Friends keep sending the pond snaps of funny things that Clive has been doing lately, and the pond has resolutely refused to run them.
Clive is, in reality, not a comedian but a cockroach of the airwaves, and he conspires to make the pond's time on the YouTubes devouring pirated content more a misery than a pleasure …those bloody ads.
Clive is, in reality, not a comedian but a cockroach of the airwaves, and he conspires to make the pond's time on the YouTubes devouring pirated content more a misery than a pleasure …those bloody ads.
Whenever the braying loon turns up, the pond begins brooding about Tony Jones late at night on the ABC forever soiling his reputation as a journalist, but in good training for the circus sometimes known as Q and no A, but rich in argumentative BS …
Why if it came to the crunch, the pond would rather spend quality time with Lloydie in full climate denialist mode … as when he bobbed up yesterday …
It was of course more distilled essence of Jennifer Marohasy and the IPA and it featured news of a remarkable conspiracy …
And then Lloydie disappeared like a summer breeze and the pond wondered if it should instead have spent time dallying with the dog botherer …
Every rag needs its partisan hack to pretend, in a balanced way, that the game's the thing, but their side is a great team deserving of support and with a winning edge, while trotting out silly sporting metaphors …
Yes game on, ten to win, the Gatling's jammed, the square runs red with blood and cliches and SloMo might yet be a winner and snare the title, hubris and all that, and the dog botherer will have done his duty, brave lad …
What a loyal minor war criminal prat he is …
And then there was our Adam, joyous in his understanding that even if clean dinkum Oz coal went unloved, still, around the world there was genuine, dinkum love for some kind of coal somewhere … any kind of coal, all kinds of coal, some kind somewhere … out there, there's a place for us, peace and quiet, coal laden air, somewhere, time together with sweet coal, time to look, time to care, somewhere ...
Never mind, dinkum clean Oz coal lover devotees, it's enough to know that coal from somewhere, anywhere is also truly beloved by the reptiles of Oz …
But in the end the pond had to come face to face with the awesome reality.
Sure, prattling Polonius had maintained his rage with the ABC in his media report, but in his weekend release, he'd focussed his laser eye on Clive …
Oh fucketty fuck, why couldn't he just have stayed on the ABC, with his honest and open and transparent position in the political spectrum, howling at the moon about the fiendish cardigan wearers' very unique leftist tendencies?
There was nothing for it, but to take the medicine and listen to the history lesson …though it should be noted that only a loon as complete and silly as Polonius could take Clive seriously for a nanosecond …
Ah yes, the pond recalls the dismissal, and as Polonius suggests, there wasn't a hint of instability there, why none at all … but was the pond only saying that to pander to Polonius, in the hope that he might cut it short, while dreading the sense that Polonius was only just starting to wind up and get going ...
By golly, he really does make desiccated coconut seem laden with moisture, and what's the point of this tedious lecture? Does the ancient obsessive seem to think that if he can hold Clive transfixed with his withered finger and baleful gaze that Clive will stop being Clive, and end talk of rebuilding the Titanic?
Suddenly the pond realised the benefit of Polonius's obsession with the ABC … it brought him into some vague connection with the real world. Hitch him up with Clive and it was off to another galaxy ...
Other pedants will have their fun with Polonius's history lesson. Only the truly deluded will believe that Clive has some connection to Ming the Merciless, and only the truly deluded would think that ancient political party names should be preserved in aspic. If anything, Clive helps establish the lofty level of his delusions of grandeur by his behaviour, and he and his big cash spend will be blown away come the next election…and only a pedant always focussed on the leaves rather than the tree might have some sense of this.
But the gob smacker for the pond was the notion that the UAP government set about rearming Australian in the lead-up to the second world war, and never mind pig iron Bob.
Sure, Polonius knew he sounded stunningly stupid, so he slipped in a modifier, "certainly Lyons and Menzies could have done more in this area", but then he undercut the correction by blathering on about the UAP having a short but successful life.
Roll on the fall of Singapore, the panic of Darwin, and a country woefully unprepared for what was about to befall it, which is why it turned to the Labor party to try to fix the mess … and frankly if it hadn't been for a few chocolate soldiers woefully under equipped and undertrained, no thanks to the UAP (but thanks to one of the pond's uncles), it could have been a bigger mess than it was …
Thanks Clive, ruining the tubes for the pond, and setting a hare loose in Polonius's brain. Is this the best we can do for a Trumpian model down under?
And speaking of the Donald, the pond felt the need to offer a little light relief after that Polonial folly, and what better way than attending to the bromancer.
You see, the Donald, who ranges between moronic and narcissistic, is a child of News Corp, so the bromancer must paint the Donald, in a very artistic way, as rich entertainment, a circus, a Broadway musical, a cinematic outing, a splash-up restaurant feast, a child to be indulged and cherished, in his own peculiar way …
The pond should warn that this is a very long circus, a kind of D. W. Griffiths' Birth of a Nation, with suitable southern attitudes embedded in the spirit of the work, so those worn down by Polonius should just toddle off for a cup of tea, and enjoy the free popcorn …
Ah, so that's the trick. Focus on Kim and downplay the Donald and ignore the adulation offered by the Murdochian hounds …
Well at least the pond can do its usual trick of interspersing text with cartoon ...
Admirable really. The Donald isn't a fat-head, even if he is a moron, who prefers the advice of Vlad the impaler to his own team on intelligence matters and just about everything else …
Only a loon as skilled as the bromancer could come up with this sort of half-baked equivocation and soft-peddling …. and weave a skein of truth from naked mendacity …but that's where artistic skill comes into it ...
