In which Polonius assumes pride of place yet again in the pond's Sunday meditation ...

 

 

The pond can't even begin to remember when prattling Polonius became a fixture for the pond's Sunday meditation.

Back in its heyday, long ago, perhaps before time began, there were Pellists and angry Sydney Anglicans and a chance for men to snag complimentary women, but the Jensensists slowly faded from sight and so did the Pellists.

Only Polonius, always raging at the ABC, was left standing. 

But to what avail? The fastidious pedant who inevitably fucks up his pedantry has had nothing new to say for years, and never had any insights to offer, let alone fresh ones ...

Even worse, he repeats himself so often that he makes dullards like the Bjorn-again one seem like fonts of originality ...

All that's by way of warning, and let no reader say they haven't been fully and properly warned ...

 

 

 

 

Sure, there's sublime comedy right there, with Polonius touting Tucker and Sean and Laura as serious debaters ...

Tucker Carlson appears to be made of Teflon. Fox News' top-rated host has been repeatedly accused of anti-immigrant and racist comments, which have cost his political opinion show many of its major advertisers. Yet Carlson endures in his prime-time slot.
Carlson even attacked his own network's chief news anchor on the air, with no real consequences. That anchor, Shepard Smith, quit mid-contract shortly after Carlson went after him.
Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way.
Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should hen inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
Vyskocil, an appointee of President Trump's, added, "Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as 'exaggeration,' 'non-literal commentary,' or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable."

Jump cut:

In Carlson's defense, Fox's attorneys, from Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, noted that meeting the standard of "actual malice" requires more than just showing someone should have researched or investigated a subject before popping off, thanks to U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
The Fox team's legal briefs compared Carlson's show to radio talk-show programs hosted by ex-MSNBC and Fox Business star Don Imus, who won a case more than two decades ago because an appellate court ruled that "the complained of statements would not have been taken by reasonable listeners as factual pronouncements but simply as instances in which the defendant radio hosts had expressed their views over the air in the crude and hyperbolic manner that has, over the years, become their verbal stock in trade."
In sum, the Fox News lawyers mocked the legal case made by McDougal's legal team. She alleged "a reasonable viewer of ordinary intelligence listening or watching the show ... would conclude that [she] is a criminal who extorted Trump for money" and that "the statements about [her] were fact."
"Context makes plain," Fox's lawyers wrote, "that the reasonable viewer would do no such thing."

And so on at NPR here ...

Everybody not suffering from Polonial delusion recognises that Faux Noise is full of performative entertainers who don't give a flying fuck about facts, bloviating away so they can produce an anger fest ... much, in the same way as Polonius himself does about the ABC, except that as a tired old pedant, he lacks the skill set ... which is why even The Insiders thought it needed a refresh ...

But credit to the old coot, still plugging away regardless ...

 

 

The pond wins another bet ... because Polonius has always been big on blather about conservative free culture ...

Recently the pond dug up this example from the lizard Oz on 17th December 2021 ...

 

 

But the reality is Polonius has had this bee in his bonnet for yonks. There are plenty of recent examples ...

 

 

But here he is back on May 7th 2013 when he was scribbling for the then Fairfax ...

 

Ah back then it was a conservative-free zone, rather than a conservative-free-zone, so at least something has changed ... a bonus hyphen.

And that's why the pond's regular response is also wreathed in the mysteries of time ...

 

That's dated by First Dog to April 10th, 2008! No wonder the pond has dim memories of when it all began, having dug out that Pooter joke time and again ...

And that's just the first layer of the dig. Who knows, we might end up in the upper Pleistocene period ... and yet still the dinosaur remains true to his ways ...

 

 

 

Oh the poor doddering old fart, trapped not so much in the reptile hive mind, as in a hive of his own making ...

It's a pitiful spectacle, and so the pond turned to our Gracie for a female view, and was truly alarmed ... because once again she seemed to have strayed into the dark side ...

 

 

 

 

Sheesh, Gracie, our speaking in tongues rapture man has been right on the ball ...

 

 

 

 

Aren't thoughts and prayers enough? What, you want him to hold a hose?

 

 

Hmm, that reminds the pond of the gum out the front, already shedding branches and ripe for a fall, just like the one a few doors down, a really spectacular gum that fell to the ground in spectacular style, though luckily the only damage down was to a fence and power lines ...

Still, we all know the correct pose ... calm acceptance ...

 

 

 

 

And so to a final few words from our Gracie ...

 

 

Dearie me, wouldn't it be simpler just to keep the inaction going ...

 

And so to Dame Slap.

The pond hummed and hawed about putting Dame Slap into an already bulky post, but figured what the hell, tourjours gai, and if it were to be done, better that it were done quickly.

The pond could have hived off Dame Slap to a late arvo slot, but better to finish it now. 

It's long and tedious, but anyone wanting to drop out can try to leave Hotel Dame Slap ... (first explain why you did leave that dark, dim desert highway).

It's also suitably weird, and the pond thought it might continue today's tradition of dropping in some Goldings to lighten the mood, though they might be irrelevant to Dame Slap's words ...

You see, Dame Slap is again at war with the sisterhood and all that jazz, and while the pond isn't a card-carrying member of the sisterhood, it does take a warped delight in examining Dame Slap's deeply neurotic, deeply Freudian fears and phobias ...

 

 

Actually if the pond wanted to present Dame Slap, it would focus on her deep and abiding love of pussy gropers ... just in the interests of logic, balance and fairness, and certainly not to pander to a stereotype of an irrational blonde bimbo driven by an overwhelming lust for an authoritarian father figure ...

 

 

That surely puts the trudging Tudge in the shade, but Dame Slap is all about defending a singularly useless dropkick of the fudging Trudge kind ... which is why the reptiles stuck in a click bait video, carefully neutered by the pond..

 

Oh fuck, not the dog botherer hermetically sealed into the reptile environment.

Now back to the cat fight ...

 

The pond realises that Dame Slap was trying to sound now and hip by linking mansplaining and ghosting, but truth to tell, ghosting embraces all genders ... but speaking of heartfelt liberalism's foundational values, how about a hair wash?

 

 

 

You know, this Golding trick might just help the pond get to the end of the cat fight ... as Dame Slap naturally joins Polonius in having a go at the ABC ... because two head-kicking droogs are always better than one ...

I said, smiling very wide and droogie: ‘Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billygoat ABC in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou.’ And then we started.

And so she donned her boots and started ...

So many victims, so much suffering, and yet how easy to forget that the trudging Tudge was a comically inept minister ...

 

 

 

 

More here but have an old infallible Pope just for the lark ...

 

 

 

The reptiles must have realised Dame Slap was wearing thin, so they flung in a click bait video as a distraction ...

At this point the pond realised that it was running out of Dame Slap but still had some Goldings to hand ...

 

 

Luckily Dame Slap provided a final place holder ... and what do you know, the dear old chook took a shot at Twitter ... but let's be fair, even a dead clock gets it right every so often ...

 

 

There's nothing like a hack Krogered columnist telling medical experts to bugger off, while no doubt rushing in to have an ingrown toenail taken care of ... but that's the way Twitter talk is full of kneejerk, absurdist commentary, where the likes of Dame Slap go not to think ... talk about regressive madness of the most ludicrous kind ...

 

And with the righteous blather finally at an end, a chance to stick in a couple more old Goldings in what has been something of a Golding fest ...