In which the bouffant one and John Anderson shoulder the white man's burden and nobly speak on behalf of Aboriginal people ... who were apparently too busy to comment directly ...

Shattered.

There's no other way around it, no other word that suits.

Each Friday the pond yearns for, hopes for, lusts after a column from the world's leading climate scientist, Moorice Newman, setting matters right and straightening out the delusionals at rags like the Graudian, who routinely pop up with alarmist stories.

And routinely the pond is disappointed by the fickle Moorice.

Who knows what he would think about the scandalous attempt to nobble the chairman and his faithful minions?

“Fox News is the biggest single factor keeping almost 40% of Americans from believing humans are changing the climate, while only 10% know that 97% of climate scientists agree we are warming the earth at our peril.” “In some ways, the effect of the Wall Street Journal is even worse, as it sows regular confusion among its 3 million daily subscribers – business leaders and investors among the most influential people in the country.” The plan also mentioned the role Murdoch papers played in Australia and the UK. (here).

The only way to defeat this sort of idle chatter is the hard field work and scientific data relentlessly collated by the Moorice ... come back, Moorice, science and the planet need you more than ever ...

Never mind, in lieu, the pond was beguiled by the bouffant one's headline EXCLUSIVE.

Egad sir (or madam), the bouffant one shows Moorice how it's done. Write a story derived from an Oz column and call it an EXCLUSIVE and the day's work is done.

But surely that's not all of it?

No doubt there was also a trip to central Australia to talk to indigenous mothers, women, and elders, perhaps the bouffant one in company with John Anderson, and an invitation to various Aboriginal people to speak directly on the subject most dear to the reptiles' hearts ...the right of Bill Leak to go on scribbling racist cartoons and the splendid role model the reptiles provide to the black community by continuing to publish them...

No need for any of this to be put through a whitey filter.

Names will surely be led, opinions quoted, the disadvantaged Aboriginal people would speak up in the name of Leak, his cause and his suffering of immense importance and interest to them ...instead of all those silly urban blacks who decided to take offence without any rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Naturally the pond scoured the bouffant one's piece for this direct reporting, of the kind the reptiles have already made famous in their approach to climate science...

Strange. No actual women named and quoted. Just old whitey Anderson blathering on in the standard colonial way, speaking for others, who remain silent. Perhaps it might come in the second gobbet ...

            

Nope, though the pond is pleased to note that Anderson leads with the line that he sat in classes with Aboriginal kids. You know, a variant on the line "some of my friends are" ...

In Tamworth, in the pond's day, Aboriginal kids were sent to a special humpy, a portable, over the other side of the oval, so white kids wouldn't be disturbed at the sight of them. There was one exception - a bright kid who went on to become somewhat radical, though the pond can't imagine why. 

But as we're all trading off, the pond reckons it knows what the Aboriginal people it has worked with would think about Anderson. Their first reaction would be to tell him to fuck off and stop speaking in their names; the second would be a deep engaging laugh at the way Anderson quotes anonymous sources with such authority ... a bit like the pond right now ...

Naturally when the reptiles get the pond hooked, the pond always dives in the deep end. The Shanahan serve was just the entrée - there was the main course of Anderson himself at the top of the digital opinion page...

Shading the truth. An epic joke. So that's what straight talk means.

And surely names would be named and all would be revealed ...

Nope, there's copious blathering about silencing people, but a singular lack of evidence of actual black people speaking.

There were some actual people who went on the record, and were reported elsewhere...

Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency chief executive Muriel Bamblett said it depicted Aboriginal people as "not knowing about their children and not having any role in raising their children". "You feel quite oppressed when these things happen, I think that we everyday have to battle with direct racism and indirect racism," she told 774 ABC Melbourne. "In the media, I think they have a public responsibility. That's obviously one of the opportunities to get good messaging about Aboriginal people. "But if you're constantly stereotyping us as second class then it's about profiling us as second-class citizens in our own country." (here)

And here ... by one Luke Pearson ...

...I wasn’t actually planning to write anything about the cartoon published on Thursday, the article I wrote last time everyone got angry over a racist cartoon he published had already summed it up. It even predicted this happening, and I don’t usually like having to repeat myself but when I saw his latest cartoon defending himself, making out that he is the victim of angry ‘sanctimonious’ white people, as though there aren’t countless Aboriginal people furious over this cartoon, and even more ludicrous, claiming that he is having a positive contribution on these conversations tipped me over the line. 
He is right when he says that Australia needs to have difficult conversations but he is blatantly wrong in feeling that is helping this to happen, at least not on the topic he claimed to want us to talk about. Just as whenever someone is killed in a pub fight leads us to talk about violence in our country, Bill Leak has done this for conversations about racism in our media. He has embodied it; he has perpetrated the act; and in doing so should provoke a conversation about the roles and responsibilities of those in media, particularly for a media outlet like The Australian who often lauds itself as a leader in dialogue about Indigenous issues. Maybe they need to have a difficult conversation about how damaging this has been to their self-asserted status as a leader on Indigenous affairs reporting? 
As for the conversations he thought he was contributing to though, he has made those conversations more difficult to have as there are now even more people convinced that the answers lie solely in blaming, demonising and ridiculing Aboriginal people and not in empowering Aboriginal communities and advocating for those people and organisations working on creating opportunities to address the very real issues of substance abuse or family breakdown. Bill Leak didn’t encourage a difficult conversation, he gave people a scapegoat; an easy way out from having to consider it in depth. And with his follow up cartoon he has proved what I wrote last time, that it is more about ‘which white people are the good ones and which are the ‘real racists’?’. Aboriginal people are pushed further into the background of this conversation, denied our agency, and once again turned into cannon fodder for supposedly well-meaning white people to expend in their never ending quest to prove that the other side of the politics spectrum are the ‘real racists’. 

Hmm, strong stuff. But the pond always lives in hope, and no doubt John Anderson would hand over the rest of his column to an indigenous voice singing the praises of Leak, instead of an old whitey doing it for the reptiles ...

That way, Pearson's complaint about Aboriginal people being pushed further into the background, their agency denied, and his talk of their status as cannon fodder would be irrevocably refuted, and he would stand corrected, in the way that Aboriginal people constantly need correction, and daily get it, thanks be unto the reptiles of Oz ...

Nope, there's more blather about the chilling thought control and limitations on freedom of expression, by a chilled-out old whitey, while there's a singular lack of an actual black voice.

Guess it's just another day at the racist reptile Oz ...

But as we're speaking of Country party matters - please no Hamlet-style jokes - it's time to wrap things up with a Rowe joke about Barners ... and as always more Rowe here, routinely helping us discover what's under all sorts of beds ...