Now the obvious choice for the pond this day would be the breaker of taxi-driver arms, but truth to tell, the pond finds the new Latham a rather pitiful and tragic figure ... especially when he now seems to enjoy the esteem of the Caterists and such-like nonentities ...
Besides, the pond is always in search of exquisite irony, of the kind an Alexander Pope would relish ...
Oh! Could I mount on the Maeonian wing,
Your Arms, Your Actions, your Repose to sing!
How barb'rous rage subsided at your word,
And Nations wonder'd while they dropp'd the sword!
How, when you nodded, o'er the land and deep,
Peace stole her wing, and wrapt the world in peace ...
But enough of paeans of praise to Latham.
This taste for irony inevitably led the pond to note that the Terrorists had scribbled a passionate editorial, and positioned it beside the taxi-driver mauler ... and in the splash promoting same, they had written of scare campaigns having a "long and shameful history".
This taste for irony inevitably led the pond to note that the Terrorists had scribbled a passionate editorial, and positioned it beside the taxi-driver mauler ... and in the splash promoting same, they had written of scare campaigns having a "long and shameful history".
Shameful!
Naturally the pond was compelled, because in the pond lexicon, shameful as used by the Terrorists is code for a complete lack of shame, a willingness to flaunt said absence of shame like a Regent fop or dandy showing off his clothes with a fine pirouette ...
Well indeed. Scare campaigns do have a long and shameful history. And naturally the Terror is always on hand to add to that long and shameful history.
There are many reasons for them, and there are many reasons they succeed, especially as they trade on broken promises; furtive, deceitful, outrageous, behaviour, shockingly stupid slogans; and the peddling of things that are completely untrue.
Who knows what examples might lurk in the Terrorist heart?
There are many reasons for them, and there are many reasons they succeed, especially as they trade on broken promises; furtive, deceitful, outrageous, behaviour, shockingly stupid slogans; and the peddling of things that are completely untrue.
Who knows what examples might lurk in the Terrorist heart?
It turned out like a hole in the head, in much the same way as its easy to whip up fear about "never ever" promises ...
Hmm, that worked out terribly well, didn't it?
But okay, the pond gets the message.
It should be really worried, but it should trust pledges and 'never evers', and at the same time, it should also abjure and foreswear scare campaigns and alarmist tactics and all the other sensationalist guff that happens to be the turf of gutter tabloids like the Daily Terror ...
It should be really worried, but it should trust pledges and 'never evers', and at the same time, it should also abjure and foreswear scare campaigns and alarmist tactics and all the other sensationalist guff that happens to be the turf of gutter tabloids like the Daily Terror ...
But then something compelled the pond to look at another section of the gutter rag ...
Now the pond immediately understood this wasn't a gutter scare campaign.
How natural it is to see Andrew Wilkie re-imagined as Freddy Krueger. Well they're a little bit strange down Tasmanian way, and you wouldn't want him lurking under your bed.
And Tony Windsor is an exemplary fit for Hannibal Lecter. This is just a jolly play on the way agrarian activities in Werris Creek link up with fava beans, or at least a nice crop of sunflowers out Quirindi way ...
As for Oakeshott, of course the chainsaw is just a witty joke about the mighty Oak embedded in his name.
There's nothing shameful, mendacious, pathetic, or kindergarten class moronic about this witty attempt to lift the tone of the national debate about climate science and what might be done about carbon ...
There's not a scintilla of a hint that it's a scare campaign ... after all, these are famous movie icons we're talking about ...
There's not a scintilla of a hint that it's a scare campaign ... after all, these are famous movie icons we're talking about ...
And hail with Musick its propitious Ray.
This, the blest Lover shall for Venus take,
And send up Vows from Rosamonda's Lake.
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless Skies,
When next he looks thro' Galilaeo's Eyes;
And hence th' Egregious Wizard shall foredoom
The Fate of Louis, and the Fall of Rome.
Then cease, bright Nymph! to mourn the ravish'd Scare Campaign
Which adds new Glory to the shining Sphere!
Not all the Front Pages that fair Terror can boast
Shall draw such Envy as the Scare Campaign you lost.
Australia needs Tony, but in to the bin he was tossed.
For, after all the Murders of your Eye,
When, after Millions slain, your self shall die;
When those fair Suns shall sett, as sett they must,
And all those Front Pages shall be laid in Dust;
This Scare Campaign, the Muse shall consecrate to Fame,
And mid'st the Stars inscribe the Terrorist Name!
