The pond has a natural Sunday high, thanks to the crony commentariat ...

The pond has recently been reading over the breakfast table Patrick Radden Keefe's long piece for The New Yorker, Buzzkill (currently still outside the paywall), as Washington State struggles to work out how to create a workable legal marijuana economy.

Good luck with that, it's beyond the pond's pay level, though it's clear that in the United States, prohibition and punishment has now produced a situation rather worse than the worst days of Prohibition, with private prisons the chief beneficiary of the system.

It set the pond to wondering why the pond no longer felt the slightest desire for a hit of the noxious weed (yes, we once inhaled), and apart from the nausea induced by smoking, there seemed to be another reason.

Substitution! A kind of marijuana patch.

You see, a hit of the crony commentariat in the morning is certain to fix what ails you. Reading the Murdochians is a guaranteed way to start the morning with a laugh, or at least a wry smile, right up there with the medical use of marijuana.

I mean, there's Akker Dakker and what's he banging on about today?

The bloody ABC ...

It's like watching a cracked record. You know, that sublime moment when the needle judders in the groove. It has the same charm as a hamster wheel, the poor creature turning and turning ...

Damn you aunty, it's just so cruel, but let's see what our favourite hamster - yes, yes, he's really much closer to Billy Bunter but for this morning he's a hamster going over and over the same old ground - has to say while on his favourite wheel, here:

Oh okay, he's got absolutely nothing new to say, it's just Akker Dakker doing some fluff gathering as a result of intense self-referential navel gazing, but did you spot it? 

No, not the bizarre header, which somehow tries to mangle the English language, but this:

Jones reverenced my view ...

Damn you NZ subbies, damn you to hell.

Sure, it's childish, it's just a typo, but it's no more anal than Akker Dakker getting anal about when he wrote freedom is absolute, or his idle paranoia (how dare a broadcaster research and prepare in advance, when you can look like an unprepared Akker Dakker idiot), or the bizarre way Akker Dakker is surely about to scribble on and to explain how freedom isn't really that absolute, at least not when it comes to the ABC ...

Jones reverenced my view ...

Truly, it made the pond's morning, and we've gone about with a smile on our face. Little children fearlessly approach the pond with a sense of joy, and run away with lollies to rot their teeth. Dogs run wild in the sunshine in Camperdown park and warm sitting spots with a piddle of pee ...

Sadly the rest of Akker Dakker is entirely predictable. 

It set the pond to wondering what the crony commentariat and the Murdochians would do if they ever lost the ABC. 

What would they write about? What would occupy their minds? Who could they rage about? How else to fill in the day and give vent to their spluttering spleen and vinegar waspish tongues? Why the commentary section could slim down to nothing ...

Naturally there were more comedy stylings, of the pompous kind:

The point that needs making for people like Jones however, who are more than willing to play the idiot if they think it will portray conservatives in a poor light, is that even a free press must be responsible.

Freedom, it seems is absolute, except it must be absolutely circumscribed by responsibility. The usual twaddle. Absolute means relative. The sort of stuff an idiot scribbles trying to retrieve past idiocies and absolute twaddle.

And then there was this:

Meanwhile, the ABC continues its attempts to smear the Abbott government over the spying allegations. 
On Wednesday, the AM program began its report of the Indonesian response to Prime Minister Tony Abbott's letter to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono thus: "Mr Abbott's initial refusal to explain documents showing Australia spied on the President, his wife, and senior ministers, angered Indonesia, causing the President to suspend cooperation." 
Get it? Most reasonable people would think the Indonesians were angered by the spying but the ABC wants its audience to see Abbott as the villain. 

So why is this piquant and funny, with a bit of chilli sauce on the good old taco?

Well occupying the very same rotating digital whirl of death at the top of the page is one Peter van Onselen, who seems to have been smuggled into the Sunday Terror from the ABC:

Get it?

