In which the dog botherer rages, Dame Slap trudges and fudges and "Ned" offers a taxing Everest ...

 

The pond was reading Tom Nichols in The Atlantic recently on the MAGA mob, and the way that anger seems to be the entire point ...

It has no functional compass and no set of actual preferences beyond a generalized resentment, a basket of gripes and grudges against others who the Trumpists think are looking down upon them or living better lives than they are. It is a movement composed of people who are economically comfortable and middle-class, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living, and yet who seethe with a sense that they have been done dirt, screwed over, betrayed—and they are determined to get revenge.

And again ...

…Trump’s authoritarian blather makes Biden’s point. The MAGA movement isn’t interested in politics, or policies, or compromises. It is interested in destruction and seeing others made as miserable as its followers are. MAGA is a movement of people who seem to be, in so many ways, deeply and profoundly unhappy, and suffering from an emptiness and anger deep in their spirit. There is no political solution for that. All Joe Biden did was finally say this obvious truth out loud.

What do they actually want?

Smaller government? More democracy? Power to “We the People”? Good luck with that: Trump just endorsed a GOP candidate for governor, Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts, by telling a crowd that Diehl will “rule your state with an iron fist, and he’ll do what has to be done.”

Of course the iron fist is a familiar motif ...

But it got the pond to thinking about which of the local reptiles was the closest to a mindless angry MAGA mob, and the dog botherer seemed to win by a canter. 

Others might have their own favourite in the local reptiles - the Bolter is an obvious choice, Steve Price a recent mindless contender - but the dog botherer's pieces always seem suffused with pointless, generalised resentment, a basket of gripes and grudges ...

It's never easy to convey tone - the pond sometimes might come off as angry when really it's aiming for an effete form of bemusement and amusement - but there's no mistaking the way the dog botherer is deeply unhappy ... there's a kind of foaming madness, displaced and transferred on to the alleged madness of others ...

You see? The pond doesn't do TikTok, it's never done Facebook, it only recycles tweets occasionally, but to each their own.

Vulgar youff will do things differently to the pond, and so it goes ... but the dog botherer seems to think that a dickhead of the Matthew Guy kind is immune from the lobster with a mobster treatment just because it comes via another format.

The dog botherer routinely comes across as a Victorian wowser patrolling the digital ether, the wild digital west, but to what avail?

Who knows what that was all about? Who cares? The pond sees it as just another example of the failure of Sky News after dark's anger management course for staff.

Where they might be railing at Faux Noise and the ruination of America, they do a transference and rail at digital media ...

You see? You don't have to be a fuckwit on digital media to be a dickhead blathering about "climate catastrophism"?...

That's the sort of moronic one liner even an incompetent member of the Twitterati would have discarded years ago with a triggered irrational urgency ...

It's worth remembering that the dog botherer himself has had form.

He was so angry on Twitter, and such a lightning rod, that he had to give it away ... and the explanation says much more about the dog botherer than it does about Twitter ...

Sometimes the pond wonders why it needs the dog botherer's lizard Oz hate sessions in its life ... and soon and sure enough, he'll get triggered by Greta ...

Her frenzy? Looks and sounds maniacal?

What need of goofy Twitter when you can be goofy in a column in the lizard Oz?

This is of course projection, perhaps mixed with a little envy, because the dog botherer would love to have the attention, but he's just a pitiful hack droning away on Sky after dark and shouting at the clouds in the lizard Oz ...

And so help the long absent lord, he still keeps on using "virtue-signallers", as dismal an abuse of the English language as the pond can imagine, after you get beyond the ABC's routine invocation of the "truly unique" ...

What hope a sober and rational debate? Why that sounds like virtue signalling, if the pond dares to descend to the level of the dog botherer.

More to the point, it's more projection. By definition, the dog botherer is both denouncing and proclaiming his moral superiority, and at great length too ...

And as always it concerns some moral panic that sweeps through News Corp like a virus, often provoked by thinking about climate science or comrade Dan ...

He slept on it, and then went on with the fucking of Iraq and the production of utegate? Truly the man's propensity for stupidity is legendary ... 

Only a delusional clown of the first water would waste time railing at social media and digital devices and think them central to all the anger, grievances and the muchness of wrong that the reptiles routinely blather about with grand words like "pernicious" ...

There's a deep resentment about being replaced, about the old listicles of loathing being ignored, but we should be fair ... Faux Noise and the Murdochians had much more to do with the fucking of the United States than the twittering of the Donald ... because anger, fear and loathing is still a decent business model, and Chairman Rupert loves his money and power, with an abundance of greed, that sees the dog botherer routinely chose the appropriate path and response ... shit-stirring anger of a nihilistic kind ...

