Focus, people, focus, or how to pay attention to a Sheehan slaying and a Savva savaging all in the one breath ...

(And more essential Popery here).

Distractions, distractions ...

Focus people, focus. How are we going to handle an agile, innovative century if we keep getting distracted ...?

There's the Pope and the reptiles of Oz trying to draw the pond into original sin by thinking of the Massacre at Werris Creek, a legendary affair which saw an intruding Bunyip slaughtered by a Billabong ... (well not by the Billabong, but by the Billabong).

They swear it's true up Tamworth way ... and apparently some natives are interested in restoring the pond's home town to its status as centre of the known universe, and country music too ...

Then there was the pond reader that drew the pond's attention to the spiffing read, Lessons from Louise: the story of Paul Sheehan and the Sydney Morning Herald, by Richard Cooke ...

The pond was entranced, transfixed.

There was the bigotry and bile of the Louise story itself, and the epic failure of the newspaper, but as a bonus there were also matters such as the Punta Del Este affair, and then there was the black v. white, and Asian crime affairs, and the Krispy Kreme Kid matter, and magic water lived yet again - oh how the pond loves its magic water, and can never get enough of its healthy properties - and then there was the sordid Peter Hill story,  so sordid it's unimaginable in a quality newspaper, and then there's this culminating summary:

As a former Herald editor says: “This isn’t just Sheehan’s fault. He and the paper have to share the blame 50:50. His name was on the story so the fundamental errors are his, but the newspaper and the editors are culpable.”
Now their culpability has extended to this. They were given a sensational and unlikely story of race crime. Its creator was a white supremacist-affiliated fantasist known to police, whom their senior columnist had never met, and never vetted in any serious way. And their response was not to balk, or check, or stand their ground. It was to give it top billing. 
On this day, at this moment, Sheehan’s aura and history culminated in an awesome failure of institutional memory. A man who had messed up so many times was given one last calamitous benefit of the doubt. 
“Hindsight has a ruthless clarity,” Sheehan wrote in his strange non-apology apology for writing the Louise story. It was at that stage appended to a correction that also wasn’t a correction: it was simply a version of the Louise story with the Arabic-speaking men taken out. And you realised, reading the amended version, that there was no reason for it to be published, that without the sensation of Middle Eastern villains it would never have made the paper. It had no animus. 
Louise knew her audience, and so did Sheehan. Hindsight has not yet been ruthless enough.

Aye, there's the rub.

Until Sheehan is sacked or resigned, it's a never no mind matter to the pond. What an abysmal and shocking record. It would have seen the man moved along, long ago, in any mainstream media organisation with an interest in its credibility and its reputation - except perhaps Fox News or Breitbart.

Fairfax stands disgraced, and will continue disgraced until the obvious happens ...

The pond badly needed to regain focus, and what better way than the ongoing Savva saga?

Yes, it's the Savva herself, and it seems she might have some kind words for another Louise, together with an astonishing headline ...

Rudd never as bad as Tony?! The Chairman never as bad as Tony!??!

Of course the pond was hooked ...

Stop right there, that image of a crispy kreme singed wall puncher sauntering off into the sunset in his smugglers or that notion that Abbott's behaviour is worse than the former Chairman's is heart-stopping stuff ... Is there a doctor in the house?

Thanks scientologist. Shouldn't you be with OJ at the moment, though the pond's only three eps in and doesn't know what happens. Please, no spoilers ...

Enough distractions, focus please! Unleash the Niki and let the Savva continue to savage ...

Ouch, that had to hurt, and so to a savaging of another Louise ...

Even Keating!

Worse than Keating and Rudd ...

Take that, publisher of Tony Abbott and Mark Latham, you pathetic panderer to the ponderous, pontificating, pompous Paul "Ned" Kelly ...

It doesn't get much better than days like these at the pond ...

A Moorice sighting, a Sheehan slaying, a Windsor loose and away from the family farm, the Queen brexiting, and the Adler reduced to a lesser form of typewriter ...

Could it get any better? Yes, kind, thoughtful reader, of course the pond knows it can ...

Speaking of Newman ...