In which the pond delegates its News Corp rant to a professional ...

The pond just had to start off with this infallible Pope this day … what a ripper it is ... with a reminder that there's more ripper sage papal insights here …

Why? Well the finch was in the air again, and the reptiles were warbling about it in the usual lizard Oz way, in both the digital and the tree killer editions …

 

The pond felt weary, tired, run down …not more Adani, not more sweet dinkum true blue Oz coal, oi, oi, oi …

How to lift the spirits?

 Why not a deep drink from a splendid News Corp rant by one Richard Cooke at The Monthly? It can be found in full here, (may be paywall limited), and the pond clapped hands and danced with glee at the opening …

The slim, match-fit form of The Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman, resplendent in a blue Tony Abbott T-shirt, and standing next to the former prime minister, was not supposed to be there. Not supposed to be in the photo, that is. It was Abbott who posted the picture to social media, accidentally revealing his mate on the hustings. A “campaigning columnist” didn’t used to mean someone literally handing out flyers, but that devolution, from advocate to participant, was not really surprising anymore. Could you call it a breach of journalistic ethics? “A lot of people are looking at this thinking, this surely crosses a line,” Mark Kenny said on the ABC’s Insiders. But it’s hard to breach journalistic ethics when neither journalism nor ethics are involved, so perhaps the wider media reaction – bemusement – was the right one. As usual, the presence of Akerman was treated as just another regrettable ideological excess of an otherwise normal news organisation.

Except it isn’t a normal news organisation any longer. At News Corp – in an inversion of journalism’s ideal– the old-fashioned, straight-down-the-line reporting is expendable and surplus to requirements. It is the unhinged propaganda outfit that is central to the identity of the company. It is the core that is lunatic, not the fringe.

By the standard of his stablemates, Akerman’s doorknocking was unremarkable. He was not, like the associate editor of The Australian, Chris Kenny, a former Coalition chief of staff campaigning for a Liberal candidate who was his own sister, or, like the national affairs editor of The Australian, Simon Benson, advising Abbott over a private dinner that “the only people who give a shit about the kids on Nauru are in Kooyong and Wentworth”. These kinds of contacts go undeclared, presumably on the principle that if you’re past the paywall, you’ve got the gist already.

In the lead-up to an election, the ridiculousness of News Corp front pages, especially on the tabloids, is so pervasive and routine it has almost become part of the pageantry. The bias, like New Years Eve fireworks, gets bigger every occasion, and this time is ascending into the awesome and spectacular. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who has called the Murdoch media a “cancer on democracy”, documented the front-page tumours on Twitter: “Bill’s $5k car-bon tax”, “Labor climate plan hits food costs”, “PM warns of Labor’s $380bn tax grab”, “Scomo ready to go: Morrison into poll position”. The standout was The Courier-Mail all but devoting its splash to a premature how-to-vote card (except real how-to-vote cards aren’t punctuated by bullet holes, and don’t say “RI$K” next to Labor).

The pantomime staged during this festival centres on an important character type, a kind of fall-guy figure called “the good journalist”, whose role is to work at News, and then hand-wring in private about how awful all this is, as though this unpleasantness has come as a huge shock and they have found themselves trapped at an embarrassing masthead by mistake. You might recognise them from the rejoinder phrase “at least they’ve got some good journalists”, so vital for defusing the discomfort of legitimate (and always insufficient) critiques of media peers.

So far, these players have discharged their role to perfection, with “sources” telling Amanda Meade in Guardian Australia’s “Weekly Beast” column that staff at the “Queensland masthead say this week’s effort upset more than a few. Many … were ‘mortified and embarrassed’ by the editor’s none-too-subtle treatment of the budget.” Bravissimo. There is a theoretical particle called a graviton that is supposed to exert the weakest force in the universe, but until its discovery, the “good journalists” of News Corp will have to hold that title.

