Talk about a crowded Monday, but the pond welcomes all kinds of reptiles doing media navel-gazing and fluff-gathering … and if the Ritson is on the move, can the Major be far behind?
Well the pond wanted to do this one because there's a very nice punchline at the end of it … though in the meantime much moaning and bleating about the suffering of Sky News has to be endured ...
Oh the poor dears, singled out for special treatment … it's not as if they have any form in this area …
But moving right along ...
Sky News has been fantastically successful?
Sky News is part of a dying business model that has peaked and is going nowhere, and that's why it's been seeking to emulate the Fox model in Australia.
Shit stir and hopefully the punters will fork over the moola for news being manufactured and treated as a kind of cable entertainment … but do go on ...
The irony here? Well above Ritson at the top of the digital page came this ...
Uh huh … vile corporate overlords daring to ban someone so barking mad, and so offensive - at least if you happen to be a victim of the Sandy Hook massacre - and there's good old Brendan standing up for the right of Alex Jones to flog supplements while making life hell for victims of a shooting …
Well the pond promised a punchline, and that's not a bad one, as Facebook gets called out for doing something and doing nothing …
And now what joy, because the pond also promised the Major … and naturally the Major is outraged that poor old Sky has been made to suffer ...
And now what joy, because the pond also promised the Major … and naturally the Major is outraged that poor old Sky has been made to suffer ...
Actually Australians have been able to debate immigration for yonks … it's mainly News Corp that cops accusations of racism, and there's a good reason for that …
Somewhere in the reptile psyche is a yearning for the return to the White Australia policy, though luckily for the Dutch they might get counted as white ...
And it's not just the Bolter doing the Hansonite dog whistle… he's part of the corporate culture that allowed that cartoon to get through, the same racist culture that the Major encouraged with Bill Leak cartoons, in the name of "debate" … or even worse, "honest debate"...
And it's not just the Bolter doing the Hansonite dog whistle… he's part of the corporate culture that allowed that cartoon to get through, the same racist culture that the Major encouraged with Bill Leak cartoons, in the name of "debate" … or even worse, "honest debate"...
Uh huh, where has the pond heard that defence before? But Miss, they did it too, they're just as naughty, it's so unfair, we might have been a little bit naughty, but they were naughty too …
How weird will it get? How about the Major reaching out to Peter Hartcher blathering on about 'leets?
Now here the pond will confess to a problem, down there with 'Orwellian.'
Godwin's Law should really be revised to include a codicil which imposes a rather large fine for the use of 'elites', especially when the word is trotted out with a wave of the hands, as if everyone knows who they are.
The pond is never sure. Do 'elites' include a self-satisfied former editor of the lizard Oz, always in self-congratulatory mode and deep up himself, as he scribbles a column a week and pockets his generous stipend?
Do elites include the likes of a populist demagogue who attracts lousy audiences on Sky but nevertheless is handsomely rewarded for shit stirring on the channel and in the HUN and every other Murdoch tabloid?
The pond will allow that Peter Hartcher and Fairfax are possibly now in such a downward spiral that they escape the 'leet clause …
And here the pond must feed its swear jar ...
And here the pond must feed its swear jar ...
… the pond had not gone twenty yards when it stopped short.
An uproar of voices was coming from the bunker in Surry Hills. The pond wondered whether someone had ordered the wrong coffee, and rushed across the road to look through the window again.
Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials.
The source of the trouble appeared to be that the Major and Mr. Bolt had each played an ace of spades simultaneously, and the Bolter had blamed the migrant waiter.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. Oh there was Ritson and Hartcher and the Oreo and Moorice and Dame Groan and Richo and Dame Slap and …
No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The pond, standing outside with an instant coffee in hand, looked from pig to man, and from woman to pig, and from pig to man and woman again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Put it another way ...
… one retold tale injures Abbott. At a convivial dinner at Mitchell’s house with a coterie of insiders from The Australian, when still opposition leader, “Tony even stood up in the middle of dessert to ape Julia Gillard’s walk for us all in the middle of a discussion about Germaine Greer’s Qand A critique of the Gillard derriere.” It is the most disappointing anecdote in the book — disappointing because of the high standards Abbott’s public civility has set for him, disappointing because it has been told at all, when all it can do is cause hurt. Yet the story has a bite: it conveys that duelling tone that has come into Australian politics, that focus on the look and manner of the leader in the news television age, on image and appearance and presentation over act and consequence.
