in which the bromancer woke wars continue, together with a good groaning ...

 

The perennial fixation with restless reptiles not satisfied with their hot rock broke out yet again in Media Watch last night ... with the mutton Dutton's attempt at a makeover producing salivating, drooling copy - and then the pond saw the headline in the tree killer edition this morning, and it was almost as if the lizard Oz had watched the show and decided to double down...

Yep, the bold, brave warrior battling in the suburbs was given another pate burnish ... with the same yarn at the top of the tree killer edition ...

Ah, with bonus "woke" lashing beneath the snap of the grinning warrior, so profoundly human, and with a family too and a Qld cop to boot ...

Luckily the pond had another herpetologist to hand to explain the phenomenon, with Christopher Warren in Crikey scribbling ... (paywall)

Will Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s shiny “gentler, kinder politics” break News Corp? Or will News Corp, once again, triumph over the paradigm of nice? For the incoming government, it’s political. For News Corp, it’s existential.

Every day, News Corp (and its Fox sibling) makes its money out of the outrage story of the moment. Now, it’s confronting a new narrative: an election read as a direct repudiation equally of the News Corp business model and of the Liberal-National post-Tampa political strategy.

The Germans, as ever, have a word for it (or, in this case, a post-punk song lyric): “Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht” (“Fear, hate, titties and the weather report”). It captures the past two decades of News Corp’s and Australia’s conservative parties. Hate of political opponents and cultural dissidents, fear of the other from asylum seekers to African gangs, sexualised and homophobic panic, climate denial and obstruction.

This past week, there’s been the odd pause for breath in the outrage factory. The Monday tabloids delivered the briefest of honeymoons: “Top dog Albo: ruff and ready” on The Daily Tele front page; “Top dog flies high” in the Herald Sun; The Courier-Mail back-handed with “Albanese unleashed”; and The Australian begrudged “Albanese does it”.

On Sky News after dark, of course, it was business as usual with “1000 days of resistance”.

The message the company’s New York head office has sent post-Biden’s election is that hate and fear are still great business. Expect no letting up in the “war on woke” in Australia. But if Albanese’s nice politics takes off, ending (or muting) both the culture and climate wars, the News model is under serious threat.

News is pulling off a pivot from ad-supported mass media to readers’ subscriptions by continually outraging an audience safely sequestered in an echo chamber behind hard paywalls.

Those hard paywalls are both a curse and a blessing. Blessing: they successfully monetise the attention of a deeply engaged audience. Curse: the demographic is finite, ageing and dwindling. The pivot is sacrificing public influence for private engagement.

In short, no breaking of the reptile outrage machine, but with a handy link to an earlier yarn by David Hardaker about the reptiles going all in ... (paywall)

The rise of community independents is the standout story of the weekend elections. But it has been accompanied by another major story: the failure of News Corp’s national and capital city outlets to keep the Morrison government in power.

The Murdoch organisation threw everything it had at discrediting the government’s opponents. It also abandoned any pretence of neutrality or balance. But to no avail. Voters paid no heed to warnings that Australia would be plunged into chaos if independents were elected, and ignored the endless attacks on “red” Anthony Albanese.

In short, the Australian electorate gave the Murdoch machine the finger.

The pond loves the sound of that: Angst, Hass, Titten und dem Wetterbericht - especially the fear and hate bits, which were on display throughout the election season.

There's no need to go into all the examples, many featured in the pond, suffice to say that the reptiles are going to have to a lot more make-overing, and woke bashing and the like ...and they'll be up against the cartoonists ...

Phew, has the immortal Rowe taken a liking to the new grandees or what?

No Major yesterday, and Barners gone today, and Tamworth bereft and full of sadness, and in his place a Littleproud a little proud for having voted against SSM ... quick, some Titten und dem Wetterbericht, and it's going to be a little chilly for reptiles ...

Such is the chill the pond is tempted to join the Major, take a seasonal break and join him in that search for the long lost Order of Lenin medal, but no, today the pond must serve up the bromancer in full woke bashing mode ...

What's truly sublime about this? Well, the bromancer will later blather about identity politics, and yet without a hint of shame, irony or self-awareness will at the same time trot out blather about the alleged tradition of Christian universalism, with the worst of the worst, that misogynist Paul as the featured loon ...

The pond will skip over the Pauline blather about speaking in tongues in Corinthians, just to get to 1:14:

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.

And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

Hello Salem witches and today's GOP.

