In which the pond goes in search of a lost credibility the Academy and the reptiles and Paul Sheehan never had ...

The pond is always delighted by folly, and the agonising over whether the Academy has lost credibility is a perfect example.

It’s never had any, nada, zilch, zip, from the get go - the number of masterpieces ignored, overlooked and insulted is longer than a month’s writing could cover. The ceremony is just another example of American marketing and hustle, like world series baseball or world championship football or world famous frankfurters.

So there's a couple of precious hours saved.

Meanwhile, Monday would once upon a time have been Paul Sheehan day, though the pond had given up reading Sheehan long ago, after his expert contributions to climate science and Lord Monckton worship.

How foolish of the pond, because thanks to reading Richard Ackland’s ‘We’re all susceptible to swallow our own agendas - but Paul Sheehan has form' Sheehan continues to delight, remains, if you will, a magical font of watery pleasure.

Ackland has many serious comments to make, but it was this one that excited  the pond, especially as it contained very helpful links:

The journalist has had some interesting corporate connections. He was a friend of the late David Coe, of Allco fame, part of the disastrous consortium that unsuccessfully bid to takeover Qantas.

Among Coe’s varied interests was a stake in the heart-stopping fried-fat donut business Krispy Kreme Australia. Administrators were appointed to Krispy Kreme in 2010 and in the process it emerged that Sheehan was a shareholder in the company.

In 2003, Sheehan wrote a column in the Herald lauding the delights of Krispy Kreme: “Part of the appeal is that at the Krispy Kreme factory stores, where donuts are baked on the premises, customers can watch the donuts being made behind large glass walls and everyone gets a free Original Glazed, the most popular of the 15 varieties on sale ($1.50 each, or $10.90 for a dozen).” Sheehan told Guardian Australia that he did not hold shares in the local Krispy Kreme subsidiary at the time he wrote the column.

So all those days the pond could have been scribbling about the Krispy Kreme Kid …instead of reading Paul Sheehan: Another Empty Voice In A Cacophony Of Hatred.

Can Sheehan make a comeback?

If he tries a light touch, like magic water, sourdough, Krispy Kremes or a handsome payback junket column about the delights of sponsored trips abroad, he’ll be mocked; if he tries a column on serious themes, he’ll be mocked for the bigotry and the bile, or the feigned attempt to hide same.

Do he and Fairfax hope and expect he can hide under a rock until it blows away?

Who knows and who cares, but the pond suspects that the Fairfaxians are trying to win back the pond by running this story …

Yes, it's front page on the tree killer edition, and online here (with forced video),  but it's too little, too late so far as the pond is concerned.

A long time ago, the wall puncher instructed Malware to destroy the NBN, and he did the job. And suddenly years after the event, a leaked report revealing the long known obvious is front page news? Oi broken Optus HFC and corroded copper vey ...

As we’re speaking of film, why not a metaphor for Malware?

That moment comes in Ivan the Terrible part 2, perhaps the most baroque film ever made, but which did its job by inspiring intense hatred in Stalin (and it can be found at YouTube here , with part 1 here).

It’s an acquired taste, beyond the valley of formalism, but anyone with a taste for the byzantine world of the Murdochians will appreciate it. And if those boyars don’t remind you of Malware’s Liberal team, nothing will ...

But hush, the pond has missed the big reptile story of the day ...

SEND SOLDIERS TO DESTROY TURKS, ARMY TOLDZ

Australian special forces should be sent into the Turkish stronghold of the Dardenelles to sort out a second front, expert authority on silly walks the pond says. 

Let's face it, no one else is up to the job of sorting out the Turks in hand to hand fighting, just like Rambo, thereby ending the first world war, and saving the British empire ... It'll just be a quick romp up the peninsula and then the lads will be marching through Berlin ...and even if things get a bit sticky, we can look back on it and celebrate the day a nation was established ...

Or some such thing.

Yep, it was another day of reptile delusion of the wall puncher kind, only this day it was Peter Leahy holding down the front page ...

This led to a juxtaposition offering the sheerest delight at the top of the digital page ...

Destroy, destroy, destroy.

