In which dashing Donners arrives to rescue the pond from prattling Polonius and Dame Slap ...

 

After yesterday's heavy lifting, the pond would usually settle down for a quiet bit of ABC bashing on a Sunday from prattling Polonius ... until a heavenly vision wafted into view, and dashing Donners demanded the head spot ...

Let's face it, the reptile commentariat has become increasingly threadbare over the past few years, with old favourites discarded like worn socks, so it was right and proper for Donners to return to the fold ... not a moment too soon and with great minds agreeing that we should preserve transubstantiation, a tried, tested and true form of cannibalism ...

There's no doubt that Donners is an inspiration, with that bit of Pope bashing, what with the whore of Babylon trolling conservatives by forcing woke agendas on them ...

And that talk of preserving the best resonated deeply with the pond, as it did with Rowson...

There's your dinkum conservative approach to matters, including trivia such as ethics - if thine ethics offends thee, pluck it out and cast it forth, all in a good cause, as recently outlined by Marina Hyde ...

When future archaeologists dive beneath the risen sea level down to our current layer of UK civilisation, they will excavate a vast relic network of self-owns, and struggle to make sense of us. What could these mysterious, doomed ancients have been thinking, they will wonder? How can their impenetrably bizarre or ineffective decisions be explained, given that they have no obvious utility and cannot even conceivably be described as beautiful? But eventually, someone will discover a tablet – either stone or iPad – inscribed into which are the words THIS WILL ANNOY ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE. “Aha!” the intrepid anthropologist will breathe. “The key to all mythologies! We meet at last!” THIS WILL ANNOY ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE … With those seven words, things will at last become clear. Think of them as the Rosetta Stone of all our useless decisions. Which, increasingly, is most of them.

It’s not just politics where “annoying all the right people” has been apotheosised – though under a range of global populists, it inescapably has been. Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico was a prime instance of annoying all the right people, with those wondering why the structure was failing to materialise continually scoffed at by various of his elite supporters. Didn’t they know it was just a metaphor? The reality-bending forced an update on an old political adage. Where once you campaigned in poetry and governed in prose, now you campaigned in bombast and governed in metaphor. If only those Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol had understood their adorably naive semantic error.

But of course, the point about “annoying all the right people” is that it can only be thought of as a policy platform by the hopelessly jejune – ie the ordinary people who put the populist in question in power, but whom all populists secretly hate. “Annoying all the right people” isn’t a programme for government. It’s just a political aesthetic – like the paranoid style, or a sort of fuck-you moodboard. And it has spread beyond the confines of conventional politics...

It's perhaps cruel to contrast a razor wit with one of the dullest knives in the cupboard,  but it does help generate a certain frisson, as dashing Donners tries to work out how to annoy all the right people, the woke mob, the trolling Pope, and such like ... all in the alleged name of preserving the tried, tested and true ...

And so to evoke Matthew Arnold, lovingly remembered for those lines ...

And we are here as on a darkling Surry Hills plain

Swept with confused reptile alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant reptile armies clash by night.

Now do go on ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond was moved by the dashing Donners black bashing, and his yearning for Eurocentric whiteness (what happened to the Judaeo-Christian routine?) and the inscrutable Scruton, who felt the need to hold on to the good things that conservatives have created in recent times ...

So many good things, not least the eternal battle between devil and chook ...

And so to a short final gobbet, with the pond's regret and the sense that it had barely got to know dashing Donners on his return, though if the pond had its way, he and the hole in the bucket man would form a tandem Friday team of culture warrior references ... 

Indeed, indeed, confidence in political institutions and the spiritual inheritance on which they ultimately rest ... who could argue with that when there are many examples to hand ...

Ah yes, dashing Donners would feel at home in some unwoke places ...conservatives working to conserve a conservative way of life ... and if a bone saw is needed, you're just slicing off a bit of the woke ...

And so to prattling Polonius, though frankly the pond doesn't know how much longer it can take his manic obsessive compulsive fixation on the ABC ...

Week after week he carries on, apparently unaware that readers now look at him with the sense that he's something of a cross between the Ancient Mariner adrift on a briny cardigan sea, and Captain Ahab, determined to harpoon the gigantic white broadcaster whale ...

Always with the ABC, and nary a thought for others, though the keen Keane in Crikey this week (paywall) suggested fruitful avenues for Polonius to explore ...

