Sunday, November 09, 2014

In which it's full steam ahead for Victorians and full steam ahead for the tabloid commentariat ...


The pond was absolutely delighted to see that Denis Napthine has proposed a steam train in every home, and that Victoria will return to the golden age of steam, and so it's full steam ahead for every Victorian .... (can we get that old line in Fitzroy in working order?)

Yes, it's another ecstatic EXCLUSIVE from the HUN, showing all the balance and sophistication of Pravda in its golden age.

Meanwhile, the Bolter is outraged at the ABC for publishing left wing propaganda.

Well you have to read Murdoch rags to appreciate the real meaning of irony ...

What the pond now wants to know is when the HUN will be publishing directly from the Premier's desk .... oh there'll be EXCLUSIVES on a daily basis. No doubt the Premier will soon be promising a bicycle in every home:


Yes, it's full pedal power ahead, another EXCLUSIVE from the pond, still channeling the rage of road users in Gippsland ...

The Bolter is also outraged that Annabel Crabbe dared to mock the Great Man, in All quiet on the shirt-front. The querulous Bolter moaned:

Abbott is dumb and laughable and crass to demand justice from Russia on behalf of the families of 38 murdered Australians? 

Seriously?

No, Abbott is dumb laughable and crass for suggesting he was going to be as bold as brass and give Putin a shirt-front, and then in a series of pathetic backward steps, ended up suggesting that he'd give him a good talking to and stern words, until finally settling for a brief discussion.

Seriously! Pathetic!

You don't strut and crow like a rooster, then turn up as meek and mild as a lamb ... now let's see how he does as a result of his premature, self-aggrandising crowing ...

Diplomacy as a form of thuggery? Sadly Putin's a master of the art, and Abbott's skill level is thumping the wall near the head of a woman:


Now if you want a bit of genuine verbal thuggery directed at the Ruskis, head off to Nick Cohen's demolition of Russia Today.

Speaking of verbal thugs - it has to be said that the Bolter is a dumb lightweight in comparison - Will Self's review of Julie Burchill's latest memoir was a ripping read.

The last person to look to for such subtlety is Julie Burchill, who’s made – by her own admission – a fortune from writing the sort of ad hominem abuse that all too often is passed off as “comment” in our media. In truth, I’ve always thought of Burchill as a sort of newsprint Alastair Campbell; just as in his heyday Campbell intimidated the Westminster lobby journalists by flecking their faces with spittle and expletives, so she seems to win newspaper contracts by playing the part of sacredly authentic monster for credulous readers. I’m afraid I can’t really dignify her latest offering with the ascription “book”, nor the contents therein as “writing” – rather they are sophomoric, hammy effusions, wrongheaded, rancorous, and pathetically self-aggrandising. 
I wasn’t actually aware that Burchill was a philo-Semite of long standing, but if alcoholics are prone to reciting “drunkalogues”, then we might reasonably describe Unchosen as a similarly tedious “Jewalogue”. (And since Burchill descants at such length on her own prodigious drinking and cocaine-sniffing, we might reasonably see it as a drunkalogue too.) There isn’t a shred of reason in this text, which – one hopes because all the publishers it was offered to turned it down – has been produced by an imprint funded by subscribers including such beacons of enlightenment as Richard Littlejohn. I really don’t see it as my responsibility as a reviewer to catalogue Burchill’s repugnant gallimaufry of insults and half-baked nonsense; suffice to say, she believes everything the state of Israel does is just peachy, and she uncritically accepts ethno‑Zionism, endorsing the idea that some schmuck – such as myself – who grew up in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, has a “right” to my place in the Holy Land in advance of the 1.8 million Palestinians currently penned up in the giant internment camp known as “the Gaza Strip”.

And Self was only just warming up. You can read the rest here, if you haven't already, but the pond can't resist quoting the final par:

About 12 years ago I profiled Burchill for the Independent on Sunday. I wrote then that she presented the bizarre spectacle of an intelligent woman who had spent her entire adult life making herself more stupid; this process has now reached its inevitable conclusion, and she has become to all intents and purposes moronic. If I were still a Jew I might have cause to reject her overtures, but thankfully, having resigned from the club, I’m no longer in any danger of being bothered by this particular barroom bore.

