The absurdity of the certain ... and the Bolter ... and the rest of the pack ... and no offence intended ...

(Above: read on, some other precipitations to follow Michael Maslin's exemplary cartoon for The New Yorker. More here).


It was Stanley Baldwin, with possibly a tip of the hat to Rudyard Kipling, who famously said:

"What the proprietorship of those papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot through the ages".

Now it's perhaps tad unfortunate to smear harlots this way, but allowing that in 1931 harlots enjoyed less acceptance than sex workers, the point is true enough.

And while we're quoting, how about this internet meme?

Which brings us to this from the Bolter:

... the divide isn’t between those who accept the science and those who don’t. Science does not speak with one voice on this matter, although the consensus now is that sceptical positions I’ve argued have indeed proved correct - on the warming pause, cyclones, Antarctic ice spread and more. It seems to me it’s actually been the warmists who have not “accepted the science” in these matters.

Yes, it's bizarro world and it's a near run thing between absurdity and the completely delusional.

The Bolter rounded off a long rant about climate science with this outburst:

Neither Lomborg nor I “deny” the science. There is little difference in our opinion on the latest IPCC report. The IPCC report actually confirmed our scepticism. (here)

It's why the pond, though it occasionally tries, can't really be bothered reading the Bolter. It's like engaging with a petulant child ... black is white and naah naah, and a flurry of graphs, and the Bolter is on board with the IPCC.

Roll that one around on your tongue. We don't deny the science, we think the IPCC report confirmed our scepticism ...

Oh wash out your mouth with soap, scribbled as it is by a preening, posturing, raging blogger with the scientific credentials of a gnat. Oh apologies to gnats, along with harlots ...

Which brings us today to the ever reliable Chris Kenny. Now the only reason the pond even began to think of Chris Kenny is that it seems he's still agitated about the Chaser lads, as you can read in Chris Kenny to pursue Chaser team over dog skit despite ABC ruling.

So the pond decided to click on today's weekend piece with the usual predictable nonsense embedded the header Maginot Line protects Tony Abbott from leftist snipings of 'love media'.

Yippee, it's gold bar free. Kenny bilge for free ...

Yep, what really caught the eye was the allegedly "gold bar" free status of the piece, but of course when you click on it, it turns out to be a bit of bait and switch:

Gotcha.

That's how desperate and pathetic the reptiles at the lizard Oz are these days - any fraudulent misrepresentation to get you to sign up to "lite access", which the pond will never do, though lo, a thousand "nites" might pass ...

Anyway, thanks to the ruckus, the pond's attention was somehow drawn to this critique of Kenny, which might be old news to some but which the pond missed while on its OS junket to Honkers and beyond (oh darlings, you would have loved it so):

Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”. 
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?

Indeed. And if you want the links embedded in that piece by Kenny's son, Liam Kenny, scribbling for Junkee, you need to head off here.

Truth to tell, it's not as if the Chaser lads can't point to right wing inspirations. There are the many cartoons by Larry Pickering, which never seem to produce outrage, but a kind of tolerant bemusement in the commentariat - the pond refuses to run them - and even Bill Leak has caught the eye in the past:

Not that there's anything wrong with anal (or oral or missionary come to think of it), though it was mentioned in despatches in Leunig and Good Taste way back in 2006 on Media Watch.

It's remarkable that there's been so much yammering in recent days about how the Liberal party and George Brandis are the true guardians of free speech and a free press, and in the very same breath, the Fairfaxians and the ABC are cast into the burning fires of hell for their outrageous ways.

Wouldn't it be simpler to let it go? Not really, not when you're one-eyed and slagging off one side is fair game, but there are cries of fair dibs when the other side is given a poke in the eye (or a poke somewhere else).

The pond thinks it's part of an unhealthy obsession with the ABC, but truth to tell, that's probably because large slabs of the commentariat can't actually stand to watch or listen to commercials - catch Gerard Henderson getting agitated about the squawkings of the parrot when there's the ABC to demonise?

