After the US election, the pond has decided on a culling, and as a way of taking a break, there will be only one reptile left standing each day, the wackiest and zaniest, and the rest can stay in the lizard Oz archive...
So this is one of the final chances for a truly epic reptile parade, but already the culling had to begin. Simplistic Simon has never been a pond favourite, so not even in the starter's line-up. The Oreo blathering about Islam and Xianity? Gone. Nattering "Ned"? Give the pond a break ...
And the Major himself is very close to being given marching orders ... representing as he does, the last gasp of the royal Murdochian order, lecturing others while showing all the signs of having a giant Queensland pineapple up his arse ...
Right from the get go, it's a preposterous notion, as silly as the pond scribbling that reptiles of the Major kind must embrace a fair contest of ideas. They're not interested in ideas, they can't handle the truth, and they don't much care for it either ...
The pond was immediately distracted, even before it began, bemused by Gaven's attempt at a walk-back from using reptile language and reptile conceits ...
What a stupid man. The whole notion of inner city 'leets is reptile speak, as noted by Crikey ...
And yet what did Morris come up with to give himself wriggle room for his nonsense, while appealing to the lizard Oz readership?
That's right he wants to appeal to suburban and rustic 'leets ...
And watch out for those curtains!
Say what?
The pond was supposed to be tracking the Major? What was that elaborate 'leet detour all about. Isn't the Major the main game? Oh if we must ...
What, Conroy has gone beyond smashing the intertubes and censoring everything? But that's why the pond started with Morris of the ABC.
Everyone, and the Major, imagines that people heed the lizard Oz, the Murdochian tabloids and Sky News ... but it's only clowns in the ABC that give a flying fuck about the Major's inglorious, desperate boasting about a has been who was never much, and the pond's not just including the great internet censor Conroy in that low-rating, poorly subscribed parade of clowns ...
Go on desperate Major, talk of non-subscribers not realising, as if non-subscribers care a whit or a jot ...
Watching might be an eye-opener? No, what's the eye opener is the needy, whining, tone of desperation, and the fear of irrelevance, so bizarre that now the Major is trying to dress up the Murdochians as a source of centrist and leftist commentary ...
What the fuck? Has the Major forgotten he's the one-eyed Major?
Has there ever been a more defensive bout of navel-gazing, even by the Major, a renowned fluff gatherer and navel gazer? How desperate does it get? Pretending the Bolter's not a barking mad right winger, and blathering on about journalism as social work destroying the trust of readers and viewers, as if we don't have the example of Fox News as the way the reptiles go about their business? Luckily there was just one gobbet of Major nonsense to go ... and it was short ...
What a loon. Even when the pond does its purge, the Major should be reassured that he would remain a contender in the hunger games ... that defence of the Donald was so silly, and that talk of a fair contest of ideas so rich, that the pond knew the Major could maintain the brand of quality loonacy to which the pond always aspires ...
Meanwhile, the good news is that the US election is only a few sleeps away and then a couple of months of nightmares before it's settled, and so Jolly Joe will have to find other topics if he's to stay in the hunger games ...
It's pleasing that the reptiles gave jolly Joe a shining elephant light illustration, as if that would illuminate things ... as for the rest, jolly Joe confessed he didn't really have a clue, which is hardly news because he's been clueless long before his 2014 budget ...
Yes, the pond has cheated, yes it's run a couple of gobbets together ... yes, it just wanted to get to that reptile mantra ..."Trump can still win." It reminds the pond of that old line, "I won, I won, I won??!!"
There's nary a thought of what might happen should there be a winning, not that the pond much minds four more years of the United States going down the drain ... there has to be some opportunities for cartoonists ...
As for the rest of Jolly Joe showing he's clueless, the pond jammed him together again, just to get it done and over ...
There's only two things to note here. In the matter of Bruce Springsteen, jolly Joe is clearly completely clueless, but at least it was different to his mystical invocations of the mythical Mary. And secondly, the reptiles left off the usual plug for his Bondi partnership, which is too cruel for words, because judging by jolly Joe's analysis, the business needs all the help it can get ...
And so to the bonus, and again it's only because it's completely preposterous ...
You see how it's done? Only by becoming a Caterist, expert in the movement of floodwaters in quarries and coal to China (oopsiedaisy), can the Labor party hope to win, and then only by becoming the LNP ...
Yes, it's the standard dose of Caterist climate science denialism, with the reptiles needing a booster shot every week or so ... and with the eternally vigilant Caterist on guard for heresy and deviating deviants ...
But it seems that the heresy is beginning to turn up regularly in the lizard Oz ...
Now the Caterist might like to pretend that Deloitte is a bunch of long-haired greenies of the kind that also infest the ANZ, but it's a long stretch ...
Good old A grade Angus beef, what a fine company director deal maker he makes.
Sad to say, the pond has begun to think of the Caterists and the Menzies Research Centre as a stranded asset. You only get so much bang for your cash in the paw buck, and when it's a blithering, blathering Caterist the fireworks frequently turn into a fizzer ...
Yes, yes, go tell that to the farmers living the experience on the land ...
And so to end with the fervent hope that the great cartoon glut won't soon turn into a famine ...