Already the Graudian has followed up by placing it in the Top five most scathing book reviews, though perhaps it's not the company Self would like to keep because it also features fatuous fops taking shots at John Keats, Walt Whitman, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

But it did also feature the immortal original Dorothy Parker on A. A. Milne:

‘Well, you’ll see, Piglet, when you listen. Because this is how it begins. The more it snows, tiddely-pom-’ ‘Tiddely what’ said Piglet. (He took, as you might say, the very words out of your correspondent’s mouth.) ‘Pom,’ said Pooh. ‘I put that to make it more hummy.’ And it is that word ‘hummy’, my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

These days the tonstant weader fwows up reading the child-like simperings of the Murdochians in the presence of a Liberal - any Liberal will do, as Denis Napthine proves today.

But it's not just the HUNsters and the Bolter that provide all the fun.

The pond has been remiss in failing to attend to the Daily Terror, or its particularly malignant über-tabloid form, the Sunday Terror.

There are, as always, rich treasures to be discovered.

Miranda the Devine, for example, was shocked and appalled by Noel Pearson's speech, determining that he had given better speeches, braver and truer, without actually bothering to dig out any actual examples of said braver and truer speeches.



In typical Devine form, she used the occasion to sink the boot into Whitlam - kicking the dead is so much fun - but was forced to dance warily around Pearson, before coming up with these concluding pars, which verge on the bizarre, and would certainly have got the original Dorothy P. going:

For starters, white skin and privilege don’t inoculate you from discrimination and heartbreak. They just don’t provide easy excuses.  
I could say that Noel Pearson, a strong man with a deep voice and commanding presence could never understand what it is to be a ­hesitant young woman in a room of VIPs. 
Or what it is to be an awkward boy with skewiff glasses and borderline Aspergers who won’t look people in the eye because of the shame he carries from schoolyard ostracism. 
Empathy is what makes us human, the ability to imagine a life unlike our own, to understand ­another person’s anguish. It’s what differentiates us from animals; its absence is evil. You don’t have to walk in another person’s shoes to understand; you just have to be able to imagine. 
If Pearson thinks Whitlam is the rare privileged white person who understood discrimination, then he imagines an Australia devoid of empathy, which is a mean view of his fellow citizens. 
If you believe in equality, you don’t tell Australians who weren’t in that hall, who voted Whitlam out of office in a historic landslide and who reject his myths that you doubt their empathy. (the rest here)

WTF? How did borderline Aspergers get into that rant? And how about conflating the devastating impact of racism with being a young thing in a room full of VIPs?

Truly weird and wonderful, and suffused with a particular form of guilt-laden mortifying Catholicism.

But okay, the pond will bite, let's see how the Devine practises the empathy that makes us human and differentiate us from the animals:

If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies. (here)

Yes, hang 'em high, hang 'em hard. There's knock down empathy for you, as the pond's old mate Humpty Dumpty would say ...

As for Pearson, the reason that the Devine was on tippy toe is that way back when - as in this April 2011 posting here - Pearson was the golden boy:

Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has done more than anyone in Australia to put the boot into the concept of passive welfare, or “sit down money”, as a poison that has weakened family life in marginalised communities and destroyed the social norms that used to protect the vulnerable. 
Tony Abbott, who is close to Pearson, and has spent weeks working in Cape York communities, was singing from the same song sheet before he became Opposition Leader - when he was Employment Minister in the Howard government and in his 2009 book, Battlelines.

Now that he's jumped the shark and nuked the Whitlam fridge, Pearson can expect the jaundiced eye of the commentariat to give him a right old pounding.

And he might find his relationship with Abbott less cheerful in the future. They run a hard ideological line in the world of Abbott, and it must kill Abbott to know that Whitlam was much loved, while some have even managed to forgive Malcolm Fraser, but Abbott has been the most loathed Prime Minister in a first year of government in many a long year ...

Let's see how Peta deals with a Whitlam worshipper ...