Or some such thing, but it has to be said, that even David Pope couldn't manage a cartoon which might demonstrate the enormous stupidity of the Daily Terror, and perforce, all those lost souls - yes, the pond means you, hapless Simon Benson, Miles Godrey and Alicia Wood - who must sail within her ...
Does Simon Benson sign himself as the Terrorist's Chief Political Reporter?
Shouldn't he sign himself as Chief Lampoonist and Chief Resident Ironist? How does he expect a report with that photoshop at its head to be taken as anything other than an effort even Mad magazine might wonder about, in the name of subtlety and nuance
The pond now prefers to think of Benson as, if not Alexander Pope or a character in an American sitcom, then at least a character in Shakespeare:
And, like a strutting player whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage.
Or there's that other quote:
A photoshop there is, my lord, some three photos long
Which is as brief as I have known a photoshop
But by three photos, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious.
All the same, this day Pope managed a cartoon showing the circus in full cry - always watch out for the floating crocs carried downstream by the mighty Peel, and submerged Titanics, the pond's pappy used to say - and more Pope here ...
Does Simon Benson sign himself as the Terrorist's Chief Political Reporter?
Shouldn't he sign himself as Chief Lampoonist and Chief Resident Ironist? How does he expect a report with that photoshop at its head to be taken as anything other than an effort even Mad magazine might wonder about, in the name of subtlety and nuance
The pond now prefers to think of Benson as, if not Alexander Pope or a character in an American sitcom, then at least a character in Shakespeare:
And, like a strutting player whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage.
Or there's that other quote:
A photoshop there is, my lord, some three photos long
Which is as brief as I have known a photoshop
But by three photos, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious.
All the same, this day Pope managed a cartoon showing the circus in full cry - always watch out for the floating crocs carried downstream by the mighty Peel, and submerged Titanics, the pond's pappy used to say - and more Pope here ...
“It doesn’t bother me because I’m focused on actually talking about my plan,” Mirabella said.
ReplyDeleteOr "my pain"?
Very perceptive, UC.
Delete"...the pond finds the new Latham a rather pitiful and tragic figure ".
ReplyDeleteIndeed Latham has sunk into the Murdochrat groupthink seamlessly, hasn't he. But surely, DP, he needs to have had some claim, however minor and fleeting, to a touch of nobility for him now to be tragic ? I mean, I just can't conceive of anybody so essentially nonentical as the Cater, for instance, or perhaps the Dog-botherer as actually having any quality that could lead to a sense of tragedy, so I'd find it hard to ascribe any such quality to Latham.
But then again, as we all know, "tragedy" is literally rendered as "goat song" in its original Greek, and all of the above are certainly bleating little nanny goats in their various mindless ways.
PS: talking about 'terror campaigns' we've been through the "red menace" and the "yellow peril" (now at least partially revived) and here we have the "green treason". Not many more and we'll make a full rainbow.
DeleteA very good point, GrueBleen. Othello is a tragic character, as is Faust. In Australian politics, you could classify, say, Doc Evatt as tragic, since he was a brilliant man, loaded with talent, but totally unsuited to be a Party Leader and eventually, sadly, lost his marbles. Latham? Essentially he's just a ridiculous little man, whose words make him smaller and smaller as time goes on.
DeletePerhaps Latham is not tragic so much as pathetic?
DeleteMaybe, Merc, but only if we mean "pathetic" in the vernacular sense of contemptible or despicable rather than in the linguistically formal sense of "arousing pathos ie pity".
DeleteBut I'm with Ayn Rand here: "pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent".
Apropos of nothing, DP, I just read this from RIchard Ackland in the last Saturday Paper
ReplyDeleteThen, of course, there was the memorable occasion when Kerr fell into the mud after the champion dairy cow at the Tamworth Show stepped on his vice-regal foot. Local snapper Paul Mathews won a Walkley Award for best photographer with his shot of a prostrate viceroy. At the award ceremony he said, “… and last but not least, I’d like to thank the cow”.
Why I never knew Tamworth was such a famous town!
The pond is astonished Mercurial, next thing you'll be saying you knew nothing of Barners at the Great Nundle Dog Show ... remember, before Barners reduced it to infamy, town and district was universally renowned as the centre of the known universe, where tripping over a drunken GG was just one of the treats any day might bring.
Delete"He was a man, take him for all in all,
Delete(we) shall not look upon his like again."
Thankfully.