Celebrating the festival of the boot - what emergency where - by kicking the media can down the road ...

So it didn't take long for the rabid hysterics and the over-the-top hysteria to produce an absolute clanger.

Yet these images remain widely available on the full to overflowing intertubes, and without the pond blotting out the face of the victim.

So where's the front page apology to said freely acknowledged victim on the front page of today's wretched rags, with the same prominence as most notably deployed by The Age?

You're dreaming, right?

Yes, they're still banging on about teens and terror and radicals but the real terror is being caught in the snare of the Australian mainstream media.

Even on the digital page of The Age, the Fairfaxians show their sense of balance and proportion by putting the error second, and even then it's with an angle that promotes Fairfax Media radio station:

Yes it's not so much an apology as a promotional opportunity for Fairfax Media radio:

It's only when you click on the link in that story that you finally get to this:

Yep, an apology which contains a lie.

It's been withdrawn from circulation where that circulation is under the control of the Fairfaxians.

Meanwhile, it's freely and widely available on the intertubes - a reason why the pond routinely warns young women not to upload assorted images that will return to haunt them some time down the track. (If the man wants a shot of someone sucking his dick, teach him flexibility and hand him a camera).

Never mind, let's hope the young man featured on the front page knows that old Cruel Sea song:

And the occifer said 
Better get a lawyer son 
Better get a real good one 
Better get a lawyer son 
Better get a real good one 
Get yourself a suit and tie 
Get your hair cut way up high 
Get yourself a lawyer son 
You're gonna need a real good one 

It reminded the pond yet again of the absurd notion of "due prominence", peddled by the Australian Press Council, itself a victim of sustained bashing by the reptiles:

The Council interprets "due prominence" as requiring the publication to ensure the retraction, clarification, correction, explanation or apology has the effect, as far as possible, of neutralising any damage arising from the original publication, and that any published adjudication is likely to be seen by those who saw the material on which the complaint was based. (General statement of principles)

So the Fairfaxians today have space for footballers of the thugby league kind, and of the aerial ping pong sort, but not the space for a grovelling, unreserved apology to the victim, while the image continues to be available online?

Sad to say, neither the media nor the Australian Press Council have the first clue about serious apologies ... and prefer the Grabthar Hammer approach of "never give up, and never surrender except to the point where you hope you might get away with it".

Meanwhile, it's a light day for the pond thanks to the reptiles at the lizard Oz, who are maintaining their relentless assault on the pond's sensibilities.

Yep if you click on one of the featured commentariat you are confronted by this continuing, ongoing bludgeoning attack on the purse or the hip pocket:

How long are they going to maintain the rage? Who cares? There's no point in providing a link to this sort of shouty Murdoch propaganda. What if someone visiting the pond went off on a visit and became an actual digital subscriber?

How mortifying ...

Anyway, the pond wouldn't link to Gra Gra "Swiss bank account" Richardson even when hell does finally freeze over ... or the reptiles admit that there might be something to climate science ...

It reminded the pond of an offer made by Crikey to bring the pond back into the fold ... a free copy of Kim Williams' book ...

And second prize was a dozen copies?

Well so long as Crikey goes on celebrating big Mal's plans to degut the ABC, SBS, community television, the NBN, and all the rest of his follies, as with its story on transmission and MPEG-4 (here), they can keep Kim. The MPEG-4 aspect of the story was covered weeks ago, for example at ZDNet here - and like everything big Mal touches not everything is sunshine, especially if you're poor and have to upgrade your gear, all so big Mal can sell off more spectrum or the commercial networks can fill up the space with even more nauseating infomercial shit. (And when will anyone notice that poor old NITV is forced to run ancient Film Australia biographies in its prime time slot? When will big Mal turn on the blacks?)

Not to worry, it leaves the pond footloose and fancy free, and in a position to recommend Jill Lapore in The New Yorker doing The Last Amazon Woman Woman returns, which happily right at this moment is outside the paywall.

