Say what? And so nattering "Ned" wants to deny the world insights of the kind that good old rare Angus offered recently?
Uh huh ...
Okay the pond has already been to this well this day, but what to do when the water tastes so sweet, and there's still more here?
Yes, if you can manage to talk to anyone at Centrelink these days, they'll advise you to allow at least six months to make an application for a pension, and then the Commonwealth will start the payments the day they decide to allow it, thereby saving billions …
Enough already, but the pond makes no apologies.
This isn't a blog for weaklings, observing reptiles involves repeatedly going into the dankest, darkest parts of the swamp, and sometimes the journeys are long and arduous …
This isn't a blog for weaklings, observing reptiles involves repeatedly going into the dankest, darkest parts of the swamp, and sometimes the journeys are long and arduous …
This day the pond had been only expecting a routine observation of the Oreo and the Major Mitchell, a fine squawking cockatoo that any two up school would welcome, but the plan was ruined by the Caterist arriving to join the party.
So it was double-down time, and if the squeamish and the weak couldn't handle it, they could join nattering "Ned" in a vow of silence, since no tweet could produce the huge amount of tedium and ennui that "Ned" seeks to produce in a column …
And so to the Oreo …
Odd socks and bodkins, that sounds strangely familiar, almost Caterist … could the pond have got caught in a time warp loop?
What, not dear old Dutton, the au pair whisperer who can't remember who he once worked with?
How cruel, how fiendish … well the Oreo must do her best for Mr Potato, and so on she scribbles in her demonising way ...
A rainblow flag? Surely they should have been whipping up hysteria with rainbow Oreos?
But relax, why would gays be worried?
Yes, the news is everywhere now, Xians read here, but the pond must finish with the Oreo because the Major can be heard screeching about religion in the distance...
What a kidder she is, but also what an internationalist.
The pond felt it should cut off the "read more" bit … "would you like to know more" is best left to Starship Troopers. But then the pond hesitated and wavered. It really had an obligation to constantly remind any stray readers of the deviant Oreo's internationalist 'leet credentials and her craven forelock-tugging to the United Nations, intent on introducing world government by Xmas …
The pond felt it should cut off the "read more" bit … "would you like to know more" is best left to Starship Troopers. But then the pond hesitated and wavered. It really had an obligation to constantly remind any stray readers of the deviant Oreo's internationalist 'leet credentials and her craven forelock-tugging to the United Nations, intent on introducing world government by Xmas …
There, duty done, the pond feels cleansed and it can head on to the Major Mitchell with a clean conscience …
The search for the missing Order of Lenin medal is an endless one, and each Monday the pond hopes for news and a successful end to the Major's hunt, and that dreadful Manning Clark finally nailed to the wall …
And if not, there's always another heretic ripe for the Major's persecution … how handy he would have been on an Inquisition ...
Johnson's piece might have been many things, but funny?
Talking of letterboxes is about as funny as the pond calling nuns penguins. The pond does it all the time, but not because it thinks it's funny, it's because that's what we used to call the nuns when we were at school when we were eight …
Still Boris and the Major always remind the pond of eternal eight year olds, so perhaps it's funny to them.
Talking of letterboxes is about as funny as the pond calling nuns penguins. The pond does it all the time, but not because it thinks it's funny, it's because that's what we used to call the nuns when we were at school when we were eight …
Still Boris and the Major always remind the pond of eternal eight year olds, so perhaps it's funny to them.
As for the rest, the pond has a technical disagreement involving pond pedantry.
