In which the pond salivates at the salvation offered by saintly Murdochians ...

They were all at it today, diligent beavers beavering away for Pravda down under.

Et tu Dame Slap? Just another serve of union bashing, when everyone knows the entire world of Western Civilisation is under dire threat, and poor Folau must wait another day for his Dame Slap salvation …

Other favourites were also to hand, with dinkum clean true blue Oz coal likely to triumph as the militant unionists somehow found themselves in unholy alliance with Dame Slap …

ALP figures!?

And though Dame Slap had forsaken him for union bashing, the reptiles kept the Folau matter bubbling along by turning to the angry Sydney Anglicans for a comment ...

Have a conversation? The pond fears that the venerable Stead doesn't understand the difference between a conversation, and a standard bible-thumping damnation and consignment to hellfire for all eternity. Perhaps he needs a complimentary woman to help him understand …

If that's a conversation, it seems a tad one-sided, a bit like the wretches who sometimes howl at the hellfire moon in King Street, but at least it allowed the pond to reference one of its favourite movies …

Moving right along, the pond was determined to avoid the devout work of the reptiles engaged in their Pravda down under duties, and hallelujah, as always, the long absent lord provided, and salvation was at hand …

Now in the usual reptile way, to signify the importance of the affair, the reptiles did a double.

First there was good old Tess, assigned to cover proceedings, and write a sycophantic report.

Then there was the oration itself …

Of course the pond was up for the double, though the pond should warn that in Tess's servile, supine coverage there was a grand parade of poobah penguins, strutting for the cameras …

As for the topic, the pond was elated at the way that Robert Thomson was finally going to come clean, berate Fox and Friends, and admit that the Murdochians had been responsible for the installation of a mafia boss in the White House, while conspiring in the matter of Brexit to reduce the poor hapless Poms to a complete mess.

Okay, the pond was hopelessly optimistic, but doesn't he look like an undertaker? Perhaps he's just come from the burying of liberal democracy?

Oh dear, as well as the penguins - how fortunate only men seem to have attended - it seems Thomson has had a severe dose of the angry alliteration ailment that sometimes breaks out, no doubt thanks to anti-vaxxers.

Seething secularism… evanescent evangelical … devotee of the deviant.

The pond suddenly, in a revelatory moment, understood why News Corp was fucked … but why Fox and Friends sounded so pleasing to the reptile ear …why only Fox and Furry Friends might have sounded better …

Dear sweet long absent lord, they dragged Gareth out of the closet to parade in a penguin suit. Was that intended as a distraction from the alliterative assault on all that agitates the alligators of action?

Well that makes as much sense as cognisant communities and net narcissism …

The pond knew it was hooked, and hung around for the main event, though it was disturbed that the reptiles had consigned inverted commas to do the duty of a thumb portrait …

Um, there's just one problem here, when we get to alliterative talk of truth and those who tell it … while no-one can touch the Donald for shameless lying, equally no one can touch the Murdochians and Fox News for cheering on the shameless lying …

Yes, the pond broke early and felt the need of a cartoon, but now it's time for a terrific tirade full of tumultuous, tempestuous, turbulent thundering ...

Oh it's too much, even as the pond tries to be sanguinely supine but salivates at the vociferous vocalisations about the panics and prevarications from the man at the head of a media mob, which manages on a daily basis to whirl in the sky like a murmuration of starlings and do the boss's bidding …

Indeed, indeed, and the pious pond is full of piety …

—Hell has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limits—words taken, my dear little brothers in Christ Jesus, from the book of Isaias, fifth chapter, fourteenth verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 
The preacher took a chainless watch from a pocket within his soutane and, having considered its dial for a moment in silence, placed it silently before him on the table. He began to speak in a quiet tone. 
—Adam and Eve, my dear boys, were, as you know, our first parents, and you will remember that they were created by God in order that the seats in heaven left vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious angels might be filled again. Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; yet he fell: he fell and there fell with him a third part of the host of heaven: he fell and was hurled with his rebellious angels into hell. What his sin was we cannot say. Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I will not serve.That instant was his ruin. 
He offended the majesty of God by the sinful thought of one instant and God cast him out of heaven into hell for ever. (more readings from Brother Joyce here)

Put it another way ...

Strangely the pond was warming to this roasting of the recalcitrants by a wretch presiding over one of the most monstrous, malevolent, malignant corporations of corrupt conduct ever conceived … even if Tess had the temerity to provide a digest of the vacuous, vapourous, vacant, ranting of a smug, sneering member of the elite ...

Oh not a fucking media miasma, it's too much, and the pond blames it all on the Donald, whose own connection with the English language is sometimes remote, almost as absent as his empathy …

As for The Wall Street Journal being the most trusted newspaper in America, the Murdochians have always consoled themselves with bullshit polls … but it's possible to point to any particular poll to produce a perverse point …

...In the intro, the researchers write, “We look to assess whether support for President Trump and other anti-establishment candidates reflects a loss of confidence in institutions — or even a more serious underlying alienation from liberal democracy,” and explain that they asked 5,400 respondents (more than is typically used for a nationally representative political poll) to “indicate their level of confidence in 20 US institutions.”

The top five were the military, Amazon, Google, local police, and colleges and universities. The bottom five were the press, the executive branch, Facebook, political parties, and Congress.

Sorted by major party affiliation, the findings become even odder, because Democrats and Republicans diverge sharply on almost every point except Amazon (and the military, and their loathing of Facebook). The five most trusted institutions for Democrats are Amazon, colleges and universities, the military, Google, and the FBI (bottom: religion, Facebook, political parties, Congress, and the executive branch). The five most trusted institutions for Republicans are the military, local police, Amazon, the executive branch, and religion (bottom: Congress, organized labor, political parties, Facebook, and the press). (Vox here).

Jeff Bezos over chairman Rupert? Explain that furtive furphy if you have the fortitude …

But now back to the master of magniloquent eloquence, the rhetorical lord of declamation, the man with a frenzied fluency … the objective objector who berates others for a lack of objectivity, while going up the bum of his own company's corporate glories …

Say what? They abridged this hagiographic hysteria just when the most interesting question was posed? 

How will we make the most of our time? Perhaps by reducing our minds to moronic rubble by watching Fox and Friends each day? 

Perhaps by adopting as a hobby the tending and attending of a herpetarium to see what ranting the reptiles reel out each day as they ramble with zealots, humbugs, rogues, grifters and snake oil salesmen of the Donald kind … with the pond watching in fascination as it sees the seas of understanding leach into a morass of mind-numbing verbiage and adoring adulation?

Well it's not only Thomson who can produce undiluted gibberish ...

Frankly the pond couldn't get enough of it, and so turned to the reptile editorialist for an adoring encore, but curiously the result sounded flat, almost sullen and surly, and surely lacking in the lofty rhetoric that soared, like Icarus, dangerously close to the Sun King …

Oh sure, the editorialist did the right thing, and was a right royal suck, but the spirit wasn't there …with only a humble "vituperation as virtue" echoing the master mariner's magisterial, monarchical ability to mangle the English language into a spinning hagiography of malicious Murdochian ideology and dismal verbal dross …

Well the pond wasn't satiated, but it was sufficient for the day, and there were a few more cartoons standing by to wrap up the verbal sallies with picturesque portraits of what's become of the United States, thanks to the ubiquity of Chairman Rupert and his uxorious, pandering sidekicks…

But never despair … there's always a solution to hand ...