Don't send in the clowns, they're already here ...

It's been everywhere, and what's remarkable -  seeing its been done for a brand allegedly wise in the ways of the media - is how irredeemably bad the advertisement is as a way of flogging a brand.

There's a grinning, smirking Mike Baird lined up against raving ratbag members of the right wing commentariat, and in the middle, a nobody seemingly intent on giving Apple a plug, without realising that brand of computer is forever tainted by its association with latte sipping, chardonnay swallowing trendie inner city 'leets, while some wretched woman smirks at something on social media, well known for tearing apart the fabric of western civilisation.

It's easy enough to work out what the Daily Terror wants to get out of it. 

Yep, somehow, Mike Baird getting into bed with them is supposed to entice and beguile punters into a bait and switch world, where the sub starts off as gentle as a feather, and then once they get to know you, they can rough you up a little:

Oops, never mind the big print, watch out for the small print.

But what does Mike Baird get out of it, apart from being branded for all eternity as a Murdoch political slut of the first water?

Ah there, on the right, there it is, though you have to look past the photoshop follies of Abbott and Putin, and Abbott trying to change the subject and claw back a bit of respect:

No doubt there will be many more EXCLUSIVES of a soft Bairdian kind - this one is of such kite-flying banality about a racing lifeline that even the Terror can't manage more than seven short pars in its digital edition.

You can always rely on the google bots to make the right connections, dot the "i", cross the "t":

Well there's no reason to explore that in depth.

Mike Baird comes out in favour of the Terror, and the Terror comes out for him and for racing prosperity.

And that's the real result, the diminution of both brands. Is the Terror an independent investigative newspaper, proudly carrying on the traditions of tabloid journalism? Why no, it's a slut of a gutter crawling rag that would hop into bed with any passing politician in the hope of selling a few extra subscriptions ...

Is Mike Baird a classy politician? Why no, he's a slut of a politician, ready to crawl into bed with any passing tabloid in the hope of garnering a few votes ...

Now deep down, the pond doesn't mind - after all, it's all been done before, and as Dr Mumbo pointed out in mUmBRELLA, there have been some splendid examples, such as Jay Weatherill doing his bit for FruChocs and Neil Kinnock turning up with Tracy Ullman - videos and Dr Mumbo here - though at the same time his alternative examples do suggest that politics is a circus and Baird is a clown.

There's something ineffably stupid about the naughty boy grin Baird gives, when he takes a beat towards camera, that's wondrous to behold, a bit like the smirking commentariat on the seats opposite, as beguiling and as attractive as toads in a stew ...

As Dr Mumbo notes, Junkee got into a frenzy, and you can head off here for their take on the ad and the story, which makes the fair point that a grinning, smirking Baird trolling for the Terror hints at a little media bias, of the sort which only a day before had sent the brainwashed Sharri Markson into a frenzy ...

It wasn't just Junkee - the story popped up all over the place, as in The Graudian's NSW premier, now free with your Daily Telegraph subscription, TV ad tells us.

What's startling in that piece is that neither Baird nor the Terror can see how having each other in their back pocket might in any way be problematic, but then corruption has run so deep and so long in the body politic of NSW that any understanding of such matters is now long gone ...

Still, the Graudian has fun with the rich resonances in the ad:

“Subscribe today and get extra, extra every day,” viewers are told as they see three Daily Telegraph star writers – Bolt, Devine and NSW political correspondent Andrew Clennell – smiling at the pure joy of riding in a carriage opposite the lovely Baird, who also happens to be the minister for infrastructure and the minister for western Sydney. 
 “With the journalists you know and trust and a new app for iPad that brings your daily paper to life, subscribing to the Daily Telegraph Plus is now even better value,” the voiceover says as a lone male commuter is joined by the team from the Tele who surprise him by popping up in the empty seats. 
A close-up of the Tele iPad app shows a helpful article: “Tackling the issues affecting the state” under which the smiling team of Baird and Clennell are pictured. Yep, the state government is working hand-in-glove with the newspaper to make NSW a better place to live. 

Now this is a newspaper that routinely carries out destructive jihads and crusades, against bicycles, Clover Moore, greenies, anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, and Baird has clambered into bed with a bunch of ideological zealots and ratbags of the most awful photoshopping kind.

Why?

A spokesman for the premier told Guardian Australia: “The premier would be happy to appear in an ad for the Sydney Morning Herald if asked. He thinks it’s a good thing for people to be buying and reading newspapers.”