And now back to the white Xian male lizard Oz identity politics ... and of course the next gobbet must begin with the standard reptile disclaimer ... you know, the "I have black friends" routine, before heading off to the usual bashing of uppity, difficult blacks, the tranny bashing apparently not having taken much traction for the moment, though there will be time, there will be time when you're operating on bigoted reptile time...

Note the resentment embedded in all that, and note also the wilful refusal to pay heed to the gathering at Uluru and the statement that followed ...

These reptiles will not go quietly into the night, and they'd love a stoush involving a hearty dose of black bashing. It's the News Corp business model, and as they now have a leader who turned his back on a symbolic apology, how much prodding will he need?

And so to the aging white Xian reptile blathering about modern identity politics, without a hint of irony, self-awareness or shame ...

Meanwhile, in New Zealand ... 

And meanwhile in Canberra ...

And so to the day's groaning, and the pond must preface this by saying it recently read in The New Yorker a piece Idrees Kahloon titled The War on Economics (maybe outside the paywall, the pond can't tell) ...

There has always been something irresistible about advice in mathematical form. When, in the Book of Genesis, Joseph was plucked from prison to interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh, he offered some Biblical budgeting: To survive the seven years of famine that will come after seven years of abundance, the Egyptians must save exactly a fifth of their harvest. Sun Tzu’s military counsel in “The Art of War” depends on ratios: “It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy’s one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.” Alexander Hamilton, arguing for a national bank in 1790, presented the appeal of fractional-reserve banking in quantifiable terms. “It is a well-established fact, that Banks in good credit can circulate a far greater sum than the actual quantum of their capital in Gold & Silver,” he wrote in a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. “The extent of the possible excess seems indeterminate; though it has been conjecturally stated at the proportions of two and three to one.”

Where leaders once turned to sages and pols for such wisdom, they now turn to the guild of economists. The most powerful states in the world are accustomed to outsourcing the management of their crucial macroeconomic decisions to committees of central bankers. Nowadays, no arena of public policy is untouched by economic guidance, solicited or unsolicited. Economists influence the way that children are cared for and schooled; the way that citizens are housed, treated in hospitals, and policed; the way that countries regulate industry and manage climate change. Public policy is now conducted in the language of budgets, cost-benefit studies, regulatory-impact analysis, and mathematical models of dazzling beauty and complexity.

Speaking of maths, the pond also read Rivka Galchen's The Mysterious Disappearance of a Revolutionary Mathematician, featuring the deeply weird Alexander Grothendieck ...(also maybe outside the paywall)

What's that? No one's interested in the pond's reading habits, they want a good groaning from a top notch economist?

Well you've come to the wrong place, because by definition a good groaning and top notch economical thinking are deeply incompatible ... a bit like a delusional aging white Xian male claiming that only others do identity politics ...

What a truly wretched cash in the paw illustration the reptiles have given the groaning ... and some might wonder why the Groaner isn't deeply agitated about that story that turned up on ABC radio ... Businesses want migrant intake increased ... (and what is it with News Radio routinely turning to static in the middle of the night? Do they rightly suspect no one listens and so no one cares?)

Relax, it's just a matter of timing and Dame Groan will turn to her great replacement theories in due course, and meanwhile, it's on with the current groan ...

Ah good old wage relativities, it being important here not to mention such demeaning trivia as gender pay gaps (well they do insist on speaking up in church and should be punished), or the matter of inequality ...

The differences between the average incomes of low, middle and high-income households in Australia are large. Someone in a household that falls in the highest 20% income group has more than twice the average disposable income of the middle 20% income group and six times as much as someone in the lowest 20% income group. The average income of the middle income group is almost three times that of the lowest income group.

At the top end, income is even more heavily concentrated. The average income of the highest 5% income group is nearly four times the income of the middle 20% and nine times that of the lowest 20% income groups; while the average income of the highest 1% income group is almost three times that of highest 20% income group.

People in the highest 20% income group receive 42% of all national income, which is more than the share of the lowest 60% combined. People in the lowest 20% receive only 6% of all household income, while the second lowest 20% receive 12%. (* Note the data is based on the latest available figures, which are from 2017-18.)

Such an interesting phenomenon, dressed up in the finery of "disrupting wage relativities" ...

And so to the last relatively short gobbet ... offering up some patented groaner Angst, Hass to Jim Chalmers ...

Once again the pond has done its duty, and will leave others to pick over the groaning entrails ... because the pond must finish up with another immortal Rowe ... with the Groaner having stayed discreetly quiet about tilting at windmills, despite her devotion to climate science denialism ...

Oh yes, the reptiles and the windmill thing ...

In which the pond sips the tears of the Caterwaulist, and endures

 

No Major! The pond's world trembled a little at the thought of the Major, disconsolate, perhaps shattered, inconsolable, wandering out of the tent, muttering that he might be a little while ... but as the wheel and the world turns, so things quickly turned around.

There were still reptile tears to sip, with the Caterist returning to a sobbing, neigh a caterwauling ... as in that dictionary example for the world, "he seems to think that singing soulfully is to whine and caterwaul tunelessly ..."

Oh there's even talk of Custer, a fatuous fop, now unilaterally promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to General ...

The pond wouldn't mind a little comedy as it sips on the Caterist tears, apparently oblivious to the famous tale of Colonel Custard's last stand... and offers this ...

No doubt she meant well with that line about Queensland cops, but the pond couldn't resist the obvious ...

Of course the days of Joh are gone, and how can a cockroach with memories of Roger Rogerson and the Blue Murder gang still in mind take cheap shots at Queensland, not to mention Victorians, saddled with assorted chips and the Armed Robbery squad in its hey day ... but it was good to be reminded that this was the day that the mutton Dutton would finally ascend, and the fate of Barners would be decided - did anybody read the pure comedy in the Graudian about the Dungowan dam? Barnaby Joyce's dam water set to cost 100 times more than market rates ...

Oh it's good to stay in touch with all the best in Tamworth ...

And now, distractions done, back to sipping on those teal-coloured Caterist tears...

Silly old departed Sharma. The moment you start talking about climate science as a religion, you lose the pond. Climate science isn't a matter of faith or believing, you don't believe, you accept the evidence as it stands ... or you join the Canavan caravan and become a cultist devoted to clean, dinkum, innocent, pure Oz coal ...

But then even the wet Liberals have famously been fatuous about climate science, not helped by the Caterist, in mourning for the seat of Ming the merciless ...

Oh yes, the heartland is shifting, and it's got the heart of a Queensland cop ... or is that Harry Potter?

And so to a bonus, which perforce is the Oreo, but with the domestic reptile world lost to that dreadful teal colour, the reformed, recovering feminist decided a little travel would help broaden the paranoia ...

Again the pond would rather be talking about that bizarre mix that gave Colbert a light-hearted moment ...

Grotesque in every sense of the word, but the pond can't set the reptile agenda, nor determine the shape of the Oreo's paranoia, though clearly she's over the colour teal, and is now seeing red ...

There you go ... so many levels of irony, not least blather about the language of colonialism, and talk of the "most powerful atheist organisation in the world."

If only the Oreo could stick to simple descriptions, like authoritarian dictatorship, of the kind General Franco arranged ... because a belief or a lack of belief in imaginary friends doesn't have to get in the road of being a repressive dictatorship.

All the same it's turning into a dull read, and the pond wished that the Oreo had speculated about the domestic scene this day ... then the immortal Rowe would have been relevant to the text ...

Instead the pond has to be content with the reformed, recovering feminist doing a "Ned", imitating a headless chook or a Chicken Little, as the sky falls ... you know, those atheist Commie bastards ... leaving the pond wondering how 'atheist' got into the mix, because there are many ways to skin that cat ...

Is such propaganda likely to succeed? Past history suggests that it will not, and adherence to traditional articles of faith still remains strong in Tibet and Xinjiang. Moreover, recent studies have concluded that when belief in a counter-narrative is strong, it tends to persist despite any level of coercion or propaganda.

My recent book analyses CCP propaganda and the strategies of resistance employed by Tibetan Buddhists in response. During recent visits to the region, I have experienced a climate of fear far exceeding anything I have encountered before, and attacks on religion have become more intrusive and widespread. But Tibetans’ faith appears to remain strong, and religious practice has become an act of resistance against the state.

The CCP’s efforts to subvert religion and force believers to adopt versions of their faiths that narrowly equate them with Chinese patriotism have clearly failed to achieve their objective. However, the Party is an authoritarian organisation, and its leaders have seldom demonstrated an ability to change course when policies fail. So it is likely that the repression will continue, and those religious adherents who bear the brunt of the coercion will become increasingly resistant to their government’s message. Given this, perhaps it is not surprising that the Party views the persistence of such beliefs as an existential threat. (here)

As any sensible atheist knows, you can argue until you're teal in the face with those who want to believe in imaginary friends, and pie in the sky in the bye and bye, and the more an authoritarian dictatorship tries to impose its will, the more it creates a countervailing force ...

And that's what the reformed, recovering feminist has reduced the pond to ...

