That meme above seemed dangerously like a breach of the pond's many patents and trademarks, but given it's 'looney tunes' rather than 'loony' is probably enough of a defence.
Are truth and public interest also still a defence these days?
But surely Bugs could sue. If wise-cracking, Elmer Fudd-befuddling Bugs - who always loved a good frock - had the slightest thing in common with Erica, then the pond's world would collapse in tears ...
Settle, Erica and rugby leaguers, she's only a bunny ...
Moving right along, today there's a full to overflowing feast at the pond.
It hasn't passed without notice the way that Tony Abbott only has to piss on a couch and the reptiles will record diligently and faithfully every aspect of the operation.
Well that looks good, that looks classy, that looks exceptionally refined ... a speech of sensibility, eh ... guaranteed to make people swoon into a state of delicate insensible sensitivity ...
But any punter who actually bothered to look at the story would surely have considered it short weight ...
That's it? A little wringing of the hands, as if the reptiles don't have a clue about the game that's being played, and the role they themselves are playing in it?
What a laugh and a joke. As any decent pundit would have noted - Laura Tingle amongst them - Abbott is now well down the path of dissent, defiance, white-anting, undermining and rebellion, with the reptiles enlisted as his able supporters.
It also fell to the bouffant one to write up the speech ...
Not a mention in those opening pars of the fundamentalist gay-hate homophobic organisation at the heart of the speechifying ... just blather about UN diplomats and officials in New York ... and so, on it went ...
If there had to be a single word, it would be pathetic. That formula "one man and one woman open to children" is a weasel wording by a weasel still deep in his prejudice and bile ...
Which is why the pond turned immediately to another bright reptile star, continuing the war on another front ...
There are some might think that the surest way to wreck any military - western or eastern - is to have a reptile armchair pundit opine on ways to wreck the military, but of course Sheridan is exempt from those charges, courtesy of his tremendous stint in the military* fighting to preserve the dinkum way of life ...
This fantastic record gives him a tremendous insight into the military machine ...
It's going to be a rough year for Morrison. The reptiles are already jumping in with talk of sanctimonious lectures, in the sanctimonious, lecturing, hectoring way only zealots can manage ... with 'Zeitgeist' the new thought-bubble word of the day ...
Why else would the word be capitalised? Is it that momentous? The Oxford imposes no such obligation, but if it's the original German, shouldn't it be italicised in some way to draw attention to its strange foreign, mildly threatening, exotic origins?
Yes, the hive mind is tremendously excited about teh zeitgeist ...
Oh you can see the many ways the reptiles get the pond to consider the deepest issues of the times ...
True, once upon a time, if anybody approached the pond and deployed 'zeitgeist' with a flourish, they would have been thrown out as a wanker.
No doubt the reptiles intend the reference to be satirical, but the way each of them have taken up the term suggests that they have their very own thought-bubble orthodoxy, and it comes bubbling up each time they try to grapple with the alternative universe that flourishes outside their bunker ...
Never mind, since repetition is the key art of reptile commentariat scribbling, it's time yet again to yammer on about the Australian of the Year, as the mortified reptiles discover that no one paid much attention to their own appointment ...
That's it? Muttered imprecations and a forecast of doom and wrecking, and that's the best he's got?
It reminded the pond not so much of the zeitgeist as that old Woody Allen film, Zelig, with the bromancer cast in the role of the ultimate conformist ...
And yet, by swimming against the tide, and back towards the fundamentalism that so enlivens the Taliban and Daesh, Tony Abbott and his bromancer chum are performing an important duty, reminding the world that stick in the mud conservatives will have no truck with music, dancing or alternative lifestyles ...
Because that's the way it is with the scorpions always ready to hitch a ride with the hapless frogs of the world ...
And speaking of scorpions, the pond must now pay obeisance to the mighty chairman of them all...
The pond has always been a big fan of the Chairman's twittering, but a recent burst went above and beyond the call of duty ...
Now some wags got upset, and launched into all the many obvious critiques that are currently available in relation to this form of wondrously hypocritical wittering twittering ...
But this misses the fun and ruins the sport.
The real fun is to click on the tweet and see how the senile old goat sets himself up for a hammering these days each time he twitters ...
The Chairman is in advanced dotage and a state of complete unawareness of how his company - and he himself - has worked over the years, and he now spends time broadcasting that remarkable ignorance to the world ...
How long before Jerry gets her pay day?
And in that spirit of joyous celebration ...
And so on ... the pond could go on reproducing the endless stream of abuse, but all good things must come to an end ... at least for the moment ...
