ...

But how rich and what fun on Media Watch to see Rupert Murdoch dream of a diverse media designed to prevent a bullying proprietor monstering a community ...

So what to do after the good humoured keeding is over?

Well the pond always admired that great scene in Elmer Gantry, where Burt Lancaster realises he's been living a lie as a hustling preacher man, and he gives it away, and as he does, he quotes Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Put it another way:

When I was a child, I read the tabloids and Gemma Jones, and so I spake as a child and I understood as a child and I thought as a child; but when I became an adult, I put away tabloids, Gemma Jones and other childish things. For then we saw through a tabloid, darkly, but then face to face, the pond came to understand, at least in part, that perhaps it's better to know nothing than to know a tabloid and the scribblings of Gemma Jones...

Remember, if you drop a single dime on any Murdoch product whatsoever anywhere in the world, on television or on tree killers or on digital product clogging up the full to overflowing intertubes, it only eggs them on to do even more egg-beating ...

Meanwhile, in the real world, of real policies affecting real people, Tony Abbott's team have come up with a real doozy, which is to rely on the clubs and gaming industry to develop support and counselling for problem gamblers ....

But why stop there?

The pond has in a bottom drawer a splendid plan for hotels to provide support and counselling for alcoholics, and the tobacco industry to develop withdrawal programs for tobacco addicts.

These could run in tandem ... with addicts invited to have a pony and a quick smoke in the front bar before settling down to discuss ways they might give up the habit.

This could also work with sex addicts, but only if done in a brothel which shouts a free round for the punters ...

Meanwhile, over at Fairfax, the Fairfaxians have started to sound the alarums and make noise and clamour, as you can read in Tim Colebatch's Why We Should Not Trust Tony Abbott.

And Peter Hartcher does his best to do a Chicken Little routine with a pox on both their houses in The truth is yet to bite them, and us ...

Amazingly Hartcher still seems to take himself seriously.

But then in the usual way, what's the featured item, the piece of commentary given the plum splash?

Yes you've guessed it:

It's prattling Polonius. Does Rockford Wines realise how their brand is being ruined by being splashed up against the man who makes desiccated coconut taste like coconut soup? Or is it a cunning move, since after reading Polonius, most people will be feeling like a bottle or three of a decent red?

Anyhoo, purely out of tiredness, the pond is going to do a spoiler. Yes, it's a spoiler alert, because the pond is going to save anyone who cares a huge amount of time. No need to actually read Polonius. He spends an inordinate amount of statistics and data to come to this conclusion, which is no conclusion at all, just his own personal opinion, showing his usual bias and prejudice:

On the available evidence, the true story is that Abbott never had a massive problem with women but Labor has a significant problem with older Australians. (the rest here, if you have a life to waste)

There, done and dusted, and there you go, Gemma Jones, there's your future ...

Lastly, it seems that Australia isn't the only place with a media problem. The pond commends The Onion's Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus' VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning, wherein Meredith Artley, Managing Editor of CNN.com, purportedly and apparently answers a key question:

Over the years, CNN.com has become a news website that many people turn to for top-notch reporting. Every day it is visited by millions of people, all of whom rely on “The Worldwide Leader in News”—that’s our slogan—for the most crucial, up-to-date information on current events. So, you may ask, why was this morning’s top story, a spot usually given to the most important foreign or domestic news of the day, headlined “Miley Cyrus Did What???” and accompanied by the subhead “Twerks, stun at VMAs”?

Inter alia, the answer?

I don’t hesitate to call it stupid bullshit because we all know it’s stupid bullshit. We know it and you know it. We also know that you are probably dumb enough, or bored enough, or both, to click on the stupid bullshit anyway, and that you will continue to do so as long as we keep putting it in front of your big, idiot faces. You want to know how many more page views the Miley Cyrus thing got than our article on the wildfires ravaging Yosemite? Like 6 gazillion more. 
That’s on you, not us.

Indeed. Turns out that Meredith Artley and Gemma Jones have a lot in common.

Oh did we mention it?

Gemma Jones, according to Media Watch and Crikey, is the face of bias at the Daily Terror ....

Now here's a great tip, Gemma, free from the pond. Have you thought about doing a story with current Chairman Rudd dressed up as Miley Cyrus?

It's guaranteed to be a bloody gigantic click fest ...

Take it away Gemma ...