And now for a little more deflection and distraction …while forgetting the romance between dictators celebrated by Colbert …
That monologue is on YouTube here, hopefully without a Clive ad intruding, but mug punters will carry on with the bromancer's monologue ...
A singular pattern keeps repeating itself with the bromancer.
There's no point looking for verbal consistency. One minute he's very mad at the Donald, but then he softens and melts and whispers sweet nothings …oh the Donald can be naughty, but he can be very good, why he could be evolving into something grand … a rational human being … capable of almost anything …provided some remotely sane minder is nearby to help with the toilet training ...
And now for yet more of that singular bromancer pattern … he might be mercurial, and yet he might not be mercurial, he might be a moron, but stay, he might be a genius, he might seem unconventional, but in reality he might be very conventional … and there in a nutshell is the singular genius of the bromancer and his singular pattern ...
Yes, the Donald is just like any other US President, and all the prosecutions happening around him are just another sign that Richard Nixon was the most typical President of modern times …
Oh fuck it, the pond just has to have another cartoon before devouring the last gobbet …
Just one to go, but since when has the bromancer taken nattering "Ned" as his inspiration? Is there something about the Donald that brings out the bloviator and the snake oil salesman in him?
Hold the Summit in Vietname to get a Sub-text?: "Look how great economic reform can be for ex-communist nations?"
Didn't the bromancer scribble?: "The Australian intelligence and analysis agencies have long believed the Kim dynasty cannot even embrace serious economic reform along the lines of China, or indeed Vietnam. Once they do that, our agencies have long believed, the Kims begin the end time of their rule."
What the fuck? Why the fuck does he keep pretending he has the first clue? Why does he manage to forget more quickly what he's written than the Donald trying to remember the lie he told a minute before?
More to the point, perhaps, why does the pond keep reading him? Well perhaps it's the fault of Clive, or Polonius, for leaving the pond dissatisfied, or perhaps it's just for the theatre … you know, The Persecution and Assassination of the Pond's Mind, as performed by Inmates of the Reptile Asylum of Surry Hills Under the Direction of the Marquis de Bromancer …
Oh yes there's theatre and laughs everywhere, and never mind the joke that the Donald is fucking the planet … that's why stand-up comedy is booming ...
Re the Bromancer: "Why the fvck does he keep pretending he has the first clue?"
ReplyDeleteWell since he hasn't got the even the first tiny clue, then he never even begins to conceive it possible that he doesn't have all the clues. It's just an extreme example of Dunning-Kruger, really, a state that encompasses all the totally thick-headed and self-absorbed. Like Donald and the Bromancer.
"Why does he manage to forget more quickly what he's written than the Donald trying to remember the lie he told a minute before?"
And that, of course, is just the way it's always done. Donald and the Bromancer are just particularly accomplished exemplars thereof.
Polonius says that compulsory and preferential voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) favours the big parties (and thus stability). I call BS. Voluntary FPTP voting in the US has created an outstanding example of a two party system where smaller parties are all but shut out. The reasons are obvious - declining to vote for a major party (either by abstaining or voting for a minor) robs them of your vote, and is effectively the same as voting for the major you like less. If you're progressive and vote Green, by not voting Dem you are effectively helping the Republicans. In general, FTPT will always favour big parties more than IRV does, except where there are strong regional factors at play (eg the minor parties in the UK are almost all regional).
ReplyDeleteBut in fact neither of these factors - compulsory voting or IRV - inherently favour or discriminate against big or small parties; this is part of the reason I think they are sound. They are not so favourable to small parties that parliament majorities are difficult, as proportional voting causes in some of Europe, nor do they shut out minors completely. One complication with proportional voting systems is the quota threshold - as we see, half-senate elections (quota 14%) favour the bigs compared to full senate elections (quota 6%). Different thresholds in different countries produce different outcomes vis-a-vis stability.
But to me, the biggest factor in whether election outcomes favour two parties or a multitude is nothing to do with counting of votes. It is about campaign finance. Quite simply, as you move from a levelised (typically state-funded) funding model to a low-regulation, donation driven (typically corporate- and union-funded) model you also concentrate power in fewer and fewer hands. The US, Australia and UK are essentially two party systems because the ability to finance an effective national campaign is concentrated in the hands of two parties. A mixed-but-levelised model in Germany, or a private-but-diversified (personal not corporate) model in the Netherlands, produces a wider spread of legitimate candidates.
But it wouldn't do for Gerard to start talking about campaign finance now, would it? Imagine if Uncle Rupert's influence on Australian politics was limited to being able to sell a message to the 50 old white guys (and Dorothy) who read the Catholic Boy's Daily...
Re voting and democracy, it makes me think that I might just have to stiffen up the sinews and summon up the blood and actually try to grasp what Rev Charles Dodgson and Kenneth Arrow were saying. But yes, truly FPTP isn't a good way of doing democracy.
ReplyDeleteFinance is a factor, but larger minors - eg the Aussie Democrats for many years and the Greens still - can manage to raise (in conjunction with a free workforce) enough funds to win seats and at least try to "keep the bastards honest". Though when they get ambitions beyond their reach - as the Aussie Dems did under Meg Lees - then they usually get dumped unceremoniously.
Or, you can just use grant money as your own financing as Ms Downer has just done in Mayo
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/24/call-for-investigation-after-georgina-downer-presents-cheque-to-bowling-club