Keep polishing, knob polishers and the crony commentariat, or should that be keep digging?

(Above: Moir with the Fairfax cartoon of the day, here)

So on the weekend it became absolutely clear why the Bolter is always frothing and foaming about the ABC.

Talk about a conflict of interest, and come to think of it, talk about a whining, moaning loser.

You can ferret through 2013 Ratings: Everybody up at Ten's Expense at your leisure. Let's just quote the key finding:

...the real story is ABC snatching third place from TEN in Total People. 
 TEN has dropped in all its Demos. Almost without exception, everybody’s Demos went up at TEN’s expense.

Late yesterday afternoon, the ABC had an industry chin wag, and the first statistic the head honchos dropped in their presentation was this statistic. (They also wondered by nobody pitched for ABC2 shows, seeming not to understand that working for the whiff from an oily rag isn't that inviting in these troubled times).

It is pretty amazing, but truth to tell, it isn't what the ABC has managed to do, so much as how the Ten team - board and senior executives - have managed to fuck everything they've touched. As Alan Joyce is to Qanats, begging for a government loan, so Ten is to broadcasting.

As always, the pond blames the Bolter and the ideological tone that has seeped in here and there in the network. The attempt to be competitive was killed off - and it's never recovered - by pissing a substantial amount of money away on a ratbag right wing demagogue from New Zealand, and now each Sunday the network has an albatross demagogue around its neck ...

Not content with ruining the morning schedule of a Sunday, they repeat the Bolter, and ruin the afternoon too ...

And so the Bolter whines and moans, but his figures haven't improved, and the ABC is gloating, in a slightly disbelieving way at such an unprecedented event, and still Ten hasn't hired the pond as a consultant ...

But what cheek that the Bolter should be allowed to bash a successful competitor, on an almost daily basis. But the pond forgets, the Bolter has no shame ...

Oh it's as fine a way to start a Tuesday as could be imagined, but wait it gets better, because after the triple backflip of yesterday, almost everybody is aghast and agog at the futtocking ways of the Federal government. It's always the way with strutting bully boys and now a clear pattern has emerged.

Get the Indonesians upset, and what happens? The bully boy folds, belatedly, after much nudging, and sends off an apologetic, grovelling letter.

Get the agrarian socialists upset, and what happens? The bully boy folds, trying to kill off the fuss, and good old Barners wins, and the share price collapses, and the Black Knight stalks international takeover bids ...

Try to Conski the Gonski and what happens? The bully boy folds, after a huge and unnecessary fuss surrounding poodle Pyne, who clearly needs a little more training before being allowed indoors ...

And bizarrely they still haven't got it right. Now they're intending to allow the states to do what they like with the federal money, without let or hindrance, and if the states abuse the privilege, it will be left to the voters to punish the miscreant states.

Now this is beyond ideology, this goes to what the pond is always on about, which is the way managerial should always trump ideological.

Who could imagine anyone who imagines that a state government like the old NSW state Labor government would do the right thing? And now they're going to give the likes of Campbell Newman the keys to the federal candy jar? On trust? Oi bloody vey ...

Speaking of the Bolter, the poor thing was in melt down yesterday. There was talk in the comments section of Tony Abbott being the new Ted Baillieu, set off by this, which you can read here, but which the pond found so delicious, it couldn't resist snapping:

Delicious , ce n'est pas grave, isn't it.

Of course the Bolter thinks its all a matter of communication and the fault of Peta Credlin, which is so profoundly stupid, it explains a lot about the Bolter.

Credit where credit is due, and the cock-up belongs to poodle Pyne, and not even Alistair Campbell, spinning his way into the Iraq war, could spin his way out of this.  In much the same way as Ten management might try to spin their way out of The Bolt Report, but we all know who's responsible ...

