The pond makes no apology for marking down the latest Caterist exercise, and the latest "onion muncher for leader" routines, and sending them to the late arvo specialist slot, because the bromancer is rightly at the top of the opinion page as he grapples with the Donald and Kim …and marvellously proposes theatrical exercises and a little role playing for the strolling players ...
Oh please, miss, that's an easy one, pick the pond, pick the pond. There'll be more lies, more excuses, and more devious apologies and explanations from the Murdochians for their lion king …
Phew, if only all the questions were that easy to answer ...
And if ever a pond reader wanted further proof that the Murdochians don't have a clue, and that Kim is doing the Donald and his acolytes like a dinner, the pond invites doubting reader to contemplate again what the bromancer just scribbled …
But did the pond mislead with its talk of theatre and role-playing? Is cricket a more apt metaphor for the game that needs to be played?
Ten nukes to make and the match to win -
A bumping Donald and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last Kim in.
And it's not for the sake of a irradiated coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But the bromancer's hand on Kim's shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!" (with apologies to Sir Henry, the original here)
Well just to bulk it up, the reptiles also ran a piece from the WSJ, which showed a similar level of befuddlement …
The reptiles followed with a photo, as if that meant something ...
Now on with the delusions ...
Every time the pond reads this sort of guff, as it reluctantly reaches for a Trumpian tweet …
… the pond is reminded of this image …
Of course that's terribly unfair to that ancient flourisher of the piece of paper, who at least wanted to be nice ...
And by a curious coincidence the pond happened to be reading Robert Darnton's The Greatest Show on Earth for the NY Review of Books this breakfast - sorry, inside the paywall ...
It's a survey of some books on how weird the United States is, and how it's been comprehensively stuffed by religion and racism, and reality television, and the new world of Barnum hokum and bunkum that litters the full to overflowing intertubes, and it ended this way …
One result is Donald Trump. He denounces news he dislikes as fake, but he rode into office on the wave of fake news that flooded then Internet from sources in Eastern Europe, notably Russia, during the election campaign. We may never know whether Trump owes his victory to fakery, but, McIntyre insists, we must learn to recognise the fabricated character of what passes for reality in a power system where facts to not matter and bunk cannot be proven false.
Although McIntyre's route to this conclusion is shorter than those taken by Andersen and Young, he arrives at the same place. All three of them quote Stephen Colbert on "truthiness" - the conviction that what you feel to be true must be the truth. All three invoke a famous remark by Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." They take a stand on ground that Andersen describes as "rationalism and reasonableness." And the convergence of their views points to a danger greater than Trump. McIntyre cites Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust: "Post-truth is pre-fascism."
Actually a trial conducted under the cloak of secrecy is another way to head well down the road to fascism, and Malware is taking the country there, as noted in Media Watch's Timor Spying last night … featuring the silence of the lambs, or at least the lizards of Oz …
But enough of all that and the selective treatment of News Corp and the sheer and utter scandal of it all, it's time for a last WSJ gobbet, as they try to cope with the Donald's unadulterated bunkum ...
That last line is worth repeating: "The Trump administration hasn't said which site Mr Trump was referring to…"
As if he had the first clue about the first thought that popped in to his noggin.
Yet still they live in hope, still they trust in the Donald, still they have faith in their Lion King …
And now there's just time for another ...
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