Dissembling disingenuous nonsense. The next time you see Baird turn up in an advertisement for City Hub, New Matilda, Green Left Weekly, or Der Stürmer, give the pond a call.

Oh okay, no need to do Der Stürmer, not when you've got the Daily Terror standing by ...

On the upside, at least everyone now knows Baird is happy to clamber into Murdoch's back pocket, not that it makes any difference to the pond, since we've never paid a cracker for any Murdoch product and never will ...

What else?

Well today the digital edition of the lizard Oz explains why the pond will never fork over a cent for the reptiles slaving for the rag.

Look at the line up in today's rotating digital fickle finger of doom.

Is this the state propaganda arm or what? The pond could fill in the details of each piece in a burst of automatic writing, which might help explain why the pond was so excellent at painting by numbers:

There's Graham Lloyd niggling, introducing saucy doubts and fears, in a way he's now been doing for years, because deep down the reptiles are a bunch of denialists in the Tony Abbott mode:

Then there's Dame Slap back to strut her stuff:

The joke there is "our values", as if the pond shares the same values as Dame Slap when it comes to Lord Monckton, a UN conspiracy to take over the world, the joys of Chairman Rupert, and all the rest of the rightwing ratbag values that go with being a member of Team Abbott and Team Rupert and Team Chris Mitchell.

Our values?

Oh just go away.

But wait, there's more:

Yes, this sort of reflexive tea party nonsense from the government's unofficial climate denialist spokesperson, and ironically in the same week that everyone was getting their knickers in a knot trying to blame each other for the cuts to the ABS alleged to have resulted in a bunch of entirely useless unemployment statistics ...

Whenever the pond sees some rampantly stupid ideologue raging about big government, the pond is reminded of the quest for the perfect porridge - the question isn't whether it's big or small, but what's right for the job at hand.

So when will you see a story from Newman with a splash saying "We have run out of easy business options. Those who see big business as the solution should think again"?

Well yes, it's as stupid as the current Newman splash.

But wait, there's even more. Who'd have known that Paul Kelly (not the singer, the maiden aunts of Adelaide are safe) is also a curriculum expert?

Could we get any bigger irony?

Of course we could:

The party of freedom? That's the party which, with the connivance of a supine Labor party, is busy introducing the most extensive range of anti-freedom legislative measures in Australia seen outside the second world war?

Dear sweet long absent lord, it's well known that Crikey is struggling, but at least they don't indulge in this kind of lick spittle, forelock tugging fellow travelling codswallop.

Instead you can cop thequestion and Bernard Keane's answer, here in Can the Liberals cope with freedom?, behind the paywall.

Now the pond respects the paywall but here's an excerpt from the first half of the piece:

The Liberal Party’s vaunted commitment to freedom is a fiction: it is as paternalist as the Left and allows national security to justify the curtailment of basic rights. 
The Liberal’s long insistence that it is the party of freedom in Australian politics is being rapidly undermined on multiple issues. Indeed, it’s now hard to see the claim as anything other than a rhetorical fiction. 
 Yesterday the Prime Minister, Education Minister Christopher Pyne, and Environment Minister Greg “I am the walrus” Hunt all joined Treasurer Joe Hockey in attacking the Australian National University’s policy of divestment of fossil fuel investments. ANU’s decision plainly alarmed a resources sector already struggling with falling prices — and a major onslaught has been launched on the university via The Australian Financial Review, which has attacked ANU every day over the last week And those attacks now come with the imprimatur of the most senior levels of the federal government. 
You might think the party of freedom, “the side of politics which has in its DNA to keep governments small and to keep freedom large”, as Attorney-General George Brandis put it recently, would support any investor’s right to invest where they see fit. Indeed, in 2010, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott encouraged investors to divest from Australian resources companies, saying “it is safer to invest in Argentina, in Tanzania, in Zambia, in Ghana and in Botswana than it is to invest in Australia”. 
Then there’s the ongoing campaign being led by Senator Richard Colbeck and other Tasmanian Liberals to extend competition laws designed for commercial conduct to individual activists and environmental and consumer groups that criticise businesses. This would enable the prosecution of groups like GetUp or consumer advocates to shut down criticism of, or campaigns against, industries or individual companies. The theme of both examples is that freedom should only be used in ways deemed appropriate by Liberals — that is, it should never be used to threaten the interests of the Liberals’ business constituency. 
This is the soft underbelly of the modern Liberal Party’s “commitment” to freedom: it’s a commitment that ends the moment freedom is used in ways with which it disagrees. That’s why, during the Howard years, that government repeatedly attacked freedom. It passed an absurd law purporting to outlaw online gambling, which merely had the effect of preventing Australian companies from competing for revenue from Australian gamblers. It passed a law to restrict online freedom of expression aimed at preventing discussion of euthanasia, and even banned Philip Nitschke’s Peaceful Pill Handbook, as well as overriding Northern Territory laws to permit euthanasia.