Meanwhile, in other matters arising from the Whitlam farewell, the bloated carcass of Akker Dakker floated into view:


The commentariat love to give Blanchett a pounding - she's pretty and rich - but it takes a real cheek for Akker Dakker to advise that nothing in life is free. He thinks scribbling crap for the Terror is worth a generous emolument from Chairman Rupert? Sorry, he's been on a pension for services rendered to the empire for yonks, a generous quasi retirement where he's routinely allowed to make a goat of himself and nobody much minds - though even the ABC began to realise he wasn't worth the pain, and dropped him from Insiders when he recycled an old joke about hairdressers being gay. Here he was yowling to the media arm of the reptiles:

Akerman told Media: “My remarks were in response to a suggestion raised by others on the program. I did not endorse the speculation. I certainly did not apologise, but said no hurt was intended by my remarks. 
 “The ABC News management did not contact me to share its view: totally unprofessional of them. Nor did it tell me I was under review.”

What a boofhead, but where did the latest outing get comical, as is always required for a pond listing?

Among the examples she offered of her generation’s expression was a 2004 film called Little Fish: ‘‘A story like Little Fish would not have been told without the massive changes to the Australian cultural conversation initiated, and shaped, by Gough Whitlam’s legacy.” 
 I was one of the unfortunate few viewers who, having contributed to the production of the film through my taxes, ­actually paid an admission fee to see what they were creating with my money. In truth I found it to be one of a number of bleak movies made with taxpayers’ money which depicted sleazy drug addicts doing what most drug addicts do – lie and cheat and destroy lives.

Well Akker Dakker should know. Here's the Hon. R.S. L. Jones in the NSW parliament in September 1997:

The joke is that Piers Akerman, when he lived in Albion Street in the 1970s, used LSD and marijuana regularly. He also used cocaine regularly when he was in the United States of America, in Los Angeles and Washington. I have spoken to someone who shared a number of cocaine lines with Piers Akerman. He was a drug addict. He also sexually harassed young female employees of News Limited in Washington and was sent back to the United Kingdom, where he tried to become the editor of the London Times but was denied that. He tried to get a job recently with the Sydney Morning Herald but was denied that, too. Here we have this hypocrite who is working hard to oppose what would have been a very useful reform in the drug fight in this country and now he is working against the interests of the community by torpedoing that. He himself was a drug addict and he still is a drug addict on legal drugs to this very day.

Uh huh. Of course the pond doesn't support this speculation. While the pond hasn't apologised, no hurt was intended by reproducing those remarks.

Now how do you plead Akker Dakker?

Of course Blanchett was merely supporting the myriad of myths that now enshrine Whitlam’s legacy. The legends have grown since he was sacked in 1975 and flowed ­freely since his death on October 21, almost all of them untrue.


Of course Akker Dakker couldn't even be used as a shoelace on a Whitlam shoe. He's a malignant man, a gnat without a vision, except for being paid for an endless flow of nattering negativity. And they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. Akker Dakker has been dining out, courtesy Chairman Rupert, for decades ...

What else arising from the Whitlam affair? Well, there's still no third party confirmation of Mark Latham's claim that the Bolter's wife yelled at him as a result of the way the Bolter wrote up the farewell.

In the old days, this would have led to charges of being hen-pecked, and male psychiatrists would nod wisely about why the Bolter has become what he is today... some might even begin to speculate about Hitler's love life, in shameless breach of Godwin's Law.

But enough of putting the Bolter on the couch.

Now, with a week to go in the spring racing season, it's time to farewell it with a First Dog cartoon and more First Dog here:


16 comments:

  1. Forgive the "off-topic"..perhaps..but this line..; "...where he's routinely allowed to make a goat of himself and nobody much minds "...threw this correspondent instantly back some many years ..back before the days of pollit' correct' when a joke was circulating around the traps of two chaps of particular "bent" up before " the Beak"...on a charge of bestiality..one being done for "rooting a goat" and the other being done for "acting the goat"..sure, lacking somewhat in the fine wit that has come to signify bestiality humour of the litigious kind we hear about these days...but nostalgic all the same...thanks for the memories!
    jaycee.

