Bibs and bobs in honour of doing a Murdochian Sean Hannity ...

Naturally the pond has been following the debacle surrounding Faux Noise - which long ago requested it be considered an entertainment rather than a news channel - and Sean Hannity and Cliven Bundy, which saw Jon Stewart deliver an epic smackdown (and Colbert a quite handy one too).

The stupidity, ignorance, prejudice and welfare queenism of Bundy is understandable enough, but the pond is continually amazed that the likes of Hannity can get out of their crooked bed and maintain a crooked smile while going about their crooked business ...

Does he ever look in the mirror?

It's inspirational stuff, and something the antipodes can only aspire to, though if the reptiles at the Oz and at the Murdochian tabloids could have their way, we'd be there soon enough. After all, they have an inspirational master:

Pick a weirdness, any weirdness will do ...

Why there's enough there for a dozen Hannity angles ...

As it is, all the pond can marvel at is the way the mug punters continue to see upside down as the right way up:

“Be warned — the commemorative tsunami is on its way. As James Brown put it in his recent Anzac’s Long Shadow, we are now witnessing an Anzac ‘arms race’. Australians are competing to find ‘bigger and better ways to commemorate our sacrificed soldiers’. The activities already planned for the centenary of World War 1, Brown calc ulates, will cost Australian state and federal taxpayers nearly $325 million. With a further $300 million projected to be raised in private donations, the commemoration might ultimately cost up to two-thirds of a billion dollars. (here)

$660 million, give or take a threepunce or a ha'penny or six ...

Now it's safe to say that the dead won't care or mind or know much about all the fuss, but meanwhile, the poor buggers who've returned home, wounded, maimed, in mind and/or body from assorted wars, are treated like some form of used goods.

The ABC has learnt the Coalition's razor gang will consider savings which could leave some former Defence personnel worse off. One of the proposals is believed to involve closing an old Defence pension scheme and forcing members into a modern version. More than 250,000 Australians get veterans' affairs support. (here)

Because, you see, if you look after the ha'pennies by screwing the survivors, you can piss them against the wall glorifying the long ago dead.

Now there's a Hannity for you.

Naturally the Murdochians have been full of dire imprecations at those who might dare to destroy the legend:

What's that you say you blood-sucking leech on the public purse, you pusillanimous veterans roaming around, mewing and yowling?

Harden the fuck up. It's more important to indulge in pompous rituals for the dead than give a flying fuck about the living, especially if they flaunt their suffering in a most unseemly way.

Just stick faces up on a wall and all's well:

The living? Messy and useless and expensive, and in need of a financial trim ... no visual beckoning or breaking dawn there ...

Now there's a Hannity for you.

And what about Dame Judith Groan?

Well it might be a no-brainer to Dame Judith, who's probably never done a decent day's physical work in her life, but try telling that to a farm labourer asked to fence the bottom paddock at age 68, or a shearer asked to knock over a hundred sheep in the morning at age 69 ...

Now there's a Hannity for you.

Yes the pond had a number of relatives that were shearers, farm labourers, what have you, with bugger all by way of pay and even less by way of saving for old age, not that they complained, enjoying the work and the outdoors lifestyle, and preferring the bush to the big smoke of Tamworth, but truly by the time they'd hit their sixties, their bodies were a wreck.

So what do they do? Re-train in macrame, or hie themselves off for re-skilling as SEOs on the full to overflowing intertubes?

Where to turn for insights, for help, for considered journalism?

Ah yes, there it is, third story down.

World is Fukt.

True enough.

Of course everyone had a good laugh. mUmBRELLA here, The Guardian there, the Murdoch press pretty well everywhere.

But the pond is deeply sympathetic. For years readers have pointed out typos, errors and omissions, little realising that the copy is perfect until the subs get at it:

A year ago, the AFR outsourced its subediting to a Fairfax subsidiary in New Zealand. More than 20 full-time and casual subeditors lost their jobs in Sydney.

The Kiwis! The Hannities of the internet.

Of course that doesn't explain how the AFR also stuffed up its bar code, which made the weekend rag impossible to sell, or why it's become such an irrelevant rag, heading off to the la la land of the hard core right, but when in doubt, always reach for the nearest cultural stereotype.

It's the Hannity way ...

What else? Well it's Saturday and the pond is in wind-down mode, but it's already been a week of surpassing riches. Like the Bolter agreeing with the buffoon:

Yes,  now you see how you can put together a piece by borrowing and cutting and pasting and then preening and strutting in the plumage, Bolter style.

Of course the story brings together two buffoons who are in what Kurt Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle called a false karass.

One buffoon has sundry interests in coal; the other buffoon, as the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, is convinced it's all the fault of the sun, the wind, volcanoes (insert cause du jour here), or it's not happening at all ...

Now there's a Hannity for you.

The pond prefers David Pope's conflation in today's cartoon, and more Pope here:

Of course you picked it in one.

Pope is suggesting that the turkey, quaintly named Simpson by its loving friends after a long ago revolutionary deserter, and militant, radical trade unionist, is having trouble with its pet donkey, called Hunt, who ran out of wikis and so is having trouble with the munitions ...

Now there's a Hannity for you ...

Which brings the pond to a final grievance for the day:

Hmm, that seems a fair point. It isn't right to go around calling everyone Hannities or Nazis or whatever. Point well made, Mr. Nunn, here.

What's that you say?

There are exceptions. The term "body fascism" seems appropriate for the obsessive expectations mainly placed on women's appearance. A "news junkie" or "chocolate addict" somehow don't devalue the discussion around addiction and its effects. Similarly, we may kill time or two birds with one stone – or could murder a Crunchie – without having a homicidal bone in our body.

Say what? Is there a term for "mind fascism"?

Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy and all that they entailed, including the Holocaust, are the equivalent of the fashion game?

You sir, are a Hannity!

But at least now the pond feels comfortable calling Greg Hunt a donkey. It seems an apt way to describe this flunky, what with the collateral damage that's seen the buffoon and the Bolter become as one ...

Now if you missed Stewart, and you've refused to spoof Firefox so you can see him live, despite the very clear instructions available on the full to overflowing intertubes, you can see him doing over Hannity here, and, as a bonus, you can see Colbert doing it here.

And so to David Rowe, seemingly the only reason these days to follow the AFR, and more Rowe here, as he brings together Quentin and the donkey and the buffoon, but sadly doesn't seem to have had enough space for the Bolter, who surely could have got into the show doing his fabulous impression of Uma Thurman as a climate scientist.