And berate the tolerant for their intolerance, and for daring to point out the rampaging vile intolerance of the Corys, Georges and Ericas of the world.

The theory is these tolerant folk are intolerant because they're not tolerating the intolerant, so that makes them hideously intolerant, and never mind how intolerable the actual intolerant might become ...

Oh faawwwk, Cory and the reptiles were on yet another Jaffas down the aisle roll ...

Preclusion, the new tolerance!!

Got a nail? You need a hammer, preferably one as thick as Peter Leahy.

Or a reptile in love with bigotry and the mocking of the different. Why damn it, it's their right to show off the same fundamentalist mindset as a fundamentalist Islamic throwing a gay off the roof, and let no one get in their way. To do that would be to persecute innocent, long suffering heterosexuals...

Never mind, the pond always preferred to save its Jaffas rather than waste them on the wooden floor, no matter the jingoistic, usher-irritating, war mongering, bigoted noise they made, so please allow a light sorbet as a final indulgence ... and what better sorbet than the dog botherer?

Sadly the pond has to report that the dog botherer is now in defaming mode.

Well he calls it praise,  but he spends the opening pars of his column defaming a couple of ABC people ...

By approving of them ...

Sorry people, you've been praised by the dog botherer, which is the kiss of death at the pond and brings back fond memories of Groucho ...

Yes, include the pond out of membership of the dog botherer club, and his praise and awards. The moment you get a trophy from the dog botherer, you just have to wonder what you're doing wrong ... though it does remind the pond that the only Academy Award nomination a Marx brothers' film ever received came in the 10th Academy Awards ... for  "Best Fucking Dance  Fucking Direction"... because the first thing anyone thinks about in a Marx brothers movie is the dire song and dance routines ...

And that was in 1938, and only now they reckon the Academy's got a credibility problem?

But wait, you're asking where's the dog botherer's inimitable form of loonacy?

Oh it was there alright, at the bottom of the piece, with the dog botherer's expert form of climate science on parade ...

Ah faaawwwk, as the Pellist said to the crow and the Royal Commission, what about Dog botherer expert in climate science, and Dog botherer sorted out middle east with help of Alexander Downer, so why do we need to send SAS, when it was done and dusted long ago ...

Yes, the pond has on occasion marvelled at the epic stupidity of readers of the lizard Oz, but that doesn't stop it from being a low brow form of humour, and when it comes to the dog botherer, the humour's positively prognathous Neanderthal ...

Select any talk back program and you'll cop the barking mad. Heck, read the lizard Oz and you'll cop the dog botherer confusing science and scepticism ...

Well here's a thought. Day after day, in a way that is verified by empirical research and can be reproduced at any time by reading a dog botherer column, the dog botherer is a verified fuckwit ...

Well it's as scientific as Kenny posing as wise guru of climate science scepticism.

But as we're speaking of the movies this day, perhaps we can wrap things up with this great Rowe ...

More Rowe here, and it remains only to note, via a Greg Hunt search here ...

Kong did not receive any Academy Awards nominations. Selznick wanted to nominate O'Brien and his crew for a special award in visual effects but the Academy declined. Such a category did not exist at the time and would not exist until 1938. Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman received a special achievement award for the development of the translucent acetate/cellulose rear screen – the only Kong-related award.

And if creature features aren't your thing, how about here at the 14th Academy Awards in 1941?

The ceremony is now considered notable, in retrospect, as the year in which Citizen Kane failed to win Best Picture, which instead was awarded to John Ford's How Green Was My Valley. Ford won his third award for Best Director, becoming the second to accomplish three wins in that category, and the first to win in consecutive years (having won for The Grapes of Wrath the previous year).

And they say the Academy just now has developed credibility problems. It's always been a gormless celebration of the stodgiest and most useless films, handing out gongs to the likes of Stanley Kramer's half-baked pieties ...

That's why it could still be handing out nominations to Godfather III, the most epic pile of tosh in the trilogy ...

But at least that's an excuse for another Rowe, who isn't short of the odd movie reference or two ...

Okay, the unicorn had to die to make that picture work, but so did Bambi's mum ...