In all this strangely the Oreo hasn't mentioned that other alleged religion, because when it comes to climate science, the Chinese Communist party has been a dismal failure, and you'd have to be a particularly gullible islander to believe otherwise ...

The pond would rather be speculating about hidden messages in that Rowe cartoon ...

What a strange marking. A bit like that monolith in 2001, poised above the mutton Dutton's head ...

Never mind, back to climate science.

Perhaps it'll get a mention in the Oreo's final gobbet ...

... or perhaps not. Perhaps instead there'll be blather about the choice of right over might, as opposed to the visceral sense of a sinking feeling in the Pacific ...

Completely clueless as to how to win friends and influence people ...

Not to worry, the pond can't remember if it ran this immortal Rowe, designed to stoke the fears of the paranoid Oreo, but what the heck, if dementia has taken the pond, it's worth a run ...

In which the pond does a big Sunday circus, starting off with a pious preaching by Polonius, a dash of Gemma, a hint of Gracie, and a full serve of the bromancer in full featherless flight ...

 

 

Last week unfortunate timing saw Polonius post his missive before the election results were in, but this week he can set the record straight ... it's all the fault of the ABC ...

 

 

 

 

Ah yes, take The Insiders. How could it possibly be one of Australia's leading current affairs programs? Once they dumped Polonius, it became nothing, just a speck of fly shit on the window of our times ... though the pond suspects that it knows what really stuck in Polonius's craw. Fancy talking about national politics during an election campaign, and even worse, being rewarded for its efforts, as noted by the venerable Meade here ...

 

 

 

 

Damn you cardigan wearers, damn you Antony with your comical bemusement in the face of overwhelming statistics... no wonder Polonius is irritated and must prattle ... the bloody ABC and the Graudian demand his relentless obsessive-compulsive fixated attention ...

 

 

What an astonishing insight that last line offers, and shows that Polonius is on top of his game, though not nearly a match for Joe ...

Before the election, Joe Hildebrand, News Corp columnist and Sky News presenter, was confident the teals, or as he referred to them the “multimillion-dollar vanity project of self-appointed climate crusaders in the wealthiest suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney” would fail at the ballot box.
It “is entirely possible that for all the millions of dollars ploughed into this campaign by billionaire heir Simon Holmes a Court and other wealthy donors, the Teals may not actually win a single seat,” Hildebrand wrote last week.
After the election, to give him his due, he did admit he was wrong. “As it turns out it appears I am far more in touch with the mood of the mainstream Australian electorate than I am with the political whims of eastern suburbs and bayside millionaires. Very happy to take that.”

Memo to self: when a fuckwit, always double down on the fuckwittery, because who cares if you're a mega fuckwit?

Of course Polonius himself is certainly not well-heeled, nor well-educated, and doesn't live in a poncy area.

He's at one with the workers, and thinks of them everytime he takes out his garbage bin ...

And so to Polonius's last astonishing insights, and he brings the gospel, the good news, with him, even if it involves even more listening to the ABC, a never ending task for the obsessive compulsive nit-picker..

 

 

Oh ye doubters, recant: "change is an unpredictable phenomenon." It's up there with "All I've got left is that room upstairs with the telly, I like to watch the ABC on the telly..."

If you could come up with insights like that, you too could be scribbling for the lizard Oz, and be celebrated by the pond on a Sunday ...

And so to more mundane duties, starting off with Gemma ...

 

 

 

Gemma belongs to the reptiles' bubble-headed booby brigade, and it's true that the pond on a Sunday would be rather reading Marina Hyde. 

Her opening salvo was such a ripper that the pond couldn't help but gasp in awe ...

For followers of British politics, this week was probably best understood in terms of quantum physics. For the past six months, the prime minister and his cabinet explained that they couldn’t comment on the Partygate scandal because they were waiting for the Sue Gray report. Then, the very day that report was published, they explained it was in the past now and it was time to move on.I know what you’re thinking: then WHEN?! When was the permitted moment to get some actual accountability?! 

Well, scientists estimate there were four picoseconds of liminal time on Wednesday when lawbreaking by lawmakers was an appropriate subject on which to challenge said lawmakers. It was hoped some challengers would be able to enter this witching moment without getting drawn into a black hole, and somehow extend the moment to try to work out what the hell the answers were.