Other reporters commiserate with them – I have done it myself – treating grown adults as if they are somehow victims of their own chosen employment. It is a folie à deux: you have to pretend that your confidant has become adrift in a rudderless ship of fools (and don’t mention the bad “journalists” towing them in a motorboat), while they have to pretend they are working on the kinks of their troubled conscience, as though they weren’t already smoothed out on payday….

And so on, and on, and the pond makes no apologies for the size of the chunk, because just yesterday this came in from the battle of Warringah …

Uh huh … and yet what did "good" News journalist Brad offer today?

So she's Labor and yet she favours the Libs …

But let's go back to "good News journalist" Brad's report from yesterday and that header about the onion muncher winning the debate.

Who said Abbott gained an edge in the debate? What justified that headline? Was there a straw poll of the audience? Was a vote organised? The pond plunged in, seeking answers, like Akker Dakker roaming Warringah streets in search of voters …

No, there's no answer there, just a summary  of the debate, with the battle skewed to the onion muncher seeking to gain an edge.

Perhaps the next gobbet would unveil the audience vote that justified the headline ...

Nope, just the usual onion muncher climate science denialism, with a bit of fear mongering about electric cars … of a kind down there with a warning that poor folk couldn't afford new-fangled steam engines, what with the high cost of coal …

Perhaps the final gobbet would contain a clue?

A close result, but Mr. Abbott finished slightly ahead with a strong argument …?

Why it seems that there wasn't a vote or even a straw poll, it was just our Brad being lord high jury, judge and executioner, all in one, in grand reptile fashion …

And that's how reporting is done at News, on the whim of a journalist ostensibly delivering a balanced report, but in reality delivering skewed, biased opinion ...

Hmmm, it's time for more of that rant ...

...It sounds unreal to say that News Corp is not a media organisation. It sounds outré to say that it is instead a political propaganda entity of a kind perhaps not seen since the 19th century, one that has climbed to its pedestal through regulatory capture, governmental favours and menace, and is now applying its energies to the promotion of white nationalism, even as white nationalists commit scores of murders.
It defends a child rapist and demeans his victims. It degrades and cows the national broadcaster until it threatens its function, and occasionally its existence. It undermines the rule of law. It does everything it can to impinge on climate change action, just as the ramifications of climate change begin to bite. Who has the better predictive record: climate scientists or boosters of the Iraq War? Now dwell for a moment on News’s relative treatment of each. We are stuck listening to the megaphoned opinions of the wrong people, who have been rewarded rather than penalised for their failure.
News Corp is not merely biased against Labor and in favour of the Liberals. This underestimates the international nature of the franchise. It is a series of multi-platform metastases that endanger minorities – sexual, racial and religious – all over the world. Right now, in the US, it is pouring its hatreds onto individuals– with a special emphasis on women, and women of colour in particular – in a manner unchanged by the upsurge of massacre and vigilantism. Its treatment of the Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar is an almost carbon copy of the treatment it meted out locally to Yassmin Abdel-Magied. All this has happened with the “good journalists” barely uttering a peep. Any potential friction this would cause with people of colour in the newsrooms is solved by having almost none. Some of those have left, unable to bear the culpability.
Any one of these factors, by themselves, would make an entity like this dangerous. Together, they represent an existential threat to democratic society. If you think this is hypothetical, or hyperbolic, look to the US post-Trump, or the United Kingdom post-Brexit, and realise that this is what these people fought for – and they want it to happen here. “It’s mind-blowing to look at the wreckage of UK politics, realize that it’s basically all Rupert Murdoch’s fault, and then look back to the US and realize that’s *also* all Rupert Murdoch’s fault”, the American political analyst Matt Yglesias tweeted in March. It’s a simplification – these are complex, multi-factorial events (and it’s also Lachlan Murdoch’s fault) – but it is not a simplification to say that the Murdoch media has ultimately been the decisive factor. The evidence, both quantitative and anecdotal, is very clear.

Yes, and you can go to the rant for the very clear evidence, and also the local fucking over of the lucky country, but around this point, deep in despair when thinking of the Murdochians on a Friday, the pond usually thinks of seeking relief with the Speccie mob … only to be confronted by this …

Dear sweet long absent lord.

Yes, the pond recoiled because it was the complimentary Caterist doing climate science denialism and children, but the pond couldn't get past that illustration.

Look at the illustration. The pond tried to date it, and came away with an estimate of somewhere between a 1950s Esquire cartoon and an early 1960s classic British comedy, Carry on Bra-less …or perhaps a post-war British postcard …

Fuck it, it was beyond moronic, even if the Speccie mob offered the excuse that it was illustrating a complimentary moron … 

And to back it up, they had the scribbler of a notably fraudulent novel doing the same routine about climate science denialism and children, and the pond decided it just couldn't go there.

Luckily that rant also made mention of the Speccie mob …

Take this kind of sentiment:
… the second wave of multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for not only Australia and Britain, but also much of Europe. This is the wave of immigrants and refugees who have poured out of the Islamic hell-holes of the Middle East, Africa and Asia over the last few decades, bringing with them a political ideology disguised as a religion that has no interest in integration, but only wishes to leech off the generous welfare and political freedoms of the West.
This comes not from the Christchurch killer’s manifesto, nor from one of Senator Fraser Anning’s Facebook posts, but from an editorial in the Australian edition of The Spectator, edited by Sky’s Outsiders host Rowan Dean. The magazine came complete with a cover praising the archetypal British white nationalist Enoch Powell.
As a case study it has plenty of company: if Sky News’s “after dark” programming is not getting into bed with neo-Nazis and card-carrying Islamophobes, it is at least staying in the same dorm room. Before he was fired as a Sky host, Ross Cameron was a speaker for the anti-Islam Q Society (at the same event, the cartoonist Larry Pickering announced “Let’s be honest, I can’t stand Muslims”, in case there were any doubts about the tenor of the occasion). The “identitarian” Lauren Southern, given extensive and beneficial coverage by both Sky and News platforms while she was in Australia, is a close associate of Martin Sellner, the head of Generation Identity’s Austrian branch. He was raided by police after they discovered the Christchurch killer had made what was described as a “disproportionately high donation” to Sellner’s group. Southern chose former members of the United Patriots Front as her security detail when in town – the Christchurch killer was an enthusiastic poster to their Facebook page. Sky invited neo-Nazi leader Blair Cottrell onto the network – the Christchurch killer had praised him as an “Emperor”. These appearances were not sober cross-examinations: several Sky News presenters took time to pose for selfies with Southern, Cottrell and the now-banned Milo Yiannopoulis backstage.

Well yes, all that and much more …

Meanwhile, the reptiles were besides themselves over another matter …

But what's the real point? Well, there's the chance to show the ad at the top of the story, so that's a win for the bigots and the homophobes and the TG and tranny haters …

And how did the lesser Kelly work this routine? Why with a "gotcha" about refusals ...

Dear sweet lost homophobic, Islamophobic, reptiles in search of a "gotcha", the pond can reliably date the year when this cause was lost … it was back in 1994 …perhaps you remember, or perhaps you've only seen it in the theatre ...

Sure, it had elements of misogyny and an unfortunately racist Asian caricature in it, but drag queen stories have had a long and honourable place in Australia, going right back to the early days in the Cross …

 

Get over it, get over the gotcha questions and any Christian fundamentalist bigot who happens to be passing as you wander out in Surry Hills in search of a coffee from the best 'leet baristas in the world.

Fuck it, Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side is even being used to sell cars. Yes, Candy giving head is now understood as Candy having a good head on the motor …

But where were we? Oh that's right, bashing the reptiles, and so many examples to pick from …

Maybe he should walk away from shameless politicisation of climate science, maybe the parrot really should reveal what went on in that London toilet, at least if he wants a defining issue of our time …

But enough already, here's a final example, wherein the reptiles manage to confuse themselves and get their knickers in a knot  …

  

Well of course they're playing footsies with "right wing fringe groups." 

How else to explain or describe the likes of Clive and Pauline?

But immediately "good journalist" Maley ran that story, he felt the need to go in search of a 'gotcha' cherry to add to sundry other wrongs …

The reptiles even provided a break-out box ...

There's more, but the pond suddenly became weary and tired again, when it realised it was just another example of the reptiles in a deep state of denial.

Of course they could have put this in a box …

...Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that of multiculturalism abolished. I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians. Between 1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate. Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country. A truly multicultural country can never be strong or united. The world is full of failed and tragic examples, ranging from Ireland to Bosnia to Africa and, closer to home, Papua New Guinea. America and Great Britain are currently paying the price.

Arthur Calwell was a great Australian and Labor leader, and it is a pity that there are not men of his stature sitting on the opposition benches today. Arthur Calwell said:

"Japan, India, Burma, Ceylon and every new African nation are fiercely anti-white and anti one another. Do we want or need any of these people here? I am one red-blooded Australian who says no and who speaks for 90 per cent of Australians."

I have no hesitation in echoing the words of Arthur Calwell.

Yes, two Wongs don't make a white.

And what about Clive? Apparently the lizard of Oz reptiles haven't seen the cockroach of Twitter and YouTube running a scare campaign about a Chinese invasion, though the reptiles at news.com.au managed to spot it:

The ad suggests the Chinese could use the airport to invade Australia, take over the state’s resources by stealth and support a “large ground force”.
“Chinese communist-owned companies with the help of the Labor Party built and constructed a private jet airport,” the ad claims.
“Australia could not repel military aircraft if they landed from carriers offshore. A superior military air force could, in effect, control all of Western Australia’s resources in the Pilbara and the North West Shelf gas reserves,” retired Royal Australian Airforce squadron leader Martin Brewster says in a voiceover during the ad. Mr Brewster is also Mr Palmer’s nephew and a former manager at the billionaire’s Queensland Nickel mine.
The ad goes on to explain the airport could “in effect” support a “Chinese communist” army.
“It has the facilities necessary to support and sustain large-scale naval operations in the Indian Ocean,” former Royal Australian Navy commander Phil Collins says in another voiceover.
“The power generation and water desalination plant, together with the bunker fuel capacity, provide the necessary logistics to provide a large ground force equipped with heavy equipment.”

The alternative reptiles put the boot into Clive's fear-mongering:

The airport is attached to an iron ore mine privately run by Chinese mining company CITIC, which is leasing a tract of land from Mr Palmer’s Mineralogy company.
CITIC and Mr Palmer is currently in an ugly international legal dispute.
Strategic defence expert Ron Huisken called the ad “sensational nonsense” before pointing out Mr Palmer had his own complex business entanglements with a Chinese company.
“This is rather tacky scaremongering — with poor grammar to boot — (trying) to leverage actual developments (including) a Chinese concern being involved in a 99-year lease to operate the Port of Darwin, repeated attempts by a consortium that included a major Chinese player to buy very large pastoral leases, and the Sam Dastyari saga,” Dr Huisken said, in reference to the former Labor senator who resigned after his close ties to Chinese interests were exposed.
Dr Huisken dismissed the idea that the construction of an airfield was an aggressive move by “Chinese communists”, explaining that having an airport at a large mine was commonplace.
“A superior force could, by definition, prevail in any circumstances, but flying combat aircraft into these company airfields is sensational nonsense,” said Dr Huisken, who is an adjunct associate professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.
He questioned just what the aircraft would do after landing in the Pilbara.
“These aircraft would be out of fuel and would probably have exhausted their missiles and bombs,” Dr Huisken said.
“If the Chinese could not bring fuel, spare parts and munitions to these airfields the aircraft would immediately be candidates for the war museum in Canberra.”

That's the man that SloMo has done a deal with …a rabid, and seriously compromised loon ...

