In which the pond does its duty by prattling Polonius, then gets down with Dame Slap and Lord Downer ...

 

 

 

 

Before beginning its Sunday meditation with prattling Polonius - so familiar it's worn as smooth as the Blarney stone - the pond would like to share some other moments from earlier in the week. 

 

There was the venerable Meade, celebrating Paul Fletcher and the tragedy of the North Shore mums here ...  and there was Marina Hyde ...

To be fair to the Graudian the pond will only sample a few pleasing lines, with the rest here ... (spoiler alert, the sampling includes the final par) ...

...Having failed to thrash out the issue in the thrashing yurt at various barefoot mogul retreats, Murdoch effectively instructed the Australian government to shake down the tech firms to pay publishers for the sharing of links, or stop allowing the practice. Yes, here he comes, Monty Burns-Unit, absolutely refusing to allow the trident to be prised from his claw by the Valley bros. This week, Google chucked him some undisclosed loose change just to shut him up, but Zuckerberg refused, turning off news sharing in Australia and removing most Australian media from its platform, as well as pages run by state health departments, charities and others. Alas, there is outcry, with the publishers seemingly not wanting the thing they said they wanted any more. It’s one of those fights where you’re rooting for the asteroid to end it.

Of course, Facebook is the galactic leader in PR crises. In the company’s short, unimaginably powerful existence, they have made so many monstrous cock-ups and on such grand scales that it seems reasonable to predict the full collapse of human civilisation will be immediately succeeded by a Facebook statement containing the words: “We know we have more work to do.” It’ll probably have been drafted by Nick Clegg, whose political endpoint was always going to be donning Earth’s last crew-necked sweater and doing comms for the apocalypse…
…The true tragedy, of course, is that these guys have so much in common. Rupert Murdoch recently received the Covid vaccination, which I read on Zuckerberg’s platform means he’s been injected with Bill Gates, a line of medical inquiry I hope to see enthusiastically taken up by anti-vax-adjacent Tucker Carlson on Murdoch’s own Fox News. Can people this ideologically similar really be so far apart? Let’s hope they can still put their differences aside to form some sort of Injustice League…
...One of several essays Zuckerberg instructed Losse to write in his voice was “Companies over countries”. She resigned without completing it, but not before having asked him if he could expand the slogan. “I think we are moving to a world in which we all become cells in a single organism,” came Mark’s mild reply, “where we can communicate automatically and can all work together seamlessly.” Wow. A vision of our future that has me immediately paging Morpheus. Was Murdoch … was Murdoch actually the blue pill all along?

 

Nope, the pond checked. There's only red pills, or perhaps an apple from a woman in a Disney film. 

 

And then there was First Dog here ...

 

 

 

Nice indeed, with the rest at the end of the link, and with all that, the pond felt refreshed enough to tackle Polonius's eternal, never ending complaint, his ceaseless petulant whining and moaning, usually if not always about the ABC ...

 

There you go ... if only the pond had its own weight in Dogecoin for the number of times Polonius has scribbled furiously about the ABC being a conservative-free zone. 

What a tedious drone he is, what a boring old fart, and yet at last he seems to have realised the real problem ... the ABC is full of women ... recalcitrant, difficult, perverse, uppity women, who dare to have a mind, when poor old Polonius can't even get a gig on The Insiders. How fair is that?

 

 

What can the pond say that it hasn't already said? Perhaps call him a pedantic, tedious old fart? Nope, been there, done that, for as many years as Polonius has moaned about the ABC.

What's worse, apparently Polonius is slow to read the news, even in a Murdochian publication here ...