* the pond, subsequent to typing these words, Greg Hunted Greg Sheridan here, and could find no actual reference to Mr Sheridan's military service. The pond profoundly regrets and apologises for what seems to have been an error. Is there a white feather in the house?
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteI was under the assumption that Abbott's speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom was a private affair and the media would not be present. How then did The Australian get a transcript of the speech?
DW
Such outspoken conservatism may be a "distraction", as some Liberals suggest ...it's a distraction from one of the great ongoing tragic love stories of our time, "When Tones met Rupe". Talk about "sensibility", what a tear jerker - every episode gets me. The marriage has been going through a rough patch lately, but this New York "distraction" from a "love that dare not speak its name" has allowed the couple to meet and renew their vows. Wait for the next instalment ...
ReplyDeleteI beg your pardon for interpolating a gratuitous irrelevancy, DP, but I was seized by a desire to read the words of Michael Duffy once again I know, I know, senility empowers idiocy). So I found my way back to your very first Michael Duffy Files post on Sunday July 20, 2008.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh, what an epiphany ! Well, not really, but us oldies gotta rev up our measly lives now and then. Anyway, it was a fine piece about how the Christian fundamentalists in the USA are but nothing compared to the awesome, growing power of we disbelievers.
You produced a couple of wonderful phrases: "If this is the best Australia can do - a columnist recycling without insight or understanding ..." and "It's neurosis as commentary ...".
Oh DP, plus ca change ... plus ca change ...
I didn't realize (I used to read Duffy occasionally) just how much he's like The Prattler.
Wow GB, a clean out from near on a decade ago.
DeleteI'm struck by the surfeit of loonery rubbish Dorothy has fished out of the pond today whilst performing her fantastic effort in aid of a healthier environment. Just look. And it's Everyday! The mind boggles. Where can it all come from? How does Dorothy keep up with the load continuously thrown in the loonpond from all around? There's so much. Does any get past Dorothy's sharp observance? If so, what lies beneath? How can a loonpond even be drained if it comes to that?
Bathtubs and old dunnies may not be lurking in the loonpond, however could there not be at least "two 75mm shells dating from World War I" that were heroically lobbed in by the Bromancer as usual missing a target from 30,000 feet?
Goood one Anon:
DeleteYou have no idea how moved the pond was by your confession GB. Bless you and bless you Anon, in a strictly secularist and pagan way, and may we soon build a rubbish heap even larger than the ones they build for New York city ... and that's very big indeed ...
DeleteIf I'd known you'd be so pleased, I would have done it earlier, DP. But it was a fun read, kinda, and there's a lot more in MDF and the earlier Loonpond for me to read yet.
Delete*Following your lead, DP, I greghunted that f*%CKenny too, and found no reference to a distinguished military career (at least, not to one in which he participated), although I did discover that he played footy for various crow-eating outfits, so I suppose he has seen combat of sorts. Whatever, thanks Gergsy, I am feeling emboldened to start uttering contemptuous put-downs of mere Lieutenant-Generals who haven't put their lives on the line enough for my high standards, sitting hear at the computer in my jim-jams.
ReplyDelete"More perfectly"? Isn't that a bit like 'very unique'?
ReplyDeleteNah, mate, it's religious:
Deletexxxxxx [Name your own deity] is more perfectly perfect than perfection.
It's the bit about the utterly perfect perfection of xxxxxx [Name your own deity] requires that xxxxxx [Name your own deity] exists, because if xxxxxx [Name your own deity] didn't exist, he would be more perfectly perfect than perfection. But they obviously is, QED.
Ooops "he WOULDN'T be more perfectly perfect..."
Delete[sigh]
Thanks GB - xxxxx [Name your own deity] - that sounds utterly, utterly prefect.
DeleteNot one mention of the pluperfect? Plus quam perfectum?
DeleteWhat's happened to Latin and the Holy Roman Empire? Is all lost? What news from the nearly unique gates we had built to keep out the barbarians? Have they failed, because we had not given them proper, perfectly unique care?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluperfect
Oh my, DP, you've rumbled me. But then when one starts with a vernacular bible (King James), not a Latin Vulgate, and one goes to working class and middle class public schools, Latin just doesn't get much of a mention. Or much of an anything, really - a pluperfect vacuum, one might say.
DeleteI do love your Pluperfect wiki link which shows just how incredibly verb tense rich English is - past perfect progressive indeed.
Unless stopped will ruin local businesses who pay.
ReplyDeleteHere's a tip for the Bromancer - That "one angry speech" wasn't for his benefit, but for people who, you know, were actually in the ADF - the ones I've spoken to were duly chastened by hearing it.