Ah yes, it's going to be tough work for the spinmeisters, spin doctors, knob polishers and the crony commentariat. The Bolter is now back to his favourite pastimes, climate science and ABC bashing, as whining losers and dropkicks do, but every now and then, he has to lift his gaze from his fluff-gathering navel to notice the bleeding obvious ...

But you have to admire the diligence of the spinners. Look at this splash yesterday from the reptiles at the lizard Oz:

Yep, it's a good news story, and not a gigantic backflip with triple pike, and a classic coalition cock-up, it's all about fixing evil Labor's meanness.

This is why you can scare children with talk of witches and goblins.

The poor old lizards had to introduce a reality check in today's leading digital splash:

So there was an uproar, and the bully boy folded.

And there, tucked discreetly down at the bottom, "No strings attached".

In the old days of real journalism at The Australian, that would have been the lead ...

Of course the Fairfaxians have been making hay:

But why wouldn't you? The Hartcher has turned here.

You see, apparently we're still in the middle of a "budget emergency", a budget crisis of the first water, an impending national disaster, and still Abbott can pull a billion or so of loose change out of his hat to bail out his minister and replace the soiled carpet. And then like a spendthrift, offer the states plenty of wriggle room ...

It's been so much fun that the pond could barely restrain the glee at reading prattling Polonius, still busy polishing sundry knobs:

Yes, yes it's true. That bloody inner city, Grange-sipping, home chef cuisine lover, opera buff and general all-round wanker Andrew Bolter is clearly one of those inner-city types in the media that dislikes Abbott ...

Look you can read poor old Polonius prattling in Abbott's Anguish: inner-city types in media dislike him if you like,  but it's only for laughs, especially as you remember that Henderson dabbles in the media while perched in his Sydney Institute loft in Phillip Street in the heart of Sydney.

Like the Bolter, Hendo thinks it's all a media conspiracy, as if the media somehow managed to force poodle Pyne to wee on the carpet:

...no government in living memory has faced so much media criticism so soon after an election. According to Andrew Catsaras' analysis in his "Poll of Polls" segment on Insiders last Sunday, when the major polls are put together the Coalition leads Labor by 51 per cent to 49 per cent. Certainly the Abbott government's support has not collapsed. However, as Catsaras pointed out, "there's clearly been no honeymoon for the new government" when compared to that experienced by Howard in 1996 and Rudd in 2007. 
The tenor of intensity with which many journalists dislike the Prime Minister and his colleagues is evident in the note which accompanies the current edition of The Monthly magazine. Editor John van Tiggelen quotes "one of the magazine's most popular contributors" as declaring: "I don't think I've ever seen such a cabinet of creeps; I can't bear to take them seriously yet." 

It's a classic paranoid syndrome. When there's no one else at hand to blame, always shoot the messenger. (It's a step down from the Bolter, sulking about the ABC as ratings rivals ... the Bolter prefers just to shoot the opposition).

Oh the prattling Polonius is in a fine old dudgeon, and never you mind that he mistakes The Monthly for the media in general, something of a leap seeing as how the hapless magazine can only boast of a circulation of 30,955, subscribers 19,500, and the rubbery readership figure of 149,000 derived therefrom, here (another good old multiplier at work).

Yep, these flailing beasts are responsible for all that besets the Abbott government:

... Van Tiggelen ...referred to the Abbott government's "onanistic reverence for John Howard" and depicted it as "this frat party of Young Liberals who refuse to grow up". 
A considered person might well have regarded such language as redolent of frattish, undergraduate language. But Van Tiggelen is the editor of one of Australia's leading magazines and is happy to put his name to such infantile abuse. 
The cover of The Monthly claims the magazine contains an article by Greg Sheridan titled "My Beautiful Bromance with Tony Abbott". In fact, this is an attempt at ridicule by academic Russell Marks. Sheridan has known Abbott for three decades. To some, Sheridan's recollections in The Australian and elsewhere of the young Abbott have been of considerable interest. Not to the likes of Marks and Tiggelen, however, who regard them as a suitable case for sneering. Yet no serious commentator sneered when Blanche d'Alpuget wrote about the young Bob Hawke or when Jacqueline Kent wrote about the young Julia Gillard.

