In which the pond stays politically incorrect with Dame Slap and nattering "Ned" ...

 

 

First a word in the pond's defence. In these troubled, politically correct times, it has been suggested yet again that the pond should update its affectionate nickname for Dame Slap to Dame Snap, as the publishers of The Faraway Tree, etc, did many years ago ...

It's certainly true that if the pond were a publisher it would have second thoughts about this sort of image in a book for children ...

 

 

But the pond is a humble blog and rarely ventures into such turf. 

While it agrees that Dame Slap is very much inclined to snap, snarl and hurl slurs, it much prefers to stick with the original ... having grown up with Dominican nuns who loved to slap, especially across the face, but on the hand and bum, wherever, the pond feels Dame Slap scribbles with much the same spirit.

As for the correctness or appropriateness of using any sort of nickname, the pond invokes the Charles Dickens' defence, though using Boz as a diminutive of Moses shouldn't be taken as inspiration in all settings.

We are not dealing with Moses here, we are dealing with Dame Slap, and the pond must further apologise, because the reptiles remain obsessed and can't let it go, and the harder they try, the more problematic it all seems to become ...

 

 

Dame Slap, of course, is part of the Murdochian mob ... the ones that travel in packs, and repeat all the same old stuff, like a murmuration of starlings, and who talk of cancel culture as if it's a shame, yet repeatedly try to cancel all those they disagree with ...

It''s a curious phenomenon, yet Dame Slap is a perfect exemplar, and her enemies a perfect example of how the Murdochian mob works ...

Why not start with a little victim shaming to show how the mob mind works?  See this use of the word "many" and then compare and contrast these lines as heard on Four Corners, and able to be read here ...

 The woman's career never lived up to the huge promise she had shown.
The older she got, the more she struggled. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been hospitalised. She attempted suicide several times.
There's no way of knowing what caused her mental health problems.
Four Corners has been told that she first sought help from a sexual assault counsellor in about 2013 and saw the counsellor about six times.

Now read on, for that compare and contrast, and shameless generalisation, and Slappian slur, and victim shaming ...

 

And with that last outburst, which is to suggest that a law firm might not conduct itself and its business as it sees fit, or be cancelled by Dame Slap, the pond must remain firm in its use of Dame Slap ...

 

 

 

 ... because, you see, the pond can just imagine what it might have been like, in those long lost days for at least some long suffering students ...

 

How Governor Cuomo would love Dame Slap at his side, talking of the presumption of innocence ... and yet in the workplace and in life, it doesn't always work out that way ... 

Sometimes, for example, a Dyson Heydon comes along, and then sometimes someone comes along to remember, as in Trial by media, toxic internet, unnecessary inquiries? That's Gillard, not Porter (paywall limited).

...Journalists have apparently purged themselves of the memory of how hysterical the campaign against Gillard was — the incessant headlines, the acres of newsprint, the stories The Australian got wrong and had to retract, Gillard standing for hour-long press conferences dealing with questions until journalists gave up, exhausted. It wasn’t just News Corp — Fairfax and the ABC joined in, though like the Murdoch press none could actually put together a specific allegation of wrongdoing.
Now, of course, many in the media — many of the same journalists and commentators who hounded Gillard — lament the “trial by media” of Porter.
And if the press gallery was feral, online media was toxic. Failed journalists used blogs to push elaborate conspiracy theories and insist Gillard would be jailed. The vile fraudster and bigot Larry Pickering published disgusting cartoons of Gillard, including ones depicting her as a rapist. All to precisely zero outrage from the right. No complaints about the “sewer”.
They all got their inquiry, of course, after Tony Abbott became PM. But despite its best efforts, Dyson was subsequently also to clear Gillard. Gillard has never received an apology from anyone about it. It’s all gone down the memory hole.
Few journalists apparently remember any of this (Raf Epstein is one) — an extended campaign of smear, trial by media and unsubstantiated allegations run for weeks on end by the opposition and the media.
What happened to Gillard is now inconvenient when complaining about the treatment of Christian Porter and how it breaches the rule of law.

So it goes, and such is life, when it comes to the Murdochian mob ...

And now for a bit of light relief and a change of pace ...

 

 

 

Again the pond must vigorously defend its use of "nattering 'Ned'" to describe the portentous one. It is of course a crude play on a lineage that stretches from the original Ned, and Mick Jagger and such is life, and so on and so forth ...

If the pond were a publisher, it would have second thoughts about these sorts of images in a book for children ...

But the pond is a humble blogger, and likes the euphonious aspects of alliteration ... so nattering "Ned" it must remain ...

 

Ah, the anonymous source, to be deplored in some circumstances and deployed in others ... but here's the thing ...

That significant emergence and convergence has quite a number of things to contend with ... not least the sublime comedy on offer in the United States on a daily basis ...

 

And there's also the more sinister comedy currently at work in India, zealously  overlooked by many so India might be pressganged into the war on China ...

 

Of course the pond doesn't have time to go into it all ...

The Graudian is here ...

The National Herald is here ...

The Conversation is here ...

The pond doesn't have much time for governments with fascist leanings, just as it doesn't have any time at all for a government which purports to be communist, but is such an authoritarian dictatorship - one might even say fascist - it would have Karl Marx turning in his grave ...

Of course you won't find any of this in nattering "Ned", where any number of evils might be deployed, so long as the war on China stays the number one hit on the charts ...

 

What next? Well the Vietnamese have never got on well with the Chinese, which, if it had been understood and acted on, might have avoided the folly of the Vietnam war. But is it wise, simply to expand the war on China, to pretend anything other than the reality that Vietnam is an authoritarian dictatorship ... much like that which Modi aspires for India to become?

Again we won't find any of that in "Ned", though it's not the first time such marriages of convenience have made a mockery of the portentous and the righteous, such as the time when everyone thought mass murderer Uncle Joe was a jolly good ally, until he wasn't, and Chairman Mao was a mighty foe of the Japanese, until everything got turned upside down ...

 

Um, actually, SloMo and the reptiles just want to keep flogging stuff, especially pure, clean, dinkum, innocent coal, to China. Everything was hunky dory and human rights just a ripple in the water, until China decided to get peculiar, and imagine its abuses might stay swept under the rug, and nobody would notice ... because nobody did much notice, or care ... not Apple, nor the reptiles ...

Such is life, and now for one peculiar addition this day ...

 

Helen Dale? That name rings a bell. What's she doing out and about?

 

1988? What on earth is the point? What does this possibly add to an understanding of the matter, except that she was a high flying debater, a point long understood? What else do we learn, except possibly the self-regard of the author?

 

Uh huh, and still the pond wondered about the point of it all ...

 

And then the pond remembered. It wasn't Helen Dale that won the Miles Franklin award. It was another author with a different name ...

 

But the story has certainly dragged out all sorts from the woods and the trees, from Dame Slap and the Murdochian mob, to Helen Dale ...

For noting that, the pond apologises ... and offers this Rowe as some small compensation, with more compensating Rowe here ...

 

And this Wilcox also caught the pond's eye ...