With the greatest respect to Gal Gado - someone's got to do it, and the pond understands that working actors must work - the one certainty is that Hollywood will fuck over this latest incarnation of Wonder Woman, and the sneak pic that was released only confirmed the pond's misgivings:

The fan boys immediately started drooling, but the pond just left the spittle and the foam on their pitiful lips.

As Lepore reminded the pond, the original Wonder Woman was part of the war effort (click to enlarge):

And then came the great betrayals and persecutions of the 1950s, whether women's rights, gays or those of an alternative political persuasion, and the original intent of the comic was shelved and forgotten, and WW was driven behind a picket fence, and given a John Howard mind set.

And then, much later, the bizarre internecine warfare, which pace Lepore, had its bizarrely amusing moments:

In May, 1975, the Redstockings held a press conference and issued a sixteen-page report purporting to reveal that Gloria Steinem was a C.I.A. agent, that Ms. was both a capitalist manifesto and part of a C.I.A. strategy to destroy the women’s movement, and that Wonder Woman was a symbol of nothing so much as feminism betrayed. “Wonder Woman also reflects the anti-people attitude of the ‘liberal feminists’ and matriarchists who look to mythical and supernatural heroines and ‘models’ while ignoring or denigrating the achievements and struggles of down-to-earth women,” they charged. “It leads to the ‘liberated woman,’ individualist line that denies the need for a movement, and implies that when women don’t make it, it’s their own fault.” Steinem rebutted the allegations. “Although it seems bizarre to have to write this obvious sentence,” she wrote, “let me state that I am not now nor have I ever been an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Never mind, there's more to life than reading the Murdochians or the Bolter and that's why the pond still reads actual tree killer editions of decent magazines as a way of avoiding brooding about the current follies...

Sure, the pond could go on yet another rant about speaker in tongues Morrison, busy shipping refugees to Cambodia. But the comics take care of that too, and more Rowe here:

Of course Rowe could have shown Morrison consorting with a dictator and doing a shameless despicable deal with a poverty-stricken country, but traducing Australian traditions will do ...

And sure, the pond could have gone on a rant about the budget and the mess and the emergency and the enormous stupidity of allegedly tackling the crisis in medical health by using a new tax to set up a research facility, or sticking to an expensive PPL scheme through thick or thin, but another comic takes care of that, and more Renaissance Papery here:

Of course the budget emergency has receded thanks to the new emergency, and new hysteria, designed fortuitously to allow Fairfax to demonise innocent bystanders ...

And mais naturellement, the pond could go on about Team Idiot, headed by George Christensen, but that's already been covered here:

It's hard to see why the rabid ratbag fringe keep on wanting to change 18C, when Team Idiot and the Murdoch press routinely demonise Islamics, and the Fairfax press can demonise an innocent bystander ...

Of course the real sting in that tail is the story just below Team Idiot, the one about the rejection of a federal ICAC (yes Graudian, caps are required), and never mind the Australian Wheat Board and the going to war on a lie in 2003, and Royal Commission now please ...

But that's the job of the useful idiots, to distract attention while the nasty idiots go about their business, including but not limited to shamelessly filching phrases from Ben Chifley, because there's bugger all light in their own heads ...

Sadly Abbott only won the Clinton in the latest round of the Ernies, always the second rate Oxford don, even at insults, but before the festival of the boofhead begins this weekend, please allow the pond to do a Fairfax, and borrow some copy, so that the awards bounce even further around the internet, like a Fairfax front page.

Well done Poodle, you've made scribbling the pond light work throughout the year, well played Akker Dakker, better luck next year - have you thought about snorting a little coke to go right out of your tree? - and have you thought about denouncing John Oliver for singing with puppets about prisons in the United States?

And well played Miranda the Devine - have you thought about acknowledging your debt to greenies, bicycles and Clover Moore for the way they've sent you barking mad?

But are you satisfied with a dead heat? Hmm, heart not quite in it, could do better, recommended treatment, scorpion bite before breakfast, and bite from rabies-infected dog just before retiring at night ... and a generous serving of Murdoch Kool-Aid with all meals ...

And so in honour of Wonder Woman, and better belated than never, and before the festival of the other boot gets going in earnest: