Why the cheap turncoat rat fink back-stabbing hussy!?
Fancy pointing the finger at the honourable member, as if he'd soil himself with undermining, sniping and wrecking …
Fancy pointing the finger at the honourable member, as if he'd soil himself with undermining, sniping and wrecking …
Oh yes, it's a bad day for SloMo and the reptiles, and a weird and wonderful day for coal and Barners …
You have to admire those agrarian socialists, they never give up on their devotion to socialism and to coal …
And just to show the pond can take an intense dislike to both sides of the house, how about this bit of cheek?
This from the wretch that gave NSW panem et circenses, aka the Olympics, in lieu of infrastructure, which remains a mess in Sydney to the present day, no thanks in small part to Bob, seeing how he ignored public transport while creating that useless colosseum which generated headlines like this?
More here - the pond realises retired politicians expect everyone to forget or forgive everything - but the pond must move along, because it's dedicated this day to one of the reptiles' finest exponents of comedy. Is there any one better than the Major?
The pond knew at once, just from the splash, that it would be a Major classic.
The notion that the Major is somewhere in the centre, and deplores extreme media voices, and isn't part of the noisy reptiles braying from the right … why, it was so rich that the pond knew a gag fest would follow (that's laughter, not gagging noises) ...
The notion that the Major is somewhere in the centre, and deplores extreme media voices, and isn't part of the noisy reptiles braying from the right … why, it was so rich that the pond knew a gag fest would follow (that's laughter, not gagging noises) ...
Somehow, strangely, the Major managed to omit the braying reptiles from the Oz, urging on the onion muncher, shouting for Barners, cheering on coal, running climate denialist stories day after day …
But it reminded the pond of an experience it thought of writing up, but dropped because it was just too tiresome and predictable.
You see, late yesterday, the reptiles let their literary reviewer out of the cage and put him at the top of the digital page …
But it reminded the pond of an experience it thought of writing up, but dropped because it was just too tiresome and predictable.
You see, late yesterday, the reptiles let their literary reviewer out of the cage and put him at the top of the digital page …
In any other newspaper, at any other time, it would have been unexceptional stuff. Williamson was reviewing certain titles, the books and their writers took climate science seriously and Williamson reviewed accordingly.
What a hue and cry erupted, what a commotion. It was as if Williamson had committed treason in the land of Barners and the coal-loving world of the reptiles. What a trolling, what outrage followed, what questioning of credentials.
Naturally the reptile readership much prefers the impeccable scientific credentials of the likes of the Major, Moorice, Dame Slap, Dame Groan and the dog botherer …
Naturally the reptile readership much prefers the impeccable scientific credentials of the likes of the Major, Moorice, Dame Slap, Dame Groan and the dog botherer …
But back to the comedy and the pond defies anyone not to get a good chuckle out of this question:
"How should governments react to pressure from narrowly focussed news organisations of the Murdochian, Major, coal-loving, onion-munching, Barners-loving kind?"
Oh dear, perhaps the pond didn't transcribe it quite as written by the reptiles' most famous centrist ...
What a moaning and a wailing, and how bizarre it is to see everybody try to turn centrist on a dime. The onion muncher? Suddenly he's for climate and Paris, and for women, except that dreadful Julia Banks turncoat, and the malicious Malware that created a bug in the NBN at his insistence …
And the reason? Well it's so transparent, naked and obvious that it verges on the pitiful …
So that's where the reptile carry-on has got things?
More Wilcox here, and how fitting it is ...on the very day that the Major has gone centrist, and Barners is out and about urging the feds to get behind a coal-fired power station … and to cap it all, just as the onion muncher has done one of his most epic backflips on Paris, the Major leaps into digital ink to tell everyone the onion muncher never got the credit or a fair shake of the prawn sauce bottle as an environmentalist …
Oh go eat a lump of coal, or join the Green Army, and keep on explaining reptile centrism courtesy of little Johnny ...
And the lizards of Oz? What of the reptiles?
Well you see, if you don the Major's blinkers, they're just truth-tellers …unlike just about everyone else in the media… and the truth is everything is shortly to be rooned by the lefties, while the Major and his mob would have produced another coal-fired power station and saved the planet ...
Well you see, if you don the Major's blinkers, they're just truth-tellers …unlike just about everyone else in the media… and the truth is everything is shortly to be rooned by the lefties, while the Major and his mob would have produced another coal-fired power station and saved the planet ...
And that's why the pond had to pause and wipe away the tears from all the laughter, before turning to the Oreo for the day … and what an odd juxtaposition that produced …
Well the pond just had to acknowledge the Swiss bank account man honouring the parrot …
"How should governments react to pressure from narrowly focussed news organisations of the Murdochian, Richo, parrot-loving kind?"
The pond was reminded, as it often is, of the end of Orwell's Animal Farm and the pigs and the farmers settling down for a fabulous celebratory meal together … but to dwell on that fable for too long would have meant missing the Oreo …
For the record, the Oreo is something of a Donald lover … and the Donald was once an Oreo lover …
What's so funny about the Oreo sticking up for Milo? Well Milo's only doing a tour of the colonies because he's got nowhere else to go. In trying to fuck everybody with his idle abuse and relentless trolling, he's managed to fuck himself ...
Controversial far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos has had a tough two years. He's been banned from Twitter, had to resign from Breitbart, lost his $250,000 book deal, he had to let go of staff from his company and this week announced he was broke. The nail in the coffin came when he was banned from community crowdfunding website Patreon, which lets people pay a certain amount of money per month to support their favourite creators and artists. (here)
Cry the pond a river …and carry on Oreo, pleading that the broke bludger should be allowed in-country like a Nigerian scammer in search of new victims, and hoping he'll be allowed to rort reptile readers, mug punters and ratbag lovers that they are...
You know, around this point, the pond became completely bored by talk of Milo, an indulgent narcissist who's discovered that narcissism can only go so far.
Please allow the pond to do an elaborate detour and celebrate a couple of pieces celebrating Diderot.
Please allow the pond to do an elaborate detour and celebrate a couple of pieces celebrating Diderot.
The pond preferred the piece by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, What we can learn from Denis Diderot …
It's outside the paywall for the moment, and unlike Milo, who has produced his own misfortune, Diderot faced real challenges for being different ...
It's outside the paywall for the moment, and unlike Milo, who has produced his own misfortune, Diderot faced real challenges for being different ...
...For all the general delight of their existence, though, every time the Enlightenment philosophes put pen to paper they put their lives and liberty on the line. As Curran persistently reminds us, thinking skeptically about the truth of religion meant risking prison and persecution. In 1749, as punishment for his skeptical and atheistic pamphlets, most particularly for his “Letter on the Blind” of that same year, an odd mixture of early perceptual psychology and a polemic against Christian superstition (the blind are both those who cannot see and those who choose not to see), Diderot was arrested and imprisoned, without trial or process, in the Vincennes dungeon.
Enlightenment France was not Soviet Russia; sources of power were dispersed through the caprices of patronage and the existence of an aristocracy wealthy enough to be, within limits, independent of the King. (The affection of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress, later proved vital for the continuation of the Encyclopédie.) Rousseau visited Diderot in the dungeon, and Voltaire, who had admired Diderot’s pamphlet, had his brilliant physicist-mistress the Marquise du Châtelet write on Diderot’s behalf for kinder treatment.
Yet the threat of imprisonment or exile never entirely let up. The Church, through its civic instruments, regularly jailed, threatened, and harassed proponents of the new learning. What Diderot faced was not the bored disapproval or the condescending tolerance that Christians now complain of coming from liberal élites; it was actual persecution, a desire to imprison those guilty of heretical thought, to close their mouths and eradicate all trace of their books.
And the pond should care whether Milo comes or goes?
The NYRB had a piece by Lynn Hunt about Diderot, The Man Who Questioned Everything … and luckily it too is outside the paywall …and it ended this way ...
...Diderot wrote his most powerful works as dialogues so that he could unsettle any sense of stable truth or clearly defined categories. In Jacques the Fatalist, for example, the servant Jacques is the one with ideas, intelligence, and energy. The master, who has no name, is a foil for Jacques and his theories of determinism. Decades before Hegel, Diderot showed that the master–servant relationship is mutually constituted, which means that it incorporates within itself the means of its own destruction in favor of equality. Even while fighting for the power of reason, science, and knowledge, Diderot saw that these had their own inherent fragilities. If the human race is a cosmic accident, then what is the meaning of life? If our individual lives are predetermined by material circumstances, then what is the space for human freedom of action? Do reason, science, and knowledge ultimately tell us that we are not free after all? Diderot was never afraid to look into the abyss.
