The Murdochians seemed a little confused, distracted and bewildered today, with the lizard Oz agonising over the budget, and the Currish Snail worried about the NDIS, and so on and so forth (the Daily Terror was off chasing coke), but an even greater shock awaited the pond when it turned to the reptiles' commentary section …
Say what?
Talk about a second eleven, and even worse, some of the headlines were incredibly suspicious.
Oh yes, Workman was there to give the greenies a serve, but what to make of "Bushfire crisis is our Pearl harbour moment, If we were to mobilise now, renewable energy superpower status could be ours"?
Had the loon never heard of the coal energy superpower status the country already enjoys, thanks to the wonders of reptile-approved dinkum clean Oz coal?
And who is this Muir blathering "Republic just part of overhaul Australia needs"? Who dare sayeth "monarchists are missing the point"?
Poor old Flinty must be having a heart attack ...
Ah, that felt better, and in its hour of need, the pond relaxed. It had watched enough SBS to know that when in deep trouble, always go the Nazi, and so it came to pass …
The threat to Western civilisation?
Surely given the current situation, there could be only one topic, and it might also allow a bigly number of cartoons …
Fortified, the pond plunged in …
Well the pond was pleased at the snap of Mussolini and Hitler - it had the right SBS feel - but what about the current crisis in the United States? You know …
Sadly the pond braced itself for disappointment, and the usual reptile blather ...
Would he have been surprised by what was waiting for him in the United States?
Oh never mind, let's just sink back into the past, when things were a little clearer ...
Ah, the usual reptile blather about the values underlying Western culture, no doubt exemplified by the Donald ...
That said, and while the pond appreciates that the talk is of Mann, perhaps "the dignity of man" might be re-phrased to be a little more inclusive? Shocking thought that it is, women are people too, and so "the dignity of woman" might have been mentioned. After all, if the Donald is the dignity of man, then there are a lot of dignified women who don't much care for the talk of a dignified Donald ...
Still, the warning about the hope that Europe must now be called upon to preserve democracy as the United States goes through an American Dark Age is well-made …
And then the scales fell from the pond's eyes, and it all became clear - because the columnist turned to blather about sovereign states and the virtue of individualism …
We were back with Maggie Thatcher, there is no such thing as society, there is only the individual ...
Ah, a Trump adviser, and the pond isn't sure that Nadia Schadlow has the first clue about what the knotty and gnarly meanings that "individualism" might take on, from anarchy and libertarianism through to bohemianism and existentialism … or so its wiki says here … culminating in crazed loons roaming the streets with military assault rifles, shooting on sight ...
And what happens when a sovereign state is so corrupted by its leader that it is incapable of doing the things necessary for the survival of the planet, let alone the state?
Just asking for a friend …
And now with that explanation of just why the United States, and so the planet, is fucked, the pond thought it might take a trip down memory lane …
At least one reader enjoyed its flashback to the Devine, and it turned out that she didn't decide to spend the rest of her life in blissful domesticity doing the vacuuming.
She kept on scribbling … and lordy lordy, was she a white feather doling out war monger of the first order …and didn't everything work out well in the Middle East, just as she promised.
Of course there's a minor problem. The Devine now loves the Donald, but the Donald himself thought the Iraq war was a bigly, huge, mistake, and by extension, and using the Donald's robust form of words, anybody who supported it was a fuckwit of the first water.
So the Devine is in something of a quandary, something of a pickle. Does she now maintain the Donald line, and forsake everything she once furiously scribbled? Or does she concede that the Donald is right in every way, and she indeed is a fuckwit?
Well the pond can't argue with the Donald on this one. At least we can agree on something. The Devine is a fuckwit, and in the light of recent events concerning Iran, what joy to think that the Donald might be the new George W. Bush ….
Now just a housekeeping note.
It turns out some of these columns can still be found online, as with Right time for the showdown, but strangely they're stripped of Devine's name and they lack the bizarre illustrations, a feature of the rag at the time.
So there's something to be said for the quaintness of killing trees … but it will be necessary to click on to enlarge to make the war mongering a little easier to read ...
This one came on 13th February 2003 in the Sydney Morning Herald ...
This one was in the same rag on 20th March 2003 ...
This was on 3rd April 2003 …
This one was on 10th April 2003 …
And this one came on 12th June 2003, and the pond offers this one not so much for the Devine as for the illustration …
Just take a lot at that drawing up close.
Why it's worthy of what Norman Lindsay and others were doing for The Bulletin way back when, whenever a question arose about Chinamen, Asians, or different looking people … and yet, it was running in Fairfax in 2003 ...
Well, it's not SBS Nazis, but it does help explain just why all that talk of Western democracy rings a little hollow in the pond's ears …
ABC interview on Sunday.
ReplyDeleteMorrison copied Trump with the extra long tie for his interview with Speers.
Well, that was a long, maudlin meander down (bad)memory lane. I can't say I took much notice at all of The Devine back then - when Fairfax was still, more or less, Fairfax - not until she became a fixture in the Murdoch firmament some years later and a regular star performer for loonpond. But as you say, DP, that was an extraordinary illustration for Fairfax, even all of 17 years ago, so having The Devine in a starring role back then was, I guess, just par for the course.
ReplyDeleteHowever, she was indeed a seriously wanton warmonger, wasn't she. If it wasn't for the fact that a large percentage of humanity of all sexes and genders are just like her, and vice versa, I'd be tempted to think that she had a serious psychological problem. But no, she's just typical of a certain percentage of homo sapiens sapiens which has engaged in war and massacre and murder throughout every single year of documented human history.
Nevertheless, just a few memory joggers:
How delightful: the John Winston Howard "Anti-terrorism Pack" costing around $15 to $20 million all up and snail-mailed to us all. Sadly, I cannot remember anything at all about it and I didn't retain a copy. But truly a fine example of Howardocracy.
And then some penetrating Devine wisdom: "Those who complained Powell had produced no "smoking gun" forget a gun only smokes after it has been fired."
Wau. And people also forget that Colin Powell was the guy who taught Hillary to use private email instead of the government provided service. Hoo boy, was that ever a "smoking gun". Then we have the real Colin Powell standing up:
"Colin Powell has called his 2003 speech to the United Nations, laying out the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq, a “blot” on his record. The speech set out to detail Iraq’s weapons program, but as the intelligence would later confirm, that program was nonexistent."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/colin-powell-u-n-speech-was-a-great-intelligence-failure/
But then, what would Powell know ? Miranda is much better informed than he.
Finally, some classic The Devine: "It is a battle between heroic moderate xxxxxs and the militant extremists trying to hijack their religion."
Yep, that seems to sum up most religions, and very particularly where xxxxx=Christianity or xxxxx=Islam.
The pond is pleased that you enjoyed the Devine GB, and is grateful you took the trouble to point out some of the details in the nonsense, because all the pond felt was an overwhelming ennui, along with the thought that with Iran, the Donald showed all the signs of 'here we go again' … no doubt cheered on by the Devine doing her American thing...
DeleteThere's not a lot of originality in The Devine, is there; so deep ennui is indeed the normal human response. Actually, the normal response to the entire ophidiarium is a deeply abiding ennui. But then Dunbar, inter alia, did highly recommend boredom as a lifespan extender.
DeleteThough younger son James is trying hard to scare up some wider entertainment, so it seems.
Pssst: "Be alert, not alarmed !"
Delete