The pond woke in a sweat and a state of high anxiety.
The crisis in Western Civilisation was still in crisis mode at the lizard Oz.
The brightest reptile minds were maintaining the rage, and a minor war criminal, the dog botherer, was in a state of rage.
After all, it was one thing to totally fuck up Iraq, but quite another to be likened to a mass killer. Who could doubt that the world had been saved from WMDs?
And there in a nutshell was the cause of the pond's panic…
Would the noble Polonius's mind be o'erthrown, and would he join the jibber-jabbering pack?
The pond didn't think it could take another dose of Western Civilisation in crisis, and the lack of diversity in the opinion pages would have been overwhelming.
The pond will need to summon every ounce of its strength and need to overcome its morning frailty before tackling yet again the crisis in Western Civilisation, and it went to sleep thinking that Polonius might just provide the strength to carry on.
After all, prattling Polonius's speciality is the crisis in Western Civilisation caused by the ongoing, enduring crisis in the ABC, which has been going on, by the pond's reckoning, for at least the last forty years or more …
The lack of diversity in Polonius's position is tremendously reassuring to the pond, and it's usually accompanied by a history lesson, and so the pond woke, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but yet tremulous with fear, and then with vast relief, flipped over the digital page to discover …
What a bigly, hugely, muchly relief.
Polonius was once again reminding the pond and the world that the crisis in Western Civilisation had in reality been caused by the dreadful ABC, and the pond stood corrected in a major dating matter.
It wasn't a mere 40 years, it had been going on for fifty years, and our man Polonius had routinely noted it, and yet the powers that be had ignored the simplest of solutions …
It was everything the pond had dreamed of … a litany of complaints as well-worn and as moth-eared as a favourite pair of slippers.
And yet still no-one at the ABC seems to understand the answer.
Some might think it could be fixed by making Polonius the new chairman of the ABC … after all, if Moorice could get the gig, why not Polonius?
But this surely wouldn't satisfy Polonius. He's an opinion-maker and an opinion-leader and he deserves his own program.
The pond isn't thinking small, like an hour on Radio National. Over there, the minions were busy hiring Sallyanne Atkinson, the worst radio talent the pond has accidentally ever heard, as a way of suggesting everyone should be grateful for having to endure Amanda Vanstone …
This sort of tokenism wouldn't be enough for Polonius, but the pond had the perfect program idea, and an end to Polonius's vale of tears …
Remember this?
Naughty Tim was something of a leftie, or at least a Polonial dissident.
There in his blog on 31st May 2012 he was writing Bashing The Poor Old ABC, and joking how he'd once agitated Polonius by observing that his views seemed to be drawn from his spine rather than his brain …
The wretch even had the cheek to quote himself from 2002 …
There's a lot more at the link, but there embedded in Bowden's text is a great idea.
We need Polonius pissing from inside the tent, and hopefully with some sense of direction. And what better way to do it than to rip off Backchat?
Why not dump Q and A, and straight after Media Watch, have an hour of Polonius doing a fireside chat …
Call it Right Chat if you will, though the pond is open to all kinds of ideas for a title ...
The brief would be simple. Polonius could repeat endlessly his impressions of what's wrong with the ABC …
For set decorations, the pond suggests a motif of well-chewn, much-loved slippers …
The pond guarantees that the show would score massive ratings … after all, the reptile business plan has thrived on the monotonous regurgitation of Polonial spinal tap thoughts …
And here's a sample of what viewers would rush to see ...
Maybe no one is excited by the pond's program pitch, or maybe they are … but surely Polonius in a regular slot represents the best chance to kill off the ABC once and for all …
Now please observe that in his final gobbet, Polonius makes a pitch for the new job of the ABC's editor-in chief, a job he's just devised, and a job for which he would be perfectly prepared …
After all, everyone is constantly impressed by the way that Polonius handles himself when any number of howlers are pointed out to him, and he rushes to correct them in a way that is cheerful and without any churl ...
Indeed, indeed, Polonius knows all about correcting errors, as retailed in this hoot of a post from the Kouk … in full here …
It has to be read in full to get to the elaborately, painfully twee Polonial email that set things going … but this will do for starters ...