A version of this device was used on an episode of Stargate once, so would probably only need minor adjustment for Westminster. But in fact, the window of opportunity – the window of “taking responsibility” – closed before it had even opened. Or to put it another way: if you’ve been sitting in your metaphorical cop car staking out Downing Street for six months, you now have jack shit to show for it bar severe doughnut-induced arterial hardening. And I should probably tell you that while you were waiting, like a coiled Krispy Kreme, the government junked its obesity strategy, so … thoughts and prayers. Oh, and while you were reading this, the prime minister changed the ministerial code so ministers accused of breaking it – eg him – don’t have to resign. Shitfinger strikes again! Seriously, everything he touches ...

Shitfinger strikes again, and meanwhile, the pond is reduced fingering Gemma's Xian shit in what feels like picoseconds of liminal time ...

 

 

Don't worry Gemma, the new Messiah is here, and he knows how to change ...

 

 

 

Too soon for a Kudelka? Not when the pond is struggling to make it to the last gobbet ... certain in the knowledge that the mutton Dutton Messiah would get a mention ...

 

Yes, it was so much better when we had News Corp's elevated level of discourse ...

 

 

... or more recently ...

 

There's nothing funnier than a pun on a funny wog name, unless it happens to be the funny wog with his funny tongue sticking out ... you know, Gemma, personal attacks and all that jazz and "looks and sounds like the same old ..."

To the pond's relief, next up was our Gracie, still with a Victorian chip on her shoulder ...

 

 

 

By golly, our Gracie is in full heretical flight this day  ... come on Gracie, it can't be that bad ...

 

 

Oh dear, maybe cartoons aren't the answer ...

 

 

 

The party must go forward? Hmmn, that rings an old bell in the pond's noggin ...

 

Former treasurer Peter Costello has also mocked Ms Gillard's slogan, mimicking her intonation while speaking at the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne.
"No amount of moronic repetition of 'moving forward' will overcome the fact that there is a record there and that record needs to be carefully assessed," he said.
But Ms Gillard defended her choices of words during an interview with Kerry O'Brien on the ABC's 7.30 Report.
"I've been using those words because they mean something to me and I think they mean something to the nation," she said.
"I've used the term 'moving forward' because I believe it captures a spirit about Australia. We are a confident, optimistic, forward-looking people.
"I want to be talking to the Australian people in this campaign about how our nation can seize the opportunities of the future."

 

And who better to go forward than the vastly changed mutton Dutton ... shackle him to the leg and let us move forward ...

 

 

And so to the final going forward and that Victorian chip on the shoulder ...

 

 

 Not the naughty corner! But he's a good, changed, transformed good boy! Who's a good transformed boy up for change?

 

 

 

 

And so to the truly onerous duty of the day ... because the bromancer went a little mad and scribbled at furious length, and the pond rarely misses a bromancer outing, such is its loyalty, no matter how much the bromancer tries to test the pond ...

It started badly with a beaming Albo, an image designed to send Polonius into a frenzy ...

 

 

 

 

 

... and then it just poured out, like Jack Kerouac on the road and pounding it all out on a never-ending roll of toilet paper ... full of snaps and neutered click bait videos ...

 

 

The pond should have known it was going to be all about the bromancer's fixation on China, especially now that a war by Xmas seems less likely and there's less need for his brilliant Generalfeldmarschall skills, but that won't stop him from getting out the maps and devising strategies ... at endless length ...

 

By golly, the bromancer is sounding like he's almost as much of a heretic and treacherous turncoat as our Gracie ... but at least the pond can be assured it won't last ...

 

 

Sacre bleu, the perfidious French back inside the tent?

 

And so back to the interminable heresy ...

Oh that's the last straw. The doggie botherer will be rolling in his climate science denialism grave to read we should never mind the science, we should think of the diplomatic benefits ... 

Apparently there are some lost, wayward loons out there who think that climate science is real and so we must pander to them ...

Well it wouldn't be a bromancer column without mentioning drones, missiles and asymmetrical capabilities, though the pond was disappointed that there was no mention of those useless hulking sardine cans once known as tanks ...

So we could still have a war by Xmas ... and yet after all that, even a warrior as fierce and as noble as the bromancer must reach his final gobbet ...

Joint naval and military installations? What a brill idea. 

Why we can send one of our nuke subs over to the Solomons by Xmas ... and slot it into its new submarine base so that we can stalk the Pacific and strike terror into the hearts of all that behold her ...

Hold on a second, wouldn't we be doing what we criticise Beijing for doing, militarising the South Pacific and starting an arms race?

Oh it's all too hard for the pond, and there's barely enough time to celebrate the reptiles dancing on hot rocks the entire week.

What a week it's been, and what a capper the lizard Oz team have provided this weekend...