(Above: yes the poodle is out of the cage, and running amok, aware that Scott Morrison has a good head start as the minister most likely to be sacked for fucking it up, but the pond doesn't have to worry, because Pope has got it under control, and there's more knavish Popery here)
4.30 am, and the sound of a plane approaching Sydney airport on the third runway disturbs the pond's sleep.
Say what? Curfew? What curfew?
Being inclined to the dramatic, the pond immediately empathises with the pilot, struggling to regain control, yanking hard on the stick as someone spots Huns diving out of the moonlight, fighting to avoid a spot on Air Crash Investigations.
In the cold morning light, it's just another bastard and Sydney Airport getting away with it - not that the pond has anything against bastards, or Sydney Airport when it remembers the curfew, so much as the silly geese who think Canberra makes an ideal second airport for Sydney, or swallow the Max the axe line.
But it got the pond up early, and surly, and the very last thing that was needed was to cop an eyeful of this from prattling Polonius on a Tuesday:
Ye ancient cats and long suffering fishes, will they never shut up about it, all the bleating, and the moaning, and the whining and the blaming and the pointing of the finger at the ABC, when most of it is sour grapes, because any journalist worth a pinch of salt would have run with the story. Just as they ran with the story about Obama and the Germans.
All this bloody groaning and weeping and sighing, just because Abbott was a butter fingers.
It's not like the commentariat have had to endure the sight of a brave pilot struggling to land his plane, hydraulics shot, the cockpit in flames, fighting to avoid dropping his broken engine into the pond's lounge room as he roars to safety and a landing on the third runway. At 4.32 am.
Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing new in Henderson's Spying on Indonesia: ABC disclosures in conflict with its 'soft diplomacy', except for the usual sight of Hendo chewing his cud in his usual paddock, and somehow imagining that we live in the good old days of the USSR and the ABC's role is roughly the equivalent of Pravda and Mosfilm.
Hendo is agitated that Mark Scott talked of 'soft diplomacy' and then dropped a double bunger on the diplomacy talk by daring to run a news room which dared to report some news.
And so we have to trawl through all the usual grievances, the Australia Network going to the ABC, the ABC getting too much money, and this guff:
There is no compelling public or national interest in such a revelation. As well, its broadcast on the ABC's Australia Network gave an unwarranted authenticity to the story in the Asia Pacific region, where it is not always recognised that governments do not run government-funded organisations.
Say what? Unwarranted authenticity? Because the spying was just an imaginary incident, like a pilot flying solo, fighting for his life?
unwarranted - without a basis in reason or fact; "baseless gossip"; "the allegations proved groundless"; "idle fears"; "unfounded suspicions"; "unwarranted jealousy" "I am sure your fears are unwarranted"
So what's all the bloody fuss about then? I mean, there's plausible deniability, and then there's just rank stupidity and a useless abuse of the actual meaning of words ...
And now we need to get agitated because people in the Asia Pacific region - yes, dumb, unsophisticated people lacking Hendo's wonderful analytical skills - might mistake the ABC for Pravda or Mosfilm ... and think what actually happened might have actually happened.
And to top off all this paranoia, fear and loathing, prattling Polonius mingles a little Pommie bashing with leftist bashing:
In a speech to Asialink in August 2010, Scott defined the ABC's soft diplomacy as ''helping to develop a positive reputation for a nation in other countries'' along with ''foreign policy and trade objectives''. This comment is at odds with his defence of the ABC's decision to run Snowden's documents last week in co-operation with the London-based left-wing Guardian, which has no interest in promoting Australia in the Asia-Pacific or anywhere else.
Yes damn you London-based pinko perverts. Leave it to brave Hendo to abuse the ABC for not being a decent, patriotic Pravda ...
No wonder each day the pond wakes up to a topsy turvy bizarro world.
Sadly, Hendo was so late to the scene of the crime and the agitation, all the key points had been covered the night before on Media Watch, here to watch, and the astonishing news that the ratbag Bolter, rabidly rabbiting on like a scoundrel about patriotism and traitors, had at one point paused to acknowledge:
You could have knocked the pond down with a feather.
Host Barry also challenged the Bolter to a salary showdown - oh how we'd love to learn what the Bolter and the rest of the crony commentariat earn for generating the hysteria that infests the public discourse - and then had the cheek to contemplate whether the Daily Terror should have published a report on the private life of Nathan Rees's private life - the sort of question that hasn't been asked because of all the shock, horror and reeling and writhing about a bit of phone tapping.
The pond loved the defence on offer, as did Barry:
Hedonism?
What a pathetic, lip-smacking, furtive, mother Grundy abuse of a word. Get up to all sorts of hedonism ...
Does Andrew Clennell of the Terror have any idea of just how stupid that sounds? Censorious, prudish, priggish, killjoyish, old maidish, schoolmarmish, puritanical, and all the other Cromwellian adjectives and nouns you can use to describe the Victorian mindset, updated to a yellow press, slavering, slobbering tabloid mentality ...
1. Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
2. Philosophy: The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
3. Psychology: The doctrine holding that behavior is motivated by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
Stop all that at once. You there, put down that philosophy text. Andrew Clennell of the Terror anti-sensual police is on patrol, and he'll have none of this filthy, vile hedonism, and pollies getting up to it and never mind conflating a furtive consenting fuck with criminal activities ...
Which brings us to a real cause of complaint about the ABC. Last night was the very last night of Media Watch for the year. Who knows when the show might come back, probably around February if the punters get lucky. Ditto Four Corners.
Oh sure there's an upside, the pond won't have to re-commence studiously ignoring Q and A until the new year, but what is it with this Xmas-New Year shutdown, which is on a par with public schools, but without the excuse of having been relentlessly harassed by young people with far too much energy ...
Sheesh, already Xmas advertising is in full swing, the war on Xmas is cranking up - happy holydays everyone - and it's not just the ABC that goes quiet, the whole commercial media pack trot out their second eleven ...
Of course the ABC hacks have a good excuse - as he noted in his Bolter salary showdown, Barry was sure the Bolter was doing much better, though when asked by Fairfax how much he earned, the free-minded wide-ranging B olter hung up the phone without so much as a by their leave ... (here) ... apparently because what's good for a lot of cardigan wearing geese isn't good for such a high class, high flying climate scientist and blogging gander ...
And so the resentful tribe must feel that holidays are the next best thing to cash in the paw, unless you happen to be Phillip Adams and think you should be paid more for being radio's best substitute for mogadon yet devised.
And no doubt it gives the second eleven a chance to strut their stuff.
But already the pond can feel the sweet smell of the lotus eaters sinking into the nostrils ... the somnolence of summer is here, quite possibly with a whiff of hedonism in the air.
Thank the long absent lord we have the Daily Terror on hand to go on flesh patrol throughout the land ... though the stench of the hypocrisy might be nauseating for those who can be bothered to wade through the endless galleries of posing women the rag puts on its website in the quest to generate hits, attract the hedonists and sate the voyeurists ...
And remember if you pay for it in any way, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
(Below: speaking of diplomacy, as you do. More Moir here, for today only with a Lord Turnbull joke at the start of the gallery)
Gerard Hedonism?
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