And so on, and that's before Keane even gets to consider George Brandis and Philip Ruddock and the intent and effects of current legislation - in which the Labor party is also embroiled ...

Whenever the pond sees Tony Abbott rabbit on about freedom these days, it's likely to collapse into a laughing fit ... the freedom he's talking about is the freedom to slut around with the sluttish forelock-tugging Murdoch press and right wing ratbag members of the commentariat...

Thanks Mike Baird for reminding us all how it's done ...

Is there any more high comedy?

Well yes, there's the freedom to sound stupid about the way the current government sees science as the way forward ...

This from a government that doesn't have a science minister, has harassed the CSIRO, and has adopted an anti-climate science stance at the drop of a hat.

Poor old gravel voiced Ian Macfarlane has been given the job of pushing the crap uphill, a job for which he's as ill-suited as Greg "I am the walrus" Hunt is to do something about climate science ... but really Science experiment yet to pass acid test, and irony of Newman ironies, we have big government picking winners, as recorded in PM in Government announces science shakeup with five new growth centres.

Well every era needs its multifunction polis ...

Oh and there's also the freedom to be and to sound stupid, and to get yourself set up for a ragging by the Ruskis, managing to display a sense of humour, as recorded in the Graudian here,  and the Fairfaxians here (forced video at end of link), and it became clear that Abbott hadn't even arranged a meeting at which he could shirtfront Putin, and so he dropped the bullying bluster about shirtfronting, but not before he'd done even more damage to his reputation as a shoot from the mouth blowhard most likely to shirtfront himself...

Well once you set this sort of hare loose, you let loose all sorts of stupidities. So the Graudian has fun with Abbott v Putin in pictures, and the war of words continues ...

... and the Currish Flail lets fly with yet another monstrous piece of photoshopped nonsense for its tree killer front page:

Which reminds the pond of another Currish Snail story in Crikey, with that other bantam, Campbell Newman struggling and soon having to deal with the arrival of Putin, and ...

Queensland bookmakers are not only taking bets on Premier Campbell Newman losing his Brisbane seat at the next election — now they are laying odds on who will replace him as premier. 
The latest polling in Newman’s well-heeled Ashgrove constituency shows that he is still trailing Labor’s Kate Jones, who is making a comeback after losing the seat in 2012. She is on 52.2% and the Premier is on 41.1%, with the gap widening since Newman delivered an apology for his government’s “mistakes” and began a charm offensive through the Murdoch-owned Courier-Mail, the only daily newspaper publisher in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Townsville and Cairns. As an example, the most recent Brisbane Sunday-Mail trumpeted: “Newman’s plan to slash power bills — EXCLUSIVE” (page 1); “Zapped — Power prices sliced” (page 2); and “Power cost cut” (page 3). Driving through the streets of Ashgrove is like entering a special investment zone where money is no object in delivering goodies to local residents. 
 Since it dawned on the former Brisbane lord mayor that his popularity had imploded, Newman’s government has spent an estimated $80 million in Ashgrove to rebuild his approval rating. More than $65 million on an upgrade of a critical intersection, new classrooms ($3 million), a sports hall ($ 5 million), $8322 for a new kitchen for the Boy Scouts and $6160 for a local Italian festival — the list goes on. Local media reports have estimated the spending spree was worth, so far, about $2500 per voter. 
Queenslanders who thought that former premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was King of the Pork Barrel are now having second thoughts. (more here behind the paywall)

And soon enough the bantam will have to deal with a new circus, coming to Queensland to confront the hapless bantam.

And who set the circus in motion?

Why the shirtfronting head clown himself ...

Take it away Mr Pope, and as always there's more Pope here ...

There's just one question. Where did Pope did up that Statesman Abbott? Is this another Fine Cotton racing scam saga?  Maybe Mike Baird knows because it seems NSW is on a race horse led recovery ride  ...