News Corp continues its operation as a right-wing, foreign-controlled political party, running a hardline climate denialist agenda at its local, deeply toxic Sky News arm. It must, however, be wondering at the extent of its influence after its campaigning for Scott Morrison proved ineffective and its smearing of community independents only elevated their profile and helped them on their way to defeating an array of Liberals (perhaps that was the goal all along?).

No, no, it's just more of the ABC, and instead Polonius decided to fixate on this, though thankfully it does suggest he does more than watch and listen to the ABC ... he too turns to Crikey, as we shall see ...

The ABC had held out for 3173 days against hostile Coalition governments, starting with Tony Abbott in 2013. Then, with only four days to go before last month’s election, ABC chair Ita Buttrose delivered a new layer of accountability that exceeded the dreams of even its harshest critics.

Why did she do it? Why in the week before a change of government did she announce a process to handle complaints via an ABC ombudsman? Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, who had been leading the Coalition push for ever-greater ABC accountability, was delighted. An independent ombudsman is precisely what he had been demanding to ensure that the ABC “remain unbiased”.

Bragg’s campaign had been amplified by News Corporation, which wrapped the ideal of balanced reporting neatly into its endless war on the taxpayer-funded broadcaster. 

Ultimately Bragg and other critics got more than they’d argued for. Buttrose delivered not just an independent ombudsman but one that would report directly to the ABC board, bypassing the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson. The decision to cut out the MD went beyond the recommendations of an independent review. It was pointed in its symbolism that the board was in charge and not the staff — an apparent deathbed admission that the ABC’s critics were right: the lunatics had been running the asylum.  

“We accept the recommendations [of the review],” Buttrose told Radio National’s Patricia Karvelas on the morning it was released, “but we have amended one already. The review recommended the ombudsman should report to the board and the managing director, but the directors thought that this would simply be continuing the system we already have and we wanted a different, more independent approach, so the ombudsman will report direct to the board and the process will be separate from editorial management.”  (more from David Hardaker at Crikey here, paywall)

There's a lot more, and it will enrage Polonius but at the same time it allows him to show off his relentless dedication to listening to ABC radio ...

Talk about a red rag to a colonial bull, and though Polonius hasn't said yet that the ABC had not a single conservative in its ranks, the pond will accept a modest payment into his Polonial holiday jar for saying that Media Watch presenters have been leftist or left-of-centre types.

The pond is never sure what turned Polonius into the fastidious, devout, fanatical pedant and ABC witch hunter. Surely it can't have been a study of the Salem witch trials, or the Inquisition or the McCarthy hearings, or even the Stalinist show trials ...

Likely it was closer to home, likely it came from B. A. Santamaria's desire to sniff out the faintest whiff of heresy and hold the blackguards' feet to the flames ...

Whatever, our brave Polonius refuses to have his obsessive compulsive behaviour cancelled ... and thar she blows, and the pond now has more than enough for its Polonial holiday ...

Did you see it? For what must have been the umpteenth time, the zillionth occasion, Polonius hit the short cut on the keyboard and out came ...

...the ABC (is) a conservative-free zone, without a conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its prominent television, radio or online outlets. 

Of course what he meant to write was: "...the ABC's Insiders (is) a conservative-free zone, without a conservative presenter, producer or editor and oh how they'll rue the day that they dropped Polonius from the team ..."

As for the rest, it's passing rich for Polonius to mock the ABC's "staff collective", when he's just one of the murmuration of reptiles soaring and wheeling through the sky, at one with their fear and loathing of the ABC. 

The pond suspects if it ever were to deliver a correctly labelled bottle of kool-aid to Surry Hills - "drink me if you hate, fear and loathe the ABC ... (listening and watching only acceptable if it enrages you" ...

... it might just result in some kind of collective Jonestown meltdown...

And so to the bonus, and the pond hadn't intended to go there, but wherever Dame Slap goes, the pond perforce must follow ...

Ah, we're back with ethics, what a relief, and a reminder that when it comes to ethics Dame Slap doesn't mind the odd bit of pussy groping ...

Is it wrong to always go over old pussy-groping ground? The pond takes Polonius as its inspiration, and besides there's been a certain buzz in the air of late ...

The pond guesses that the point it is making is that a lover of pussy gropers is hardly in the best position to delve into journalistic ethics ... and the pond's problem is compounded because it hasn't the slightest interest in celebrity gossip of any kind.