Scott Morrison’s claim that no one in his office knew about the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins has been undermined by new text messages revealing his staffer was “mortified” by the story and had pledged to take action.
The text messages were exchanged between Ms Higgins and another Liberal staffer in April, 2019, after she had confided that she had been sexually assaulted but had got “jack-sh*t” support from the Liberal party.
Outraged, the man asked if he could take the matter to a friend who worked for the Prime Minister and ask for help on her behalf.
The man said he did so and on April 3, 2019, just 11 days after the alleged rape in Defence Minister Linda Reynolds’ office, he reported back to Ms Higgins what happened in a text message.
“Spoke to PMO (Prime Minister’s Office). He was mortified to hear about it and how things have been handled,” the text reads.
“He’s going to discuss with COS (Chief of Staff) — no one else. I flagged need for councillor (sic) and desire to be closer to home during election.”

But then we really know what it's all about. 

Polonius really doesn't care about the woman or her plight, Polonius doesn't care about a cover up, Polonius doesn't wonder why the news reached the PMO, and yet the man from marketing remained blissfully unaware, presumably operating the office on the basis of a "don't ask, don't tell" rule.

In reallity, Polonius is routinely hostile to anyone who dares to discuss Scotty from marketing's behaviour, and like the ancient masters of the Inquisition, is standing by to sniff out any form of heresy at the ABC, no matter how small ... because that's what he does, because he's a Baskerville hound who can only sniff the wind coming from one direction ...

 

 

Could it be that conservatives are as dour and as humourless as Polonius? The pond knows that he pretends to be a dog on occasions, but what he serves up there is sarcasm, rather than humour. Reading Polonius in all his ponderous, pontificating solemnity is a bit like stepping into a cow pat in a field out of Tamworth ... a bit of a stench, and really only funny back in silent movie days ...

And so to another delight, and this time the pond realised it must deal with Dame Slap, having slipped up last time, and with the reptiles putting her at the centre of a delightful trio of stories ...

 

 

 

What a line up, and then what a downer ...

 

 

Dame Slap does Lord Downer? Even Bill Leak had fun with Lord Downer ...

 

 

Those were the days ... but the reptiles promise it's only a six minute read, so how hard can that be?

 

Hmm, might be harder than the pond realised. Perhaps a cartoon as a reminder of the days that Lord Downer tried to pretend he was dinkum?

 

And now it's back to an apocalyptic vision from the Lord, one which suits Dame Slap's own taste for the apocalypse ...

 

 

 

Petrol head? The pond thought he was a stocking head ...

 

 

But hey ho, on we go ...

Why are Australians more fearful? 

Oh please Dame Slap, can the pond answer that one? 

Would it have to do with an ancient irrelevant loon announcing in a grumpy old man way ... "the collapse of the economy, massive social dislocation, depression, educational setbacks and the collapse of small businesses left, right and centre" (though that will be news to the plumber who turned up at the pond's house yesterday, announcing that his business has never been better, with a boom in renovations and building in the past year).

Or could it be that we have had stupid leaders doing stupid things, and not just Ted Cruze in Texas ...

Never mind, there's nothing like an irrelevant old failure pontificating away ...

Did anyone else note that blithe Downerism? The distortion of history whereby if your marble came up in the conscription ballot, never mind, it wasn't too bad, "you didn't have to go." 

You could have gone to jail or gone on the run again, or you could have a handily placed pater who would make sure your bone spurs got you off ...

As for leadership, yes, there's a cartoon for that ...

 

As for caring about human rights, there will be many who remember Lord Downer's contributions in many areas ...

 

And in the last gobbet, Lord Downer shows he still knows how to jump through the hoops, with his praise of Gladys (remember that triptych of yarns above, also featuring our Gladys),  and his talk of Little Australia ...

Why does the pond think the fear of Little Australia so funny? Well once upon a time Dame Slap was furiously in favour of Little Britain ...

 

 

Well we know how all that blather ended up, but the pond has done enough of a build-up, it's time for the final gobbet where these issues are canvassed in a Lord Downer and Dame Slap way ...

 

 

 Uh huh, shut down the borders, keep control, do a Brexit, and at the same time open up to the world, except for all those damned funny furriners in Europe ...

So it goes, and maybe a few pond readers would like a few more Lord Downer cartoons, just to remember the good times ...