ReplyDelete" ... a million times before". Not by the current Chief of Army. Not announcing sanctions against nearly 200 members of the ADF*. Not extending the responsibility from the perpetrators ("...by all necessary authority") to any who passively allowed it to happen ("the standard you walk past...") - that was a fundamental shift (and nothing to do with the speechwriter).
Whether it had any lasting effect, I couldn't say - the Army still has a lot of WWI-era attitudes to a lot of things. But it certainly needed saying at the time.
Oh, and as for Peter Cosgrove delivering independence to East Timor...Greg seems to think he did it personally. To succeed, such interventions need a good SO1 Operations (the staff officer responsible translating the overall mission aims into "whose boots on which ground"). For Cosgrove, that was then-Colonel David Morrison.
Peter Leahy is praised for his influence, but he had no operational experience. Latter-day Liberal Party hack Jim Molan is praised for his experience (here's another tip, the guy managing energy security for the force isn't "putting his life on the line"), but he had no influence (nor was he ever in line to be CA). So which is important? Only the Bromancer could tell us, but either way, Morrison had both.
I have no opinion on the merits of making Morrison AotY. But Sheridan is full of shit - I know, that's another thing thats been said a million times before.
*There may have been speeches announcing action against this or that individual, but never the revelation of such widespread ongoing and systemic abuse.
The Timor Leste jaunt only happened after the Clinton deadlies finally yellow carded the Javanese gang, and gave a green light to Little Johnny who still almost stuffed it and nearly snuffed many more except that his, and presumably the CoD's directions too were ignored by incredibly brave and decent folk in the Dilli embassy and elsewhere from time to time. Large numbers of East Timorese were then butchered as the gang departed. Enter, sound the trumpets, Australia. It was virtually the reverse of how the Javanese gang entered Timor Leste in the first place except the Brits ran the "intelligence" and "planning" on that from Singapore as the yanks were preoccupied (apt word) themselves a bit to the north in SE Asia busily killing several millions as they are wont to do for industry's sake in furtherance of war crime.
DeletePresently, on the list here there's no Operation Gateway: Australia's enduring contribution to the preservation of regional security and stability in South East Asia. Oh look, it's mentioned here, so all is well then to the South of China. There's 5 eyes oversight for you. Brilliant. A little odd in both cases though as the South China Sea is hardly the heads of Sydney Harbour, and the Japanese minutely surveyed much of those previously uncharted tricky waters along the Queensland coast for themselves with Ming's blessing for years, and sometimes for a bit they were also accompanied, or rather were followed closely by the RAN who didn't have charts worth a damn for most of the coast, and who didn't get the Japanese charts either until quite a lot of shit had happened.
Brilliant, FrankD. Thanks for those details.
DeleteFor some the fun times begin, not that he didn't have fun when here. He can also go for a morning swim across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba and pick up a few cigars.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/JoeHockey
...as long as Joe's having himself a whale of a time...
DeleteWinter Storm Jonas: At Least 48 Dead; Roof Collapses Reported; D.C. Remains Shut Down
The plot thickens in the ABC's NBN (lack of) coverage - James Pinnell, PCAuthority.
ReplyDeleteMedia Watch have come back at Nick Ross - tweeted by Alex Druce, Stock Journal. Yes, Fairfax.
The Land
"What happens when it really rains at Walgett for the first time in 3 years."
Rain brings smiles across the state
Chiko roll, Birds Eye maker bites off $91m profit Chiko rolls pay Oz some tax. Hell, who'd 'a thunk it?
Thanks for that update of the NR affair and the sordid world of the ABC, and that shot of the lad running naked through the mud. It made the pond dream of Tamworth ...
DeleteNick Ross continues to be disappeared. Who? First you saw him Now you don't. Still you don't.
ReplyDeleteOn quick and dirty review it seems archive.org crawled over a then extant Ross only a little:
The vast differences between the NBN and the Coalition's alternative
NBN alternative: Is Australia's copper network fit for purpose?
Malware's Auntie will have them delete that yet.
But, say, speak of Malware and a little crawling ...
NBN cost benefit analysis: Former OECD economist Henry Ergas welcomes chance to work on review
They can say all they want to defame Nick Ross, but each day the pond connects to the intertubes using Optus and dreams of revenge against Malware, the ABC and the rest of the lickspittle toadie cardigan-wearing time servers who boast of iView and then laugh at the way it becomes Ucan'tView for the pond ... and don't talk of the copper or Telstra as alternatives, or it'll be mice at ten paces ...
Delete