He had to hide the true significance of his work during his own lifetime, and he wrote for posterity in dialectical and often self-contradictory ways that make it hard for most readers to get a clear sense of his meanings. But it’s no accident that Diderot studies took off after World War II, for he is distinctly a thinker for our times.
There's lot more in both the reviews, about Diderot's taste for porn, his relationships and especially his strange dance with Catherine the Great …
Milo? He's no thinker for these times, he's a self-seeking, self-serving gnat in desperate search of a colonial rump …
The pond is astonished it spent a nanosecond thinking about him, but is mightily pleased the government is in a dither … because Milo peddles the same sort of far right nonsense that infests the government and the lizards of Oz. There's no real need for him to turn up, we have plenty of home-grown manufacturers including the Oreo.
But why doesn't the Oreo admit she would be a handy replacement for Milo, and could do the tour for him, perhaps on a 50/50 split basis.
Well the pond blames it on the stupidity of the Oreo, as always getting things arse-about ...
The NYRB had a piece by Lynn Hunt about Diderot, The Man Who Questioned Everything … and luckily it too is outside the paywall …and it ended this way ...
...Diderot wrote his most powerful works as dialogues so that he could unsettle any sense of stable truth or clearly defined categories. In Jacques the Fatalist, for example, the servant Jacques is the one with ideas, intelligence, and energy. The master, who has no name, is a foil for Jacques and his theories of determinism. Decades before Hegel, Diderot showed that the master–servant relationship is mutually constituted, which means that it incorporates within itself the means of its own destruction in favor of equality. Even while fighting for the power of reason, science, and knowledge, Diderot saw that these had their own inherent fragilities. If the human race is a cosmic accident, then what is the meaning of life? If our individual lives are predetermined by material circumstances, then what is the space for human freedom of action? Do reason, science, and knowledge ultimately tell us that we are not free after all? Diderot was never afraid to look into the abyss.
He had to hide the true significance of his work during his own lifetime, and he wrote for posterity in dialectical and often self-contradictory ways that make it hard for most readers to get a clear sense of his meanings. But it’s no accident that Diderot studies took off after World War II, for he is distinctly a thinker for our times.
There's lot more in both the reviews, about Diderot's taste for porn, his relationships and especially his strange dance with Catherine the Great …
Milo? He's no thinker for these times, he's a self-seeking, self-serving gnat in desperate search of a colonial rump …
The pond is astonished it spent a nanosecond thinking about him, but is mightily pleased the government is in a dither … because Milo peddles the same sort of far right nonsense that infests the government and the lizards of Oz. There's no real need for him to turn up, we have plenty of home-grown manufacturers including the Oreo.
But why doesn't the Oreo admit she would be a handy replacement for Milo, and could do the tour for him, perhaps on a 50/50 split basis.
Well the pond blames it on the stupidity of the Oreo, as always getting things arse-about ...
Yes, in the weird world of the reptiles, the Major can pose as a centrist, and the Oreo can present as a liberal concerned for liberal democracy … but at least the sheer tedium allowed the pond to mention Diderot …
And now the pond feels free to mention the latest Rowe, with the lad taking a dive into the most expensive folly of recent times, a sordid dive which gave comrade Bill a free headline …
And so the Diderot of cartooning saw an easy target, with more Rowe here ...
"The Guardian speaks for the Greens..."
ReplyDeleteFor those here who don't read the Guardian, their articles that touch on issues of importance to Greens voters commonly attract criticism of those voters. The leanings of their commentators give the lie to the Major's claim - the number of obvious Labor voters outnumber the obvious Green voters by at least 5 to 1 (probably closer to 10 to 1). There are almost as many RWNJs as there are Greens, who are routinely attacked for being too idealistic or too ready to compromise principle for political gain. Just as the MSM enables the "Labor's fault" mantra, so the Guardian enables the "Green's fault" line, like: voting down the CPRS -> Carbon Tax -> Tony Abbott = All your fault, you "tree tories". We saw this a lot in the latter part of 2018, when the Greens occasionally threw a spanner into Labor's parliamentary games.