Dame Slap is likely to take that lack of interest, and twist it into back flipping knots, and sure enough, Dame Slap manages to wend her way from the naughtiness of doxxing, outing, call it what you will - given an entirely justified berating for the completely unjustifiable treatment of a private love affair - to explaining how outing allegedly private fucking should remain a part of the reptile tool kit, and be given a jolly good public fucking ... which is just as well because the Murdochian tabloids have a proud history of outing ...

Oh there were some grand days and many convolutions back in the 1990s, as recorded by the Irish Times in 1998...

...Last week, following the outing (again!) of Peter Mandelson on BBC TV's Newsnight by the gay former Tory MP turned newspaper columnist, Matthew Parris, a Sun editorial took us all by surprise by declaring that the Trade Secretary's sexual orientation was irrelevant. He was a wonderful guy, doing a brilliant job. That was all that mattered.

Then on Sunday the Sun's Murdoch stablemate, the News of the World, outed the Agriculture Secretary, Nick Brown. A popular and highly effective minister, there was no suggestion he had done anything wrong or was guilty of hypocrisy or that his private life conflicted in any way with his public role.

On Monday, as if to defend the behaviour of its sister paper, the Sun screamed on its front page for Tony Blair to come clean about the "gay mafia" at the heart of British public life. In politics, the police, the judiciary - everywhere except in the editorial offices of the Sun - gay cabals were busy scheming and plotting the downfall of civilisation as we know it.

In the space of a few days, Britain's bestread newspaper had flip-flopped from hating gays and loathing "outing" to quite liking some gays and loving "outing". The Sun's leftwing rival, the Mirror, sensing blood, accused its rival of confusion mixed with prejudice. The Mirror's view was that gay MPs would be better off coming out, but that it should be a matter for them.

On Tuesday, sounding less sure of itself than ever, the Sun's front page shrieked "Blair backs Sun on gays". This was a complete fabrication and infuriated Downing Street. Bizarrely, on the same day the Mirror changed its mind and agreed with Monday's Sun that voters did have a right to know the sexual orientation of their politicians.

But it didn't sound sure enough and invited its readers to ring in on the subject. That poll caused yet another change of heart, as an overwhelming majority of Mirror readers said they were not interested in the sexual orientation of MPs and believed they deserved a private life.

Wednesday's Mirror reverted to its original, more tolerant stance, Wednesday's Sun was completely silent. Then on Thursday came the Sun's ground-breaking apology. "We will not invade the privacy of gay people . . . We recognise that public attitudes are changing . . . Our readers are tolerant of private behaviour and find unwarranted intrusion offensive." As if for good measure, the Sun sacked its "outing" columnist, Matthew Parris. Why they didn't sack another columnist, the obnoxiously homophobic Richard Littlejohn, instead escapes me. A sign perhaps that the "apology" was not as heartfelt as it seemed. There are reports of mutinous Sun executives and even Murdoch himself forcing the apology out of reluctant editors.

Something like that convoluted flip-flopping is about to happen with Dame Slap, but in the meantime, the pond would like to keep outing the pussy groper ... and his minions of the Dame Slap kind ...

But it's going to take a while to get to the thong back flip bit, and meanwhile, there's much righteous Dame Slap to endure ...

It seems it's perfectly right and proper to be a pap because you're just feeding the public what they want, yet strangely when it comes to showing the mutilated bodies of dead children, torn apart by military-grade weapons, a discreet veil must be drawn ...

That yarn's at Vice, but the pond must get back to important matters ... like Lisa Wilkinson, flaunting herself and asking for it ...

Indeed, indeed, and yet we haven't got long to go before we get to Dame Slap's own form of outing, and what a convolution of back flips that will produce ...

You see? It's actually very handy to dig into sex lives and past fuckings when it comes in reptile handy ... and so the pond feels justified reminding stray readers that Dame Slap was herself entranced by a pussy groper of dubious character ... with a gang of dubious consorts inclined to misconduct in their private lives ...

And so we come to the nub of it, which is to say that if you fuck with the wrong people, Dame Slap will cheerfully fuck you over, and if that drags up your fuck with the wrong sort of people, then you should expect a good fucking ... it's the News Corp way ... and it's entirely legitimate ...

Yep, just do it carefully, and it seems that was Hornery's crime - a lack of care and skill, a kind of blundering bonehead from down under when what he really needed was Dame Slap's scalpel ... 

The private sex lives of public figures are fair game, provided you feel justified and righteous and you do it carefully ... so it's on with the outing, and the doxxing, provided you do it reptile style ...

And now as the pond has run out of cartoons, a last celebration of Dame Slap's hero ...