Which is a nonsense of course. Unfortunately the pond can't lay claim to being a serious commentator, but when Blanche d'Alpuget wrote about young Bob Hawke, the pond didn't just sneer, it sniggered and snickered, and when Blanche - who always favoured white when sighted by the pond - turned to Subud and reportedly barked like a god to get closer to god, the pond howled at the moon in delight  (Blanche's bizarre secret life, oh okay Woman's Day isn't a serious commentator either).

Even better, Blanche was doing it in Newtown, just a stone's throw away from the pond. Here you go, you Subud followers, share the joy here.

But back to Polonius, prattling away. Yep, for the billionth, squillionth time, old Polonius comes out with his favourite hoary old line:

The Coalition won the 2013 election in the suburbs and regional centres of Australia. Abbott, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Warren Truss, Barnaby Joyce and their colleagues focused on the unpopular carbon tax and concern in the electorate about unauthorised boat arrivals. They also presented the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government as incompetent. This pitch had lesser appeal in the inner-city areas where the Labor/Greens approach to climate change was not unpopular and where either Rudd and/or Gillard were admired by many. 
A problem for the Abbott government is that most journalists who report national politics are inner-city types. It's difficult to think of many members of the Canberra press gallery or key reporters in the capital cities who would support Abbott's position on, say, climate change or asylum seekers or same sex marriage. 

Does anybody at Fairfax read this copy, and note its rambling repetition about inner city elites and inner city types? These days poor old Polonius is sounding like a broken wind-up Hong Kong alarm clock with a snapped main spring, or an old hand-cranked 78 rpm gramophone producing lots of wow and flutter ...

Being behind the times, Polonius is still brooding about the Indonesian affair, and the unfair treatment copped by Abbott, as if Abbott's inept response to Indonesian concerns was somehow the fault of inner city 'leets. If only the 'leets did have control of Abbott or the media ...

And then, in the Bolter way, he reduces ineptness to a failure to communicate:

...the Coalition may need to consider whether its apparent tactic of low-profile engagement deserves reassessment.  

Yep, what we got here is a failure to communicate.

No, Polonius, forget the elites, forget the spin. What you have here is an apparent tactic to deliver a series of colossal fuck-ups ...

And there's the trouble. If you've fucked up, it's hard to communicate that you haven't fucked up, and it's even harder to hide it, and to blame it all on the media and dangerous inner city elites, showing their fear and loathing of Abbott, and not just in The Monthly, but letting it all hang out in Rupert Murdoch's rags, which by their own accounting, reaches 65% of the Australian readership.

So let's see how the front pages of various rags handled the story. Well The Australian featured the same digital splash - schools uproar - on its tree killer front page:

And the Fairfaxians also featured it:

So that means the lizards at the reptile Oz are a mob of dangerous inner city elitists dedicated to hating Abbott, just like the Fairfaxians, who for some inexplicable reason still feature that dangerous inner city elitist Hendo each Tuesday?

So what about The Courier-Mail - who could have imagined - which dared to do a proper tabloid response:

Yes corrupt Russian snow games, and the poodle Pyne backflipping makes a tidy joke. Could anyone confuse that with the dangerous workings of inner city 'leets?

But slowly the pond began to work out Hendo's favourite form of journalism. You can see it in the allegedly strident tabloids in the Murdoch stable. Why they're as meek and as mild as a flock of sheep far away in the top paddock:

And the rags dare to call themselves newspapers run by journalists ...

Well played, knob polishers. Avert the eyes, look away. Damned if Hendo's inner city 'leets will ruin your day ...

As usual, the wonderful David Rowe nails it, speaking of school bullies and Ripping Yarns as we were, and as usual, you can get your Rowe fix here.