Dame Slap and prattling Polonius as TV reviewers, and the bromancer as a bonus? How could a Sunday meditation of this calibre go wrong?

 

 

 

 

At one point on the weekend, the reptiles offered this startling juxtaposition, of Dame Slap blathering on about feminist porn and growing calls for net-zero emissions.

In her heyday, the IPA chairman was a proud climate science denialist, on top of the game, and a fellow traveller with the likes of "Lord" Monckton...

Now she seems to have lost her mojo, now it comes to this ... for want of a better description, a Bettina Arndt wannabe fellow traveller, a lightweight attempt to do a Clive James on the telly ...

 

 

 

Until the pond read that opening gambit, the pond hadn't realised how dire things had become for Dame Slap ... a TV reviewer, and of all things to review, an offering by Netflix, a company which shattered Sturgeon's Law by forcing a revision upwards to the law, whereby ninety nine point nine percent of everything on Netflix is crap ...

 

Even worse, after refusing to highlight "Ned's" podcast, the reptiles rubbed salt into "Ned's" wounds by deeming a wretched TV reviewer as worthy of a podcast ...

 

 

 

 

As for Dame Slap's thoughts, they're entirely predictable but what the hell, it's a Sunday meditation, so there's time to waste ...

 

 

That talk of Spot reminded the pond that there were real writers out there in the world, and they could turn Kermit the frog to some fair use and point ...

As you’ll have seen, these are some of the many conversations Johnson has done his best to avoid this week. Instead, he has been Macavity-ing it up in New York, saying “prenez un grip” to Emmanuel Macron, and using his big UN climate speech to quote Kermit. To which the most respectful response is: get that frog’s name out of your mouth (Kermit’s, not Macron’s).

And this ...

 

 

Once upon a time, Dame Slap knew how to channel her inner bitch, and let fly, but this outing is truly pathetic. Gone are the days when she donned the MAGA cap and celebrated the fine art of pussy-groping ... now she just gropes the telly ...

 

 

Tediously predictable? Write what you know, I guess, wrote another writer, and the pond guesses that Dame Slap knows how to sound tediously predictable.

As with most writing of a psychoanalytic kind, or should that be simply psycho, what is revealed is not so much the subject at hand as the Freudian issues deep within the scribbler.

That reference to Enid Blyton offered another sad reminder to the pond of Dame Slap's glory days, when she first earned her nickname ...

 

 

Now she's armed with a warm TV reviewer lettuce leaf, and she's not afraid to use it ...

 

 

It's not for the pond to ask why Dame Slap doesn't mention Westworld, surely another thought crime on planet Janet, and it's not as if there haven't been interesting things going down in the entertainment world ... whether it's the official response, as noted here ...

 

 

 

 

Or a more freewheeling sense of fun ... 

 

But what do we get instead? Dame Slap as Bettina Arndt TV reviewer lite...

 

As a  survey of what's on TV,  this is beyond the valley of the superficially pathetic ... with almost anything, even Jane Austen's novels, able to slip in under the header of feminist porn.

It's sad but true, Dame Slap has lost her mojo, and seems intent on slipping off to her own planet to do a lot of binge viewing. Could anything else match this offering as a big reveal of the lonely nights of a reptile gazing at endless hours of TV fodder? So that's where the pandemic has led Dame Slap ...

Of course the pond would have liked to dress it up as Shakespearian and in a male guise, as befits the Slappian thesis ... you know, oh, how noble her mind used to be, and how lost she is now. She used to have an IPA chairman's grace, an IPA scholar's wit, and a Gina's army soldier's strength ...

O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown. 

The IPA courtier's, the IPA scholar's, the Gina soldier's eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state of climate science denialism, the glass of IPA fashion and the mould of pussy groping form ...

But there was never much in Dame Slap's noggin to start with, so it's hardly surprising to find this vast and trunkless mind of stone half sunk in the desert of Netflix TV series ...

And so from one tragedy to another, and this time it involves the incessant buzzing of the ABC bee in the mind of prattling Polonius...

 

 

 

Here the problem arises from obsessive compulsive, richly anal watching of ABC television, designed, it seems purely to torment Polonius and send him into a doddering fury ... when he might be better off sharing popcorn and binge viewing feminist porn with Dame Slap ...

As it is, we've heard it all before, with the usual cut-out caricatures, mindless stereotypes and predictable villains ... 

 

 

First there's the obvious question - why does Polonius torture himself? And why is he so fixated on the ABC? Was it some childhood trauma involving Playschool? 