… one retold tale injures Abbott. At a convivial dinner at Mitchell’s house with a coterie of insiders from The Australian, when still opposition leader, “Tony even stood up in the middle of dessert to ape Julia Gillard’s walk for us all in the middle of a discussion about Germaine Greer’s Qand A critique of the Gillard derriere.” It is the most disappointing anecdote in the book — disappointing because of the high standards Abbott’s public civility has set for him, disappointing because it has been told at all, when all it can do is cause hurt. Yet the story has a bite: it conveys that duelling tone that has come into Australian politics, that focus on the look and manner of the leader in the news television age, on image and appearance and presentation over act and consequence.
A coterie of insiders, the onion muncher doing a humorous skit while the coterie of reptiles devour the dessert with gales of insider laughter?
The pond felt the urge to avoid idle chatter about 'leets for at least an hour, but there were still a couple of Major gobbets to go ...
Uh huh. Of course Katharine Betts, an academic who would usually be dismissed as a member of the 'leets - or so it seems to the pond in its confused state - has no fish in this game, she just happens to be the Patron of Sustainable Population Australia …
Now the pond doesn't mind differing opinions, but it does like to know what motivates people when they blather on about 'leets, because this sort of blather constantly puts the pond in Godwin's Law peril …
Would it have hurt the Major to mention that Betts herself, from her 'leet ivory tower, has a certain 'leet view on migration?
Seeing as how he's supposed to be a professional journalist and doesn't just cite sources willy nilly without regard to possible bias or the truth of the matter…
Seeing as how he's supposed to be a professional journalist and doesn't just cite sources willy nilly without regard to possible bias or the truth of the matter…
Oh wait, what's that you say, the Order of Lenin medal is still missing?
Never mind, there's just one gobbet to go, and what do you know it features more from Betts and even attempts a rehabilitation of the Bolter for expressing the honest views of millions of racists ...
Uh huh. Well the pond has no hesitation in calling those last few lines by the Major deeply racist in the usual News Corp way.
The pond came from a proudly racist lumpenproletariat family with all sorts of bigotries in the air, and to this day the pond can't shake its fundamental bigotry when it's confronted by reptiles …
What ugly creatures they are, how foreign, how weird and strange, especially when they give themselves fancy airs and pretend they are at one with the common folk …
What ugly creatures they are, how foreign, how weird and strange, especially when they give themselves fancy airs and pretend they are at one with the common folk …
The former editor-in-chief of the Australian Chris Mitchell was given a six-figure pay rise in 2012 after telling Rupert Murdoch to choose between him and then CEO Kim Williams who he believed was “killing off” the broadsheet with his digital first strategy.
Six figure pay rise? At one with the suffering people? What was that famous line that used to turn up in Rubbery Figures?
Reptiles' arse?
No, not quite, but something like that, it'll come to the pond in due course …
And now for a cartoon about another ratbag who pretends to be at one with the average punter, and doesn't mind stirring the racist pot, so that Fox News and News Corp can do the same racist ratbag stirring …
And now for a cartoon about another ratbag who pretends to be at one with the average punter, and doesn't mind stirring the racist pot, so that Fox News and News Corp can do the same racist ratbag stirring …
Maj. Mitch.: "...they can express their concerns freely and anonymously ... as they are doing by supporting One Nation in increasing numbers."
ReplyDeleteOk, now let's get past the Maj. Mitch's obvious ignorance (ie that people are just allocating their first preference vote to One Nation which is in no intelligible way equivalent to supporting Pauline's Party) and consider this: "Maj. Mitch.: "...they can express their concerns freely and anonymously ... as tey are doing by supporting One Nation in increasing numbers."
Ok, now let's get past the Maj. Mitch's obvious ignorance (ie that people are just allocating their first preference vote to One Nation which is in no intelligible way equivalent to supporting Pauline's Party) and consider this: "An allochtoon is a person who has at least one foreign-born parent." There's apparently quite a few allochtoons in the Netherlands - about 20% of the population back in 2006.
Why do I say that - apart from using a fine Dutch word that shows how much the Bolter and I have in common. Yes, that's right, I too am an allochtoon - my father was born in Epsom England in 1905. The Bolter was born in Adelaide, South Australia, to newly arrived Dutch migrants. So it goes.
But the point is, that I do occasionally allocate my first preference to One Nation. But never in State elections, and never in the Senate, just in the Fed Reps where I know full well any One Nation candidate that I could ever vote for in my blue ribbon Liberal electorate is not going to ever get elected.
But sometimes, I just can't come at giving my first pref to either Labor or the Greens. Thus I too exhibit my itsy-bitsy protest which of course is taken deeply on board by my targets.
I wonder if Maj. Mitch. has any conception of any of that.