In which the bromancer begins his gymnastics lessons and the dog botherer goes celebratory pluralist ... until he remembers in the nick of time it's all the fault of the ABC ...

It was that piquant juxtaposition - 'toning it down,' up against headline for a story about a proto-fascist purge of enemies in the style of teh Donald's best bro, Vlad the Russian impaler and druggist to sports people - which naturally attracted the pond.

In a previous post, the pond linked to Jon Stewart doing a profile of Lumpy, aka Hannity, and the gymnastics which are being performed as Murdochian commentators adjust to their new hero, and it seems that the bromancer is one of those keen to participate in the sport at an Olympics level ... at lest if the header is taken as the sole guide ...

Indeed, indeed, that's as mild a gymnastic opening as could be hoped for.

Now in much of the commentary on the speech, it's routinely been noted that the tone was dark and on occasions apocalyptic, and that it was fear-mongering of the first water, full of misinterpretations of erroneous data and light on policies (the Graudian whipped up a variety of comments here), but the bromancer isn't interested in any of that, he's doing gymnastics ... so naturally he'll see fear mongering about Laura Norder as a major plus.

He might also offer a little dissembling - now don't get him wrong, he's not full Trump yet - because that's part of the art of the gymnastics. Like the mock turtle. A little advance and then a little retreat ... a lobster quadrille on the shingle ...

It seems that the bromancer must keep practising before he gets to true Olympian Murdochian levels of the sport. True, he scores a point by celebrating relative lucidity, but loses a point by pointing out the many absurdities trotted out by the bankrupt graduate of Trump University rip-offs ...

Has the bromancer thought about drugs? After all, with Putin and teh Donald so chummy, how long before drugs in sport are encouraged as a way of life?

Meanwhile, this was a double-barrelled day of reptile pleasures because the dog botherer was out and about and in a joyous mood, with his tweet pointing the way to a celebration of western glories ...

Now dullards might point to Shakespeare, or Mozart or Beethoven, or many other y'artzists, or scientists making startling discoveries ...

... look ma, I have discovered the law of relative tongues, but no, being the dog botherer, he had to start off his celebration of western glories, not even with Taylor Swift's music, but how filthy rich Taylor Swift is ...

... as if somehow Taylor Swift being filthy rich was evidence that living standards were on the rise, as opposed to say, evidence that there was an increasing gap between the haves and the have nots.

But then the dog botherer is an immensely, inordinately stupid man, proof if anyone cared to ask that western follies are routinely a source of shame, at least when you realise someone at the lizard Oz thinks it's okay to pay this reptile to scribble nonsense ...

Choose your better time or place. It can't be found?

Indeed it can't, if crass materialism is your key to what makes a life worth living. 

But that often seems to be the key measure when specious claptrap is spouted by far right loons anxious all of sudden to show how pluralist and diverse they are, and start celebrating Icelandic singers, indigenous artists and women in space ...

... before next week going on a rage about multiculturalism and pluralism and diversity and the way such nonsense has ruined the world, Dame Slap on abuse steroids ...

Yes, enough of all that boring as batshit harmony through diversity, let's get back into whitebread monomania.

And so back to the celebratory dog botherer, overlooking his fellow reptiles' desire to froth and foam, a desire he frequently shares, until he suddenly decided to turn into a futurist Paul Simon kumbaya-loving hippie.

Ah, it didn't take long for the turning did it? 

All that talk of Icelandic singers soon dissolved into standard abuse of the ABC for daring to have alternative notions.

Throw in a celebration of coal, with coal somehow getting the credit for X-ray machines when perhaps polonium and radium might have collared just a little, and we're back in barking mad gymnastics land, just a little west of that white triumphalism perpetrated by Rep Stephen King ... (oh yes, The Washington Post lined up some historians to respond to King, but it's the pond's experience that there's no point debating with loons, it's just enough to enjoy the siren song of loonacy, bigotry, prejudice and one-eyed blindness).

What's astonishing is the way that the dog bothering attack dog so quickly to standard pose - howling at the moon  and the ABC, and proposing assorted ways that Muslims might continue to be demonised, all 2.2% of them, without even the equal opportunity chance to demonise Catholics. 

And so to Taylor Swift. Never mind the music, feel the Wall Street ...

Such is the pond's perversity that this sort of rah rah bullshit, this uncomprehending nonsense, this ritual invocation of climate science from a climate science denialist, simply sends the pond into a frenzy, because of all the attacks that the dog botherer fails to mention, the one from right wing loons parading claptrap in Murdochian rags seems the most obvious ...

If only he'd written that the ABC and moderate liberals of a mamby pamby kind are under vile assault from boof-headed, right-wing, barking mad, packs of rabid, roaming, ravaging dog botherers, the pond might have got on board and even enjoyed a sing-a-long with Taylor Swift ... yes, the pond can stand a good one in ten songs by Taylor Swift, a better than average average ...

And so to a test, as we contemplate the strength and significance of our democratic institutions and social norms and contemplate gay marriage and the role of complimentary women in the angry Anglican church ...

 

   

Actually, Oppressed and Oppressed would seem to fit the bill ... and then the pond began to think about just where western civilisation had got us, and what was the peak of its famous free speech ...