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  2. Henderson and Marr nearly got into fisticuffs on Insiders this morning. Henderson accused Marr of joking about terrorism, and Marr called him a fool while poking him. It got quite heated and Cassidy had to step in. Great fun!

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    1. Oh you hopeless commentariat addict, but wasn't it ... the pond would watch regularly if they could guarantee that level of silliness ...

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  3. I can't be sure, but didn't Pier Zakerman attend UWA?
    And wasn't it in the heady, pre-Whitlam days when UWA provided free tertiary education?

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    1. Oh Zoot, Zoot, next you'll be listing all the current bludgers in the current government who scored a free pass ...

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  4. OK, there's been criticism of Pearson for being over-rhetorical. Maybe, but current leaders need to up their dramatic flair. Hockey could have used a bit more of Dennis Potter's Marlow - "Age of Entitlement? ... It's over, Sunshine! And don't you forget it." Surely, Abbott could be more Shakespearean - "I have come to bury Putin."
    I've just watched Fargo (the movie) again and must say that comparing Greg Fotze to Steve Buscemi was a bit unkind. Not so the imposition of David Marr into Hopper's Nighthawks- brilliant.
    I'm guessing (without looking) that our hawks of the Right have all got down on the Boos at the Whitlam memorial. Have any gone as far as seeking to Ban the Boo? If they can get some traction on that one, perhaps they can move on to loud motorcycles.

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  5. Ms Devine apparently referred to Gough as a 'Westie made good'. Unbelievable that she can get away with an "ignorant and proud of it" line. Then again shI'd call some of her outpourings "brainfarts" except that it implies she has some brain to begin with.

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  6. As an aspie who lived that schoolyard terror, may I say quite sincerely fuck you, Miranda Devine. And the idiot nag you rode in on.

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  7. Been watching The Code, Miranda has?

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    1. And a reminder or two for angelic ol' pruners who would empathically overwrite and rewrite others' his stories and his speeches.

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  8. Yeah. I read Nick Cohen's squealing about RT and typical of the type, it was all froth and no evidence. Something like the charges levelled about MH17. The only thing demolished was Cohen's credibility.

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    1. A high-five for Nick, from Gorbi. Mind, that once-or-twice-booed traitor, Fraser, has been spreading similar perfidies, recently.

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    2. So you're a big fan of Faux Noise Anon? Seeing as how you love RT ... peas in an ideological media pod. Next thing you'll be explaining how any assault on the Murdochians was all froth and no evidence ...

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    3. Sorry Dorothy, you're displaying Cohen's standard of intellectual dribble. As I said, Cohen didn't give any evidence, only hyperbole. When the evidence, as in the 'secret' control tower instructions to MH17 from Kiev are published, the black box recordings are publicised, the satellite imagery that the US and NATO undoubtedly have as well as the eye witness accounts of 2 SU25s taking off from Ukrainian territory and chasing MH17 and with what looks like bullet holes in a line in the cockpit area of MH17 - when these and other anomalies can be demonstrated to prove that Russia is responsible then and only then will I believe the Ukrainian/US point of view. Until then, which by the way I don't believe will ever happen, I will continue to be extremely sceptical of the statements by the political descendants of Stepan Bandera given their actions in Odessa, Novorossiya, Mariupol etc etc. But then again, as a loud exponent of the applications of Godwin's Law, I expect you to completely gloss over this as it appears to be politically incorrect, or is it really because V Putin has put into place a law that bans the homosexual seduction of minors? Not homosexuality you know, just the seduction of minors. Something which even good old homophobic Australia adheres to. Therefore his message seems to be: 'good luck to you wherever you can find love but leave the kiddies alone'.

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    4. Abbott says he's told Putin he has evidence! and that he demanded an apology and compensation. Christine Milne today has asked for Abbott to produce this evidence he says he has, noting that Abbott is the only one internationally saying so. Perhaps it's just the church of Rome out trying to slay the orthodox once again, and our Captain Catholic can't help himself. And, in her defence, weakly, perhaps Ms Parker has forgotten what the Harvard gang did to Russia all too recently?

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