I have occasional access to files of the Currish Snail in a local library. Many months back that particular pit of reptiles decided that the LNP was not going to be sufficiently combative to win the election in Queensland, so, to preserve democracy as they saw it, they virtually took unto themselves the role of opposition. As you have noted, that produced some remarkably vile slurs (love ya work, Dorothy).
ReplyDeleteIt would be difficult to go deeper in the ‘slur’ stakes than the sub-header about the ‘black heart of Annastacia Palaszczuk’ - an anatomical reference set off by her closure of the border.
By this morning - it is telling Premier Palaszczuk what she must do to mould the state to the form the Chairman thinks it should take. No doubt her first party room meeting will start with a reading of that editorial. It has been put in front of the paywall for all to see.
Of course, such eminent good sense comes with a side-salad of Cater greens. This is what the Menzies Research Centre was set up to do? Well, Menzies does have a lot to answer for - what with assisting the sons and daughters of the working-class to go to university, and back when there was just the one, for Queensland, expanding to St Lucia in anticipation of increasing enrolments.
The flagship does seem to be a bit rudderless this day (no pun intended). Shouldn’t we have a recent comparison of COVID activity in Sweden, compared with Oz? Presumably the Killer is wrestling with the numbers, from - somewhere, to try to show how much better various other countries are doing than good old Girtby?
New Zealand won’t qualify because they have voted, by about 2 to 1, to allow some people to choose not to endure unnecessary months of pain (even though it is really a gift from God, so character-building). No - it is one thing to have, um - collateral deaths for the good of the economy; people who woulda died anyway - but another thing entirely for people in that position to choose to go early, if the alternative is truly too horrible to contemplate.
Oh - and Premier Palaszczuk promised similar choices for the voters of Queensland. No doubt the Currish Snail will pick up on that, after it has picked itself up off the floor.
Well, that's saved me a whole lot of pointless pontificating, Chad. I think you covered all the "salient" points. So I'll just add my quick summary of Katherine Murphy: "fealty determines fact, and tribe determines truth"; and aren't the reptiles good at that.
Delete"And so to end with the fervent hope that the great cartoon glut won't soon turn into a famine ..."
ReplyDeleteLet us truly hope so, DP:
Tom Toles’s final cartoon
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/30/tom-toles-final-cartoon/
One to keep, thank you GB. It is my impression that events here, in the UK, and in the home of the brave have inspired contract cartoonists, and encouraged newcomers. In items I dip into in the UK, they have confidently moved away from having to label every person, and many things, in their drawings and are now much more precise with their aim. And they have much to aim at.
DeleteWhat a pity then, Chad, that cartoons hardly ever have much real effect - other than on folks like you and DP of course - for most folks it's just part of 'normalising by continued familiarity' the cartoon subject(s). Unless they are Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes, perhaps.
DeleteNow on a different topic, a quote - which if my memory was still like I fondly imagine it once used to be or Google was actually some kind of AI search engine I'd already have found it - which was along the lines of "Granting justice to those you find agreeable and/or decent people is easy; it's offering justice to the unworthy or bad (or evil ?) that decides whether or not you are actually civilised."
It arose because I landed on a blog post that was discussing: "If he had been captured, would Hitler have deserved a dedicated and powerful defence ?" The blogger, a Jewish lawyer said that yes he definitely was but that nonetheless, he would not provide it.
Which I thought was plenty civilised enough, but others disagreed. So, in what exactly does 'being civilised' consist, and why does being a reptile preclude one from being civilised ?
I have seen reports that the great Walt Kelly is credited with helping to swing public opinion away from Joseph McCarthy around 1953-54. Kelly, and others, figured they might be able to make the Senator a figure of fun, and they had plenty of material to work with - so, SImple J Malarkey. Once people can laugh at a character who is trying to instil fear in them - they are on their way to overcoming his (and her!) power.
DeleteOn your other point - I think there is a legitimate distinction between those who appear to have a genuine belief in what they say - e.g. Hitler, Anders Behring Breivik; and those who have a fair grasp of reality, but wilfully claim and promulgate other beliefs, in pursuit of power and money - including any number of ‘God wants me to be rich’ evangelists, and - many persons who write and broadcast for any arm of Limited News.
All should be entitled to equal representation in a ‘civilised’ legal system, where the exercise should include determining what their genuinely held beliefs are, in order to determine if they are culpable for their actions.
I was around at the time, Chad, but as a mere 10 or 11 yo, so I have no personal recall of either McCarthy or Malarkey. But is it your point that if only a modern Walt Kelly could be found in Belarus then in short order Lukashenko would be laughed out of office ? Who else would that work with - Putin perhaps ? Al-Assad perhaps ? Khamenei ?
DeleteAs to the "justice" questions, I take your point to be that everyone is indeed entitled to "dedicated and powerful defence" but is it incumbent on each and every one of us to be prepared to personally provide the defence ? Which I guess is the point with the Jewish lawyer: if he and everybody else recuses themselves from providing a defense, then the "right" is surely breached.