But how did the bromancer end his piece on Wong?

The pond's not going to link to any ads by Clive and Pauline - there's only so much racism that needs to go round, there's only so many times we need to be told an invasion is just around the corner.

But why are the reptiles downplaying these things and dismissing the pair as fringe players? 

Well because SloMo is doing the dance with both, and this might well see "fringe player" Clive turn up in the Senate and turn it into an even greater circus … and so all the racist hysteria, Islamophobia, homophobia and what not must be dismissed as "fringe", until the reptiles can resume business as usual after the election, having helped SloMo retain power …

You know, the business of racist hysteria, homophobia, Islamophobia, Western Civilisation, fundamentalist Xianity, and such like ...

Or so the narrative goes in Murdoch la la land as the reptiles hope against hope and have their fingers crossed and their 'gotcha' questions ready… but the pond rather fancies the final thoughts in that rant …

...News advocates a suite of highly unpopular policies: defunding or privatising the ABC, privatising public assets, “wage reform”, tax minimisation, foreign military adventurism, the building of coal-fired power stations, meaningless action on climate change, the obstruction of a fibre-to-the-home NBN, and the overturning of anti-vilification legislation. This is near-identical to the policy platform of the Coalition. So far, the real-world implementation of these ideas has been mixed, but the conversational bandwidth they have taken up, considering they have almost no natural constituency beyond vested interests, has had a ruinous effect.
This is why News is made so angry and afraid by grassroots activist groups like GetUp and Sleeping Giants. GetUp collected donations from 64,956 individuals in the last financial year, a democratic base that no organisation on the right, not even the Liberal Party, can match. News has placed its great white hope on a series of failed bodies styled as the “conservative GetUp”, without realising that the community support to furnish such a phenomenon is not there. The Australian noted that GetUp was turning its attention to the “hard right” of the Liberal Party, targeting Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Nicolle Flint and their ilk. It was, said the paper, “courtesy of GetUp’s multimillion-dollar war chest … a marked shift to US-style negative campaigning tactics geared towards denigrating particular candidates”. That sounds very much like projection.
Sleeping Giants is implementing something similar, aimed at the hard right of News Corp itself. It has already taken huge gouges out of the advertising spending on Fox News in the US and on Sky News Australia, most recently persuading Pizza Hut to drop its advertising locally, simply by pointing out the kind of content to which its ads ran adjacent. Sky host Rita Panahi, in a stung response, described Sleeping Giants protesters as “sad, pathetic totalitarian bullies who want to essentially shut down any speech they don’t agree with”. But it is not censorship, or anything like it. It is a voluntary coalition of like-minded interests that draws its power from persuasion. It even has the private support of some of the News’s own good journalists who, after all, like all of us, are overdue for liberation.
Alex Turnbull, Malcolm Turnbull’s son, has begun an attempt to “destroy News Corp’s influence in Australian politics”, pushing independent candidates in electorates where News is popular. “Members of LNP can only laze in the hot tub of Murdoch endorsed far right craziness while ignoring their constituents so long as their seats are not at risk,” he tweeted. “Putting their seats in play tends to sober them up.” This kind of criticism, coming from Turnbull’s family as well as Kevin Rudd, is often treated as sour grapes, instead of what it is: the warranted alarm of two former prime ministers, who have seen up close the distortions created by the company. Others say the same in private.
These counter-Murdoch operations are small but growing, with mainly informal links so far. Their enemy is not so irregularly organised. After a decade of lost opportunity over climate change, after Christchurch, after Pell, any benefit of the doubt about News Corp’s intentions and results has disappeared. “Do you really think Australia would be a better country without News?” a senior reporter asked me recently. Once that might have been debatable. But as the entity is constituted now, my answer is yes – Australia would be a better country without News. Of course it would be. Either it changes, or we do.

And so to a few relevant Wilcox cartoons, with more Wilcox here, and with Wilcox's shop at her site here …go on, you've always needed Scottie's chocolate box tea towel ...