The articles themselves are little different, taking Labor positions as axiomatic - modest (inadequate) action on climate change, wages and fiscal policy, dosed with a little more progressive vibe on social policy. Perhaps "speaking for the progressive left wing of the Labor party" would be reasonable, but "speaking for the Greens" is massive overreach. At times they are even pro-coalition, with their coverage of Malware's tenure was skewed by Katherine Murphy's massive crush, which rivalled Leigh Sales', and they still run generally favourable coverage of anyone remotely centrist in the Coalition (although the last of them are running for the exits).
I guess one often has to stretch the truth a bit to create false equivalence, but this is rich.
Yeah, personally I tend to find the Guardian to be just a little bit 'all over the shop', especially when it includes some number of pommie-granate writers. I guess that sorta comes from, totally unlike the Murdoch press, not having an enforced conformism. Though in truth, I don't reckon the reptiles really need much forcing.
DeleteThey voluntarily exhibit the attitudes and behaviours that lead them to support the jailing of a Diderot (do we have anybody like him now ?) while shouting out about how democratic, tolerant and supportive of free speech they are and always have been.
It's always funny when the reptiles claim to be centrist. I try to imagine that balance with the fulcrum at the extreme right end - doesn't work, does it?
ReplyDeleteThe Maj has two problems here:
1/ He realises he is backing a looser. At some point the reptiles have to unwind from their current position or the myth that they are the kingmakers will be exposed (PS everyone knows already).
The prescription to date for problems caused by the drift to the right has been to move more to the right. Rupert has driven this all the way but it is looking more and more like a suicide mission. Who to blame? Scumo? Truffles? The public?
2/ The Oz' readers are literally falling off the perch and the readers out there are getting more choice. Who, in their right mind" would pay for the shite served up in this rag?
The "niche" the new entrants are appealing to is the broad centre of Australian politics. The Maj is right about one thing - the ABC is a bit left of the Labor party right in the middle of the political bell curve.
So, more delusion and naked self-interest I guess.
Well you see, Bef, if the line is very long (almost infinite) then anywhere can count as "the centre". And to the reptiles, wherever they are is ... yep, "the centre".
DeleteBut "naked self interest" you guess ? Something that bleedin' bloody obvious doesn't really need to be 'guessed', does it ?
True dat!
DeleteFrom Maj. Mitch: "John Howard ... showed how a conservative leader can take action conservatives disapprove of: banning guns and proposing an emissions-trading system in the 2007 election."
ReplyDeleteWait, what ? In the 2007 election, Howard lost 22 seats in total including his own safe seat. Yair, that surely comprises the best ever lesson in how to achieve things "conservatives disapprove of", doesn't it.
As to the guns, well there was basically a spontaneous anti-gun uprising including both conservatives and liberal-progressives after Port Arthur. So the Maj. is basically saying that conservatives should wish for more massacres in order to do things "conservatives disapprove of" ?
He really has leapt right over the cliff since "retiring", hasn't he.
Reading The Oreo though, reminded me of a fine political strategy/tactic known as "Accusing and blaming your opposition for the things you, yourself, are doing". I'm given to understand that Goebbels used that tactic to brilliant effect. And there's quite a few members of the GOP that are pretty good at it too, including Trumpskin.
So, what has this got to do with The Oreo ? Well she's at great pains to assure us just how appalling she thinks Milo Y is as a person. And what does she achieve by that ? Well, by personalising her objections to Milo, she can completely ignore how appalling his politics and social conscience are. So she doesn't have to confess, as Andrew the Blot did that "Milo's libertarian politics are something the Liberal Party should be proud of" (or words to that effect).
So what we have is The Oreo utilising the 'psychological projection' version of accusing and blaming others for what in truth you, yourself are actually guilty of - a fine form of indirection that The Oreo, like all reptiles, practises assiduously.
DP, I think there is a song for the Major, to be sung by whoever is the present day Rex Harrison, like:
ReplyDeleteWhy can't The Guardian be more like The Oz?
The Oz is so balanced, leans neither Right nor Left,
etc