Islam as a religion is a church of many races …talk of "racism" is ill-applied to a multiracial church …when there's a fine variety of alternatives that might be applied to Johnson, the Major and sundry others. You know, "incorrigible bigot", or perhaps partisan sectarian dogmatist, or doctrinaire fanatical purist, or jingoist national supremacist or racialist chauvinist sexist …
Islam as a religion is a church of many races …talk of "racism" is ill-applied to a multiracial church …when there's a fine variety of alternatives that might be applied to Johnson, the Major and sundry others. You know, "incorrigible bigot", or perhaps partisan sectarian dogmatist, or doctrinaire fanatical purist, or jingoist national supremacist or racialist chauvinist sexist …
You can jumble them together how you like, and apply them as appropriate …
The pond usually is happy to be called a bigot. When an Islamic loon on King street in Newtown tried to hand the pond a pamphlet explaining the joys of Islam, the pond naturally replied "you've got to be joking, didn't someone tell you you're dreaming?" but the bearded one took it in good spirits, looked mildly abashed and disturbed and went on handing out the pamphlet to others … though strangely didn't try it on again with the pond on the way back …
But then the pond is an equal opportunity bigot and offender against all religions. The pond gets just as excited seeing a penguin in the street, or some exotic Exclusive Brethren woman dressed in approved 1950s clobber or a Jew in kippah or even stranger, the full-blown Shtreimel or a Humphrey Bogart style full-blown patriarchal Hasidic Fedora …
Indeed the pond recently got excited about ScoMo's pentecostal mob, and what do you know, when the pond went back, the wretches had gone to water and no longer had a 'what we believe' section, just a link …
Indeed the pond recently got excited about ScoMo's pentecostal mob, and what do you know, when the pond went back, the wretches had gone to water and no longer had a 'what we believe' section, just a link …
What fun, but what gets the pond about the reptiles and the Major is the way they only have eyes for the Islamics, and blather on about women, as if there's no bullying of any note in the Liberal party that might be handily mentioned ...
The Major might think he can curry favour with the pond by talking about Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women - a favourite pond hobbyhorse - but what's the odds of the Major talking about the treatment of women and minorities in Orthodox Jewish religions, such that Netflix shamefully deleted a reference to one of the women being gay in its documentary on the subject?
There are many motes in many eyes, and there's lots of bullying and Michael Kroger in the Liberal party …and the Islamics are inclined to follow what they learned from the earlier Abrahamic patriarchal religions ...
But now it's back to the Major, as always brooding about the ABC ...
And so to that old saw. Reducing immigration on the basis of religion? That's not racist, that's just pure undiluted bigotry, fear and loathing, and hysteria …
Doubtless world community nervousness will settle when reptile extremists of the Major Mitchell kind abstain from urging Australia to head off on holy crusades all over the world and bomb the shit out of assorted countries in the hope that sending them back to the stone age will produce, within a year or so, a fine form of democracy …
Oh yes there are many motes in many eyes, and many talk of terrorism when they think nothing of nation-state war mongering …
And that's what gets the pond, the profound hypocrisy that litters everything the Major writes, and the endless clinging to Bill Leak, who turned weird and genuinely racist in his old age, and while the Major occasionally sounds as if he might like a bit of old-fashioned French laïcité, he'll always settle for ways of avoiding complications and instead just embrace good old-fashioned bigotry and nationalist supremacy ...
And that's what gets the pond, the profound hypocrisy that litters everything the Major writes, and the endless clinging to Bill Leak, who turned weird and genuinely racist in his old age, and while the Major occasionally sounds as if he might like a bit of old-fashioned French laïcité, he'll always settle for ways of avoiding complications and instead just embrace good old-fashioned bigotry and nationalist supremacy ...
Anning made a stupid speech, and yet just a moment before the Major was countenancing the reduction of immigration on the basis of religion because people felt a little nervous?
And yet the au pair whisperer would welcome au a pairs but refuse to let into this country Afghan nationals who worked with the Australian army at their obvious and ongoing peril?
Who knows what to call this sort of rampant offensiveness and treachery?
Don't answer, this has already been as long a tour through the swamp as the pond could possibly bear, and the only way out is a cartoon or three … as we're speaking of religions that could usefully be examined regarding tax-free holdings … or should be …
Oreo: "The public has developed a taste for political drama and the [Murdoch] media provides the fare."
