In which the pond wonders at the rough beast slouching towards a decent Fox news service on television ...

(Above: and more Rowe here).

There's nothing like fear-mongering, terror-trolling and induced hysteria as a boon when working the red carpet in a bid to stay before the cameras for another booking, and the exemplary Rowe catches the artistes in exemplary pose ...

Demonisation has become an essential part of the conservative political and media toolkit in recent years, which is why, even when it comes to a sombre subject, the editorialist reptiles of Oz can introduce a risible element.

This morning the pontificating supreme member of the chattering classes at the Oz stepped into the gun and race debate in the United States, mainly to express bewilderment, while also revealing remarkable confusion:

But why select out Clinton? She's merely a candidate.

If wanting a woman to mention, why not mention Governor Nikki Haley - Republican - of South Carolina, busy calling for the death penalty but busy also doing absolutely nothing about the divisive flag still proudly flying out on the front porch. Why not mention the Republican-controlled state legislature busy doing nothing at all about it ...

But that's the flag you say, and the Oz editorialist is on about guns ...

So let's turn to guns:

Read that first sentence and weep: America's failure over gun control is incomprehensible.

And then marvel at the line about sporting the Confederate flag as a way of underlining the gunman's sickening motivation. Say hello to the South Carolina governor and legislature while marvelling ...

The reality is that America's failure over gun control is all too easily comprehensible, though it's now so intractable it's unlikely to be changed well into the future.

The NRA has profoundly corrupted the political process, and most notably the GOP, though many Democrats of the southern kind are in the trough just as deep.

And in the process the NRA has found a potent set of cheerleaders all residing at ... Murdoch's Fox News.

But of course the hand-wringing editorialist at the Oz can't mention this reality. Instead we cop a lot more pious blather:

The US is also awash with Fox News daily thrust into private hands.

America's shame is also Fox's shame, and by extension Murdoch's shame, and since the Oz is kissing cousin to the American empire, they can bask in the reflected shame.

You don't have to look far for evidence - that prime Fox klutz Steve Doocy was head of the pack saying It's extraordinary that Charleston church shooting is being called a hate crime.

But that link will also lead to a number of other links proving that when it comes to tone deafness Fox is king of the pack. It's not just Fox of course - that other weapon in the Murdoch American empire chimed in with an editorial claiming that institutional racism no longer existed in America.

And the usual Fox suspects were also front and centre - that eminent doofus Tucker Carlson, for example, and you could, if you wanted, get a dose of Bill Orally or Hannity.

Sad to say, the United States is fucked, comprehensively, with no easy way out of its canyon of guns and race, and in the short time it's been functioning, Fox News has done its very best on every level and in every way to exacerbate the divisions, and support the NRA in its desire that nothing be done.

It doesn't matter what Murdoch says or tweets, it's what the businesses he owns do that matters ...

It's called a successful business model, and that's why the best the local reptiles can offer is "incomprehensible" - because admitting, acknowledging or even observing the forces at work in the United States involves truths much too close to home.

Which is why the pond looks nervously at the local scene, since we live in interesting times and there are the usual braying domestic ratbags at work in the media beavering away in the Murdoch cause.

After all, if you see a successful business model, the temptation is to replicate it. Forget the way that high fructose corn syrup corrupts the body or extreme right wing punditry corrupts the mind. If it sells, put it out there ...

The model's already at work in the Oz in the tree-killer domain, but sadly for the reptiles it doesn't work too well.

But paying for the Bolter to turn up on FTA television offers more hope, which is why the Murdochians have been looking at Channel Ten more and more longingly.

Now the official line is being peddled today by Mark Day:

Yes, it's just so unfair.

But what's this? Foxtel deal raises News Corp's influence at Ten ...

In short, the gaggle of conservative fundamentalists have already made a mockery of Day's crocodile tears.

The rest  of Mark Day's piece is the usual pleading for special treatment, as he sings his song for his supper in the usual News Corp way.

There's talk of the wonders of the new CEO, and Vietnam and India as new opportunities - hey shared time zones - and the wickedness of slothful governments refusing to encourage entrepreneurial business activity and the changing world, and the way Tony Abbott, if he doesn't pander to News Corp, will be driving media growth, investment and jobs offshore.

Yes, if News Corp can't get hold of Ten and turn it into a FTA equivalent of Foxtel, what a blow it will be to Australia.

But the reptiles don't just laze around on a rock on the noon day sun. They're always busy and there are other ways to skin the cat, as we learn today from that bubble-headed booby:

A brand new news service for the reptiles! Perhaps using the world-wide resources of News Corp. The lizard Oz and the tabloids at home, Fox News in the United States ...

Well the pond votes for the very first opinion program to turn up on the news service.

Let it be the dog molester remarking how incomprehensible it is there has been such a sharp upturn in hostility, anger and resentment in Australia, given that Tony Abbott is such a soothing and healing leader, and the reptiles are doing their very best to introduce harmony throughout the land ...

Oh wait, he already does that, thanks to News Corp.

Never mind, let his and the voices of the rest of the commentariat apparatchik be amplified a thousand times on televisual boxes throughout the land, and on the intertubes, copper wire willing, and in the cell phones and ...

And if you think that's good news, remember to get your refreshing glass of kool aid punctually at 10.30am at the water cooler ...

And so to the headline news the pond is still waiting for ...