Long ago, I had this weird idea that as 'agents of the court', a lawyer's sole duty was to ensure that the law was fairly and validly applied to the accused, not to try to bring about a 'not guilty' verdict. I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea if we could implement that.
There is Jolly Jumpback Joe still though. But then there is what DP said about him:
ReplyDelete"...jolly Joe confessed he didn't really have a clue, which is hardly news because he's been clueless long before his 2014 budget..."
You know the hardest thing for me to take on board - after I'd read Betty's 'Feminine Mystique' and taken on board the idea that, maybe, women were men's "equals", was that an "equal" woman would marry and have children with the likes of Jolly Joe. Not doomed a couple of million years in the future as normal 'species lifetime' might indicate, but doomed now, And so it shall come to pass ... pity we're going to take quite so many other species, and even whole families and so on, with us. But I guess that's what a major disaster always does and a million or two years later, biological diversity will be back again.
On the meantime, we might like to contemplate what foods we acquired from the Mayans:
chocolate, vanilla, corn (and what a long process of controlled mutation breeding that was: about on a par with bananas and wheat), chillies, tomatoes, black beans, avocados, sweet potatoes, squash and pumpkins, papaya. Will there be species to replace us that will keep the corns and avocados (and bananas) alive ?
Then I guess there's Nicky-nocky Cater too. Hmm: "... and everything is safe for dinkum, sweet, clean pure Oz coal and gas, and climate science is just a mirage, a dream by a butterfly ..."
ReplyDeleteHmmm, what did Zhuangzi have to say ? "Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."
Not that Cater would really dream he is a butterfly - no, way too complex, subtle, thoughtful and powerful a model for Goosebumps. So, while we contemplate the incredible thoughts of the reptiles, let us consider Cater:
"The Green's success in winning at least two seats on Saturday was largely the product of the St Lucia effect, the spread of campus culture into suburbs an easy cycling commute from the University of Queensland."
So Nicky goes on to compare Toowong (Uni wokey) with Aspley (good ol' non woke workies ?):
"In Toowong half of the adult population have a university degree. In Aspley, it's around a quarter. It may depress you to learn that in Toowong, 15 per cent of adults under 35 possess a post-school qualification in either Society and Community or the Creative Arts."
Oh wau, "Society and Community or the Creative Arts" no less - just wait till the Ramsay folks get a whisper of that - they'll be in like Flynn. But I would like to point out that in my younger days, a suburb in which 1 in 4 adults had a Uni degree of any kind was a burg of snobby elites. So what exactly is his point I wonder ? That if "50% of adults" in a burg have a Uni degree, then the Greens should have been getting at least 50% of first preference votes for a long time now ?
"No, what's the eye opener is the needy, whining, tone of desperation, and the fear of irrelevance". Isn't it so, so obvious.
ReplyDeleteThey have had years of serving up disinformation to a readership that is only half listening because most of the issues don't really matter in any case and then along comes a pandemic and it all becomes very clear. It's hard to think of a single position advocated in the Oz (heretic women excepted) that hasn't been demonstrated to be tragically wrong. It's like "here's a trial of what you are proposing - pretty ugly eh?".
On another front in the reptile wars, I tripped over this
https://twitter.com/MrKRudd/status/1323038979566891009
I'm not sure if this is just fishing for something that can be recycled back into the American media or whether they are misguided enough to think this sort of smear will work. As amused as I am by near a half a million signing the Krudd petition it would hardly seem worth the effort. Never underestimate their pettiness however.
A 'smear' always works if it is shown to the right audience. Every smear that Trump has made, every single one of his 20,000 documented lies and every gormless evasion (not "responsible for COVID") works perfectly well because every single, and multiple, one of them are given to Trump's adoring "base". "Lock her up !"
DeleteDAMN THOSE GREEN LEFT CYCLISTS PEDDLING THEIR GREEN LEFT UNIVERSITY CAMPUS IDEAS!!
ReplyDeleteLabor is capable of doing enough damage on its own. Hello stupid voters! Hello?! You've made a huge mistake - Fools, one and all, but maybe you've dodged a bullet because Labor has apparently ignored the Greens? WTF? Nothing about Palaszczuk's pretty decent science-based handling of Covid - aaaand that Freckles was completely bereft atop a party where the spiv wing are at war with the nutjob wing.
My god he's an arrogant, stupid little man, though he does add a touch of gravitas in quoting Angus Taylor. Carbon Capture and Storage - powerful stuff. Game set and match.
The Caterer says that if you drive a dump truck your political opinions are better than if you ride a bicycle. I remember he said that Northcote had too many psychologists driving Peugeots and not enough plumbers driving utes. How many readers are going to be fooled by this ludicrous pose?
ReplyDeleteDidn’t he go to university himself, and must have been infected by campus culture, unless he drove a dump truck in from the coal mines every day?
I lived in Toowong but I got to uni by EJ Holden, not a bicycle, so maybe I'm OK.
Oooh, I drove one of those (EJ) as a taxi for a couple of years.
DeleteI drove a Falcon XA cab for North Suburban. I still believe my real name is Fox 42.
DeleteGreetings from Don 64 of Yellow Cabs in City Rd Sth Melbourne (1960s).
Delete