And so on … and if that isn't enough to convince the ABC programmers of the wisdom of the pond's pitch, then let the ABC slide into obscurity and irrelevance on a Monday night …
Right Chat and editor-in-chief, and the ABC, full of Polonial right stuff, will soon be thrashing all those dreadful commercial stations … and those token Polonial appearances on The Insiders will be just a dream, or a nightmare ...
Oh, to avoid the confusion, the pond forgot to add that's idea should reside within the ABC's Light Ent or comedy department, and a laugh track might be required.
Sure, it'll be a dusty, rusty, crusty, rickety old comedy, but that's the whole idea …it'll take everyone's mind off the crisis in Western Civilisation ...
The pond is standing by for the government to get on board and take up the idea, but according to Cathy Wilcox, they've been a tad distracted of late…
Never mind, there's more Wilcox here, and the pond is standing by, waiting for a call from an ABC commissioning editor … dare to dare the dream, you bloody cardigan wearers …
How delightful. Here's the Dog Botherer:
ReplyDelete"The ABC publishes a culture warrior's outrageous claims likening me to a mass killer ..."
But then, just short while ago, the Bromancer spoke up to claim that it was him that the "culture warrior" had likened to a mass killer. So who is it, reptiles ? The Dog Botherer, the Bromancer, other reptiles as yet un-named ? All of the above ? Who ? And why this rush to claim infamy ?
Besides, the "culture warrior" didn't liken you to a mass killer as such, he merely compared some of your thoughts to his and Bannon's. Not the same thing at all.
But obviously clear enough for you both to rush to identify yourselves as 'targets'.
They are such snowflakes such sensitive little petals and so willing to portray themselves as victims of lefty bullying.
DeleteWell they do both get mentioned by name in Prof Moses screed, but neither are specifically connected with a 'mass killer' and/or Bannon. And in any case the Bromancer is more prominent than the Dog Botherer.
DeleteThey really are, like you say, such sensitive little petals.
How secretly exciting!
ReplyDeleteThe crisis in Western Civilization (c) is at such a level, Polonius has taken the top of table position at the Pond.
It clearly is a 5 bells crisis. Man the barricades! Stop making allusions to the dog botherer and the bro thinking and expounding with ideological blinkers on!! We must come together to save the country now!!
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteTo read this from Henderson;
“In any organisation without a plurality of views within it, a certain groupthink will form.”
And then cast a glance across the combined opinion pieces from Albrechtsen, Van Onselen, Kenny and Carroll is to know true irony.
DiddyWrote
But we'd have to admit, DW, that to achieve that all-but-total level of 'singularity' of views is one hell of an achievement. Even the old Catholic Church couldn't manage it after centuries of executing its dissidents and heretics.
DeleteI never really thought about moth ears before. Turns out they are very sensitive, in fact they can hear higher frequencies than any other living thing. This is so they can pick up the ultrasonic probes of bats that want to eat them. While slippers don't have any auditory capability, I suppose you could say Henderson is hypersensitive to any signals from the ABC.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe you are making a new word out of moth-eaten and dog-eared.
Umm, does that mean the bats can't hear their own ultrasonic probes, NH, or that moths can simply hear even higher frequencies than bats can generate ?
DeleteSome of the answers are here: https://www.nature.com/news/moth-smashes-ultrasound-hearing-records-1.12941. They didn't do any tasting on Henderson, but he would probably break records in many areas.
DeleteShould have said 'testing".
DeleteOk, the Nature site (per your URL) actually clearly states:
Delete"The greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella) can hear sounds of a higher frequency than any bat can produce."
Fascinating. I wonder, then, what those moths are actually listening to. And even that question is answered:
"Why has the wax moth evolved to hear sounds so high-pitched that no bat can make them? Recording ultrasonic calls is difficult, so it is possible that researchers have simply been underestimating the calls of bats, just as they did the hearing range of moths.
But Windmill has a different explanation. As a side effect of its sensitivity to high frequencies, the moth’s eardrum vibrates for only a short time after being hit by a pulse of sound. This allows it to distinguish between courtship calls of its own species, which consist of extremely closely spaced pulses, and bat calls, which are separated by much longer intervals."
I see that the item was written by Ed Yong who is usually very thorough and precise (I used to read his site and follow his 'missing links' some years ago).