The fixation leads him on to weird moments, such as the notion that it "was barely covered in the media" ... when a nanosecond of goggling might have helped him out ... (screen cap, don't be a Polonius, do your own) ...

In fact, it's nothing new. Australia has been deemed a nuclear target since the days of Pine Gap and other bases ... and every few years stories have erupted at the way we're a nuclear target should we get to a Dr Strangelove moment ...

What a relief that Polonius decided to step outside his ABC cocoon for a little while, if only to attack Nine newspapers for daring to carry the thoughts of someone not in the Polonial hive mind ...

 

 

More of Keating anon.

Meanwhile, how pleasing that can always rely on Polonius and his little memory slips for a little light entertainment. 

As sure as Ming the Merciless gets a mention, his appetite for appeasement will be downplayed by Polonius ... and yet in his day, in his prime, Ming was a grand appeaser desperate to avoid war ... (he wasn't much of a man for fighting himself).

 

 

(Here). 

It required some fancy footwork, but Polonius was up to the job and immediately took to the ABC airwaves, because back in the day, the ABC and Polonius used to play footsy, before he got old and irascible and sulked and refused to come down from his attic ...

 

 

Oh yes, fancy footwork, but now to the final gobbet ...

 

No, it will be helped by brave, bold Polonius, attacking the quisling ABC, and joining in the war on China, as if that wretched appeasing Ming the Merciless had never existed ...

And speaking of the war on China, the bonus for the day is the bromancer, because when has the pond ever shirked its bromancer duty? And yes, comrade Keating will be set up for another coconut pounding, in due course ...

Sure to get to the long and tedious pounding is a long and tedious one, but when duty calls, the pond can tackle the bromancer as easily as climbing "Ned's" Everest ...

 

 

It might occur to a few jaded souls as they read the bromancer that they just read it all in prattling Polonius, but that's the way it goes when you stumble into the reptile hive mind ...

 

 

Why is this so? Well the pond did its usual survey of US newspaper cartoons in the hope that it might find a relevant US cartoon or two as illustrations to accompany the bromancer's piece. You know, a sure sign that superb publicity agents have been at work, and even insular US cartoonists were forced to pay attention ...

Sad to report, the pond didn't encounter a single US cartoonist moved by the world-class hyperbole. There wasn't one US cartoonist the pond could find in the whole world who responded seriously to the Australian diplomatic initiative.

No doubt there's a cartoonist out there somewhere, but the best the pond could come up with?

 

 

 

And the pond had a sneaking suspicion that it was about climate science rather than a terribly unique* (*ABC licensed) diplomatic initiative full of seriousness and gravity, ripe for a satirical thrust...

Never mind, time to give the perfidious French a dunking in cold water to bring them to their senses ...

 

 

And so to giving comrade Keating a pounding, though given the pounding he was given by Polonius, some readers might experience a severe case of déjà vu ...

 

 

In all this the bromancer has paid very little attention to the state of one of our key allies in the saga, and yet Marina Hyde did an excellent report for the Graudian on the strength of the situation in the UK ...

 

 

 

 

By golly that's the sort of well-run country you'd want on your side for the war on China, and frankly, the United States is also totally unified and in top notch condition ... at least if you happen to enjoy irony as a form of commentary ... but back to the bromancer, showing that he can pick fights with anybody handy ... 

 

Suddenly Chairman Ruddster is an expert to whom we must pay heed.? There's probably a passing irony there, and yet sadly the pond didn't have a relevant cartoon to match the situation ...

 

 

 

But back to the bromancer approvingly transcribing the thoughts of chairman Rudd. Must get in quick, because it might be some time before we see this happen again in the lizard Oz ... 

 

 

A final thought: the war on China lives in the bromancer's heart. Chairman Rudd doesn't say it, but Murdochism in foreign policy is traditionally paranoid, belligerent and militaristic. That's how the crusader bromancer was so hot to trot in Iraq, Afghanistan and the like. Most analysts think that Murdochism's economic and social policies will harm the Australian economy. Combined with aggression abroad, and subs patrolling the oceans, that's an extremely dangerous combination.

A final relieving thought for worried young pups: the subs won't be around until 2040, and then not all of them, and the pond will be long gone, and so will the bromancer and SloMo and Chairman Rupert, and many other villains and scoundrels, and in the meantime, we will be relying on the candle-driven power of the put-put boats the pond used to play with in the bath ...

And so to wrap up the day's meditation, off to a couple more irrelevant cartoons, with TT always to hand here ...