In which Polonius drones on, and the pond drones back in a mostly unique way ...

The pond has had a mixed week.

It realised, with a shock, that it had lost forever any talk of ‘unique’ being really, truly unique and not in need of a modifier, with blather about ‘most unique’ littering News 24, even in bulletins written by paid journalists supposedly with a grasp of ye olde, antique, antiquated notions of the English language, and read by paid newsreaders, whose job, the pond now understands, isn’t to check copy, or provide information in a literate way, but instead to mangle words and their mainly unique meanings …

On the upside, the pond learned of CRAP, the Cultural Revolution Against Phones, which the pond’s partner had attempted to hide. The pond finally heard about Jack White’s valiant refusal to own a cell phone, his boast that he doesn’t have that addiction, and the response of fans when told they can’t use their phones in his concerts …

The partner tried for some wriggle room by suggesting Jack was barking mad, and it's true that an early life in Detroit seems to have left Jack a little disturbed, but let's not have any ad hominem attacks when the cause is just, and the screen-grazing sheep can be herded towards the truth ...

So CRAP is bubbling along nicely, as is the cable cutting at Foxtel, and soon there will be a truly alternative unique new world where ancient values will return …though perhaps not at their ABC.

The pond blames it on its early life in Tamworth … listening to the nuns earnestly assuring the pond that anyone who told a fib was on their way to hell … without the first clue that at some point much further down the track, there would come the reptiles and the Donald …

Compare these headlines, which the pond noted through the week …

Yes, Lloydie was up to his usual sneering tricks, with blather about the "glitterati", while the Graudian and many others were agitated about actual observations in the field …

Then there was news at the ABC about the fate of the deep North, with Temperature rises will make Brisbane a 'difficult place to live within 30 years, report finds …

The pond thought living in the deep North right now was difficult, but hey, at last there seems to be an upside to climate science, called the suffering of the toads …get a little of that Adani into you, toads, and feel the warmth ...

Perhaps the silliest headline came from Crikey and good old Guy…

But Guy, it is front page news on the lizard Oz every day, with the glittering reptiles howling "dinkum clean Oz coal, oi oi oi …"

Look …

Angus is on the right track, and there's something the pond doesn't miss at all … ancient grey-haired old loons howling at the moon about "virtue-signallers," sadly the most commonly unique term of abuse in the reptiles' limited vocabulary ...

Speaking of ancient coal-loving fossils and antique ways, the pond simply can’t discard prattling Polonius like a useless cell phone, and this weekend he was in triumphalist mode ...

At last … it's not too late to put Polonius in charge of TV breakfast, or perhaps The Insiders, or at the least Media Watch,  while the prospect of Gerard and Anne replacing Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens on The Minefield is an idea so hot the pond has copyrighted it, patented it, or done whatever you need to do to maintain rights to a concept for an an idea for an outline for a treatment for a first draft, before pitching it to RN …

And so to Polonius in full prattling flight …

Was it only a few weeks ago that the pond noted that Polonius had a special key on the keyboard which at least once a week he ritually pressed so that "conservative-free zone" would have as much currency as "virtue-signalling"?

No wonder he opened with reciting the alphabet, perhaps because the 2 x 2 multiplication tables were a bit of a stretch.

Well the good news is that Polonius exudes every sort of bias, deliberate, unconscious, senile, and repetitive, and he's in top form … and the reptiles must have realised it, because they sauced up his sauciness with a wonderful tidy man portrait of Ita, who will save the Polonial day, and perhaps even bring Polonius into the tent as living proof of a national conservative treasure destined to ensure RN ratings shift from * to ** ...

Oh dear …what was Polonius thinking?!

To do down Moorice, to pretend that Moorice only saw the Polonial light late in his term as chairman. Would it have been hard to have done a nanosecond's googling?

One such opportunity was the ABC, where Newman first served as a director from 2000 to 2004. Then as now, one of his central preoccupations was the broadcaster's supposed left-wing bias. 
"It's very clear," he tells me. "I lived there, right? I was in the carpark. I spoke to the staff. I know the bias is there." Despite being answerable to federal senate, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and to its own Electoral Coverage Review Committee, Newman wanted the ABC to be additionally monitored for "bias and balance" in the lead up to the 2004 federal election. (Fairfax nee Nine here).

Late in his term as chairman? Quick, some soap for Polonus so he can wash out his mouth, or at least his keyboard ...

The pond realises it's very competitive amongst the reptiles to spot the bias at the ABC, and that Polonius was probably doing it in the days of Ming the Merciless, but fair dibs for Moorice. Why he even managed to be outraged at the process which saw Polonius's heroine Ita get the gig …

"If you don't want to have a process, fine. Leave it up the PM or the minister or the tea lady or whoever. Everyone knows that's the basis of the selection. But I don't really see the point of having a process that is not observed. It makes a mockery of it." (here)

Of course Polonius likes the world run by fiat, dictum, diktat, and lordy lordy, does he have plenty to hand …though these days, he has to preface his musings with "as far as I can recall", and "if my memory serves me correctly", and "error prone though I might be, I believe there was a possibility that …" 

… as he makes an urgent plea that he keep on playing Donkey … "oh, pick me, pick me, pick me …"

They never give up, do they, harping away, droning on in that tedious, monotonous Polonial voice, and without apparently being aware of the contradiction of inviting a conservative voice to appear on the ABC (speaking in tongues no less), only for the conservative voice not bothering to appear …now that's how you get them coming and going.

A conversation:

I won't appear because you're biased, and of no use or interest to me.

But if you do appear, you'll help balance the conversation. Don't you want a balanced conversation?

What's in it for me to help you disguise your naked bias? 

And so on and so forth ...

Well they wouldn't have that trouble with Polonius. He'd turn up to give a talk about the ABC's bias in the janitor's closet, pointing out the shocking example of the left-handed brooms that they allow the janitors to use these days … as they had been doing back in the days of Talbot Duckmanton …

Not that the pond cares much about any of it. These days it's in the truly unique situation of being unable to listen to a broadcaster mangling the English language … when commercial television is perfectly poised to do that in a routinely unique way …

And now, as outside the myopic world of Polonius and the conservative voice, and the riches it produces, such as the Donald, things are on the move, so why not celebrate conservatism in action with a relevant Rowe, with more Rowe still to be found here …