Not to worry, there's just a short gobbet of hate, fear and loathing to go ...

For a moment, the pond wondered if the dog botherer was crack to the pond, but much like the dog botherer instantly dismissed the thought - after all, why think when you can blather "virtue signaller"?

Instead the pond went on to the next fix, a stiff whack of Dame Slap taken straight ... another anger merchant always ready to be angry a column at a time ...

On any other planet than Dame Slap's, you might wonder why all the attention has been deflected from the trudging Tudge and his inability to keep his cock in his pants ... yet back in 2020 Here is a closer look at the people who have been lecturing us about family values... (caution, it's Mamamia) ...

...Alan Tudge, now-Acting Immigration Minister, was one of the Liberal Party’s most vocal advocates of traditional marriage in 2017 during the same-sex marriage debate. 

In December that year, Tudge – then Minister for Human Services – said:

"My reservations about changing the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples was my view that marriage is an institution that traditionally has been primarily about creating a bond for the creation, love and care of children. And I was concerned that if the definition is changed to be purely one about recognising love, rather than a foundation for the raising of children, then the institution itself would potentially be weakened. I hope I am wrong. I hope that, by expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, the institution of marriage will be strengthened. My hope is that more couples will take advantage of it, make life-long commitments, and that their relationships will prosper.”

Tudge was married with children at the time of that speech. As has now has been revealed, he was also in an affair with his press secretary, Rachelle Miller, who was also married with kids. 

Whilst the affair was consensual, Miller says she now regrets it. 

"Where there's significant power imbalances with senior ministers and perhaps junior staff, I think that absolutely there needs to be an acknowledgement that that sort of behaviour is not OK.”

Miller says she was pressured by Tudge to keep the affair private, alleging he told her: “Make sure you don't talk, make sure you get your lines straight, make sure you don't answer your phone, actually it would just be better if you don't answer your phone at all.”

She also explained that during the same-sex marriage debate, it “really upset” her to talk about his apparent family values. 

Well yes, but you won't find much attention to any of that by Dame Slap ...

Or perhaps another recap ... without the Dame Slap twist and pike ...

Rachelle Miller was formerly the advisor of ex Human Services Minister, Alan Tudge. The pair were also engaged in an affair.

Leaving aside the sheer hypocrisy that Tudge, a fierce and vocal opponent of marriage equality on the basis of “sanctity” was leading a double life in Canberra while his wife and three children were at home, it’s the treatment that Miller recalls that’s equally sickening.

Speaking about an incident in which she attended Parliament’s Mid-Winter Ball, Miller says she was instructed by Tudge to walk in with him to the event despite the fact she felt uncomfortable doing so.

“My appearance had bearing on why Alan wanted to walk in with me on his arm and I felt a lot at the time like an ornament and that I was being used as an ornament,” she described.

Later at an after-party at a bar in Canberra, Porter a well-known friend of Tudge’s accosted Miller with another Minister.

“Minister Porter was obviously quite drunk at a public bar after the ball,” recalls Miller.

“They came up to me and said, ‘you look really great. You look really hot. Of course Alan, being the media tart that he is would want to have you on his arm when he walked into the ball with all the cameras there. He’s a total media genius, you know, to have you walk in with him.’”

A shaken and uncomfortable Miller described the interaction as “demeaning,” later saying that her relationship with Tudge forced her to lose “a lot of self confidence”.

“I didn’t feel like I had any power at all to stand up for myself. I was exhausted; really, really exhausted.”

When the relationship between Miller and Tudge eventually fell apart, she was forced to leave his office and demoted to another Minister’s. Soon after, she left politics for good.

“I knew I was leaving a job that I really loved but I didn’t see that there was any other way out,” she said. “And look, the culture is very much like that. You sacrifice yourself for the good of the party. I actually viewed myself as damaged goods and I was really worried about this coming out and impacting our chances at the election.”

But why is the pond surprised? Dame Slap has always had the habit of taking the side of men, and it's seen her advance her career, with suitable kowtowing and forelock tugging, and a goodly dose of bitch slapping for women who offend her ...

A technical point. There was no sign of a shaded panel in the online version, though to be fair, even if the reptiles had highlighted it, the pond would probably have sauntered by ...

The critical question for the pond is why the fudging Tudge can't be made to wear the $650k as the price for flashing his cock while rolling in hypocritical mud,  but that would require a revolution in the notion of political responsibility ...

It's so much easier to give Greta a bagging than scribble a column about actual climate science, and it's so much easier to give Miller a bagging than dress down a man with a straying cock ...

As for the trudging, fudging Tudge? Forget it Jake, you're on planet Janet, somewhere above the faraway tree ...

And so to the pond's Everest duty for the