But back to Kenny junior, who got up a splendid head of steam, and then let the whistle blow loud and long:

Like clockwork, and in the unlikely company of the ABC’s Media Watch, the Murdoch newspapers have taken up the question of just how this image could possibly have been allowed to go to air. In what is perhaps the most idiotic contribution, The Australian’s ‘Cut And Paste’ section has asked whether prominent feminist Anne Summers is as offended by this joke as she was by the sexual vilification of former PM Julia Gillard. To equate the two things is a ridiculous move, typical of the desperate, flat-earth refusal in some corners of liberalism to acknowledge the existence of gender politics. Involving Summers in this episode for no sound reason is transparent ideological sniping. In the Daily Telegraph, the always yawn-inducing Tim Blair suggested that Kenny would be treated much more kindly by the public broadcaster if he were an Islamic terrorist — flogging an excruciatingly worn out, tired slur. 

The always yawn-inducing Tim Blair! Why here's a man who makes the pond sound feeble and in its dotage. But do go on:

In the Herald Sun, populist torch-bearer Bolt has demanded to know why ABC managing director Mark Scott has allowed this deterioration of standards to occur on his watch. Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise. ‘The Left’ is often characterised by those who appoint themselves as its opponents as lacking a sense of humour, too ‘politically correct’ and too self-righteous to lighten up and take a joke. 
No doubt Kenny, Bolt and Blair would argue that the difference in this case is that tax-payers fund the ABC, and should not have to hand over their hard-earned cash for this type of trash. And I tend to agree. Let’s see the ABC give back every cent of what it cost them to use Photoshop for thirty seconds. Maybe I’ll spend the spare change on a bus to go see the Great Barrier Reef before it, like the Chaser’s dog, is completely fucked in the arse.

Again you'll have to go to the original piece here to get the embedded links in the piece and relish the comments - 258 when the pond dropped in - but by golly the pond likes the cut of this Kenny's jib.

Now the fact that he's Kenny's son has really nothing to do with it, except for those quaint old duffers who still like to blather on about patriarchal lineage. If anything, Kenny might claim to have sired someone able to think for themselves and deliver a "fucked in the arse" joke with some flair and style ... let alone ...

Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise.

Yep, it's not the patriarchal lineage, it's the style, and as a result, the pond felt no need to circumvent the bait and switch routines of the lizard Oz, and get around the "lite" begging bowl, and actually read Kenny senior this day, and what a relief and a pleasure that is, because no doubt it's full of the usual carping, angry, bitter nonsense.

Instead the pond went to bed last night chortling, and woke up the same way this morning, and it's all thanks to Kenny.

In its own way the piece is an eerie mirror reverse of the current war engulfing the Daily Mail and its attempt to blame the Miliband son for the Miliband father, and blame the British Navy serving Jewish father in ways that were shamelessly and fatuously wrong, and which is producing ongoing fallout likely to continue for weeks.

You might well like to catch up on Alastair Campbell monstering Jon Steafel on the BBC's Newsnight. The pond usually has very little time for Campbell, after his dubious sexed up service for the war monger Blair, but it takes a feral to take out a feral ... and poor old Steafel looks like a British badger caught in a Conservative culling program ...

Great entertainment here.

And then Neil Kinnock came out in Mail attack in Ed Miliband worse than anything I faced, says Neil Kinnock. Senior Tories have jumped on the Mail, and all sorts of politicians have come to Miliband's defence, and some have leaped to the rag's defence by asserting that while the piece might be absolutely outrageous tosh, it's the right of British rags to publish contemptible, outrageous tosh ...

It's all terribly English, a kind of thumping and agitation with kippers and toast at ten paces, and it's kept the pond entranced for days ...

Oh yes, there might be something to be said for patriarchal lineage after all ... and no offence intended ...

(Below: and here's how they did cartooning in the old days, with this example from Punch in 1937. The text below A queer fairy story, or, the babes in the war-wood reads Italian newspapers have charmingly expressed the opinion that the rearmament of Democracies is becoming a menace to the peace-loving Dictators of Europe, with the cartoon showing Stanley  Baldwin and Leonard Blum dragging a terrified Hitler and Mussolini through the armed woods).