Most reasonable Akker Dakker readers would think that the ABC wants to see Abbott as the villain, but most reasonable Sunday Terror readers would think that it's Peter van Onselen who wants to see Abbott as inept and so the villain of the piece:

Two weeks on from the breakdown in Australia's relationship with Indonesia and I'm yet to hear anyone convincingly articulate what damage an apology (privately, but perhaps publicly also) by our prime minister to the Indonesian President would have done. It sure would have done a lot to send a good will message Indonesia's way after we got caught eavesdropping. 
The initial claim that an apology would have opened the door to demands by Indonesia that Australia restrict its intelligence operations has been shot out of the water because Tony Abbott appears to have all but given that pledge without the issuing of an apology. At least that is how Indonesian President SBY (as he is known) interpreted the letter Abbott sent him. 
In fact because tensions rose so quickly and so dramatically given Abbott took his God given time engaging directly with SBY on this issue the pledge Abbott made - thereby restricting our future intelligence operations if we stick to it - needed to be all the stronger.

On and on van Onselen goes, expanding on Abbott's inept villainy:

To douse the flames of anger burning within Indonesia all that Abbott had to do was apologise. To be sure it wouldn't have put the flames out - nationalism and anti-Australian sentiments run deep within our nearest neighbour. But it certainly would have helped, with no foreseeable downsides, other than a little humility. 
Remember: it wasn't even on Abbott's or the Coalition's watch the tapping which was exposed occurred. Labor was in power in 2009. Apologising for the misdeeds of others is easy, just ask Kevin Rudd who gave the much overdue apology to Indigenous Australians shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Attempts to defend the way the government responded to a failure not of its own making ignores the escalation that occurred because Abbott didn't contact SBY directly immediately. 
The crisis which followed could have been better contained. (here)

Give that man a job at the ABC.

Dear sweet long absent lord, and won't someone pass Akker Dakker a dose of the smelling salts.

Poor old Akker Dakker ended his bleating and moaning and whining and whinging in the usual way:

The ABC sucks more than $1 billion from the taxpayers. 
What's more, Labor rewarded it for its support with more money and was prepared to twice ignore a tender process and award it with the Australia Network to pursue "soft diplomacy" on Australia's behalf in our region. 
The ABC is a bloated failure in the hands of ideologues. It should be stripped back to its charter, at the very least, or broken up and sold, if possible to commercial interests. 
In a world of expanding media, the notion of a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster is anachronistic. Those who want to keep "our" ABC, should fund it. 
Those who don't should not have to pay for it.

On the evidence, and with a Murdochian having the cheek to talk about a responsible press - oh hypocrisy where is they sting - it would seem that the confused, bloated failure known as News Corp should be at the very least broken up and sold, or if possible nationalised in the national interest ...

Was there any other comedy material in the Sunday Terror?

Well it's true they kept Cardinal Pell off the rotating digital splash at the top of the page - did the pond's cruel visualisation of the Pellists sauntering through fields of tabloid sexist trash have an impact?

Of course not, but at least that cleared space for Miranda the Devine:

This one's truly weird, more a dry hollow chuckle than a laugh.

You see it's a warm-hearted story about a lesbian couple who've helped a neglected child to find herself.

Good luck to them all. But here's the funny thing:

I've had my differences with Dr Kerryn Phelps. As a high-profile activist she has challenged my stance against same-sex marriage. 
But on the urgent issue of adoption we are as one. The ideal might be for a child to be brought up in a married family by a biological mother and father, but the epidemic of child abuse does not give us the luxury of making such distinctions. 
A loving home with two competent adults in a committed relationship is infinitely better than the Hobbesian hell suffered by tens of thousands of children as an accident of birth. (here)

Say what?

Next week Miranda the Devine scribbles a piece about the health-giving benefits of bicycle riding?

How soon before the Devine finally manages to scribble:

A loving home with two competent adults in a committed marriage ....?

It is of course exactly the story of story you'd see on the ABC, perhaps on a Monday night on Australian Story ...

With the added wonder of seeing the Devine do a backflip, flip flop and cartwheel with double pike ...

Watched, no doubt, by a spluttering, indignant, fuming, defiant, tottering-towards-complete irrelevance Akker Dakker, as the crony commentariat split and divide in the most peculiar way ... 

Thereby ensuring another hit, whack, dose, whiff, toke of Sunday laughs from their splendid comedy stylings ...

(Below: I know, I know, it's addictive, the craving, the hits, the highs, the laughs, you want more, another sweet little toke. Here's a golden well-rolled oldie from Deltoid, Akermangate: Piers Akerman fabricates some more. Now you can take a walk in the park singing it's the dawning of the age of Aquarius with Miranda the Devine).