ReplyDeleteReally, Jenny ? "the public" has a taste for political "drama" ? Most of the public I'm aware of, including my own poor self, is totally sick of the LNP "drama": - we've had years of Muncher dramatics, and now we have Barners and indeed the whole bunch of elected vampires "dramatising" the quotidian normality.
And more: "...Bob Hawke has called for the ALP to sever ties with the CFMEU."
And when "Little Johnnie" Howard calls for the LNP to sever ties with the IPA, the CIS and the Menzies Research Centre, there might actually be a case for pressuring Labor to do that. But at least the CFMEU hasn't pushed the case for legalising smoking in public places or defended CSR's proud record of avoiding blame for causing mesothelioma.
And also this: "Labor enjoyed a long honeymoon in opposition while the Liberals tore themselves apart. With the leadership question finally settled ..."
Oh no it isn't, Oreole Jenny, just ask Concetta Fierravanti-Wells why she is sneering at her leader now that he is PM. Why, the evil man apparently was actually "plotting for some time" to oust whoever it was that temporarily occupied the PM's throne. They just really don't care whether or not they harm the party, do they - just so long as they can push their own ideological barrow.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteIt’s got to be the 280 character limit that is preventing Kelly, the nation’s pre-eminent political journalist (small internal snigger) from taking up Twitter.
How could the Editor at Length ever be expected to distill his political genius down to less than fifty column inches.
DiddyWrote
Only 50 DW? That's sounding a tad parsimonious ...
DeleteAh DW, one of my regular reads (Kevin Drum) came up with some wise words that I'll pass on here:
Delete"In the age of print, a long article was often a marker of quality: given the constraints of page counts and design considerations, a long article usually meant that multiple editors had decided it was worth the space. As a heuristic, long = important wasn’t a bad one, and many of today’s writers grew up imbibing it. Unfortunately, by the time they grew up they were freed from the constraints of print without quite realizing that those constraints created the heuristic in the first place. So now they write interminable pieces, assuming that this connotes authority and gravity. But it doesn’t. Mostly it just means bloat, which is one reason that tl;dr has become such a common epithet among readers."
Hmm, ok, Ned Kelly BOC, but is there really any reptile to whom this doesn't apply ?
I'll just leave this here shall i? https://twitter.com/6abc/status/1036350585157693440
ReplyDeleteWasabi!!??
DeleteAnd what's wrong with wasabi ? Lovely stuff - just like my favourite chilli jam.
DeleteJust some offhand musing about various and sundry: "religion" versus "racism". As best I can tell, DP, the whole "Islam is a religion" chorus is just a disguise, conscious or otherwise. They really are racist, but by claiming their problem is with a religion and not with various ethnicities, they can dodge the opprobrium that racism earns. Being 'anti-religious' - even if it is focussed on one single religion only - is more "acceptable' in an age of diminishing "faith".
ReplyDelete"The Major might think he can curry favour with the pond by talking about Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women ..."
Which reminds me about a little bit of almost unknown (nowadays anyway) repression of women in Australia: the bank imposed requirement that a woman taking out a bank loan required a male guarantor:
"Women in the 1960s were routinely asked to have their husband or a male guarantor sign for a loan, even when they were the sole earner. The assumption was that a woman did not need a loan in her own right, and she would not have the funds to service the debt (Summers, 1994, Singh, 1994). The Anti-Discrimination Board, New South Wales (New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, 1986) noted credit discrimination continuing in the early 1908s* in terms of requiring (usually male) guarantors, and the imposition of unfair loan terms on the basis of potential pregnancy. At the same time, it was usual for banks to ask women to guarantee debts by the men in their family, even when the women did not personally gain anything from the loan. This was so widespread in the 1990s, that it was termed sexually transmitted debt (Lawton, 1991). "
* I rather think that's a typo and 1980s was intended.
See: http://mams.rmit.edu.au/8t26opwcyo6gz.pdf
Incidentally, it is now 30 years since Ronnie Reagan passed legislation in the USA to free women from the same "male guarantor" obligation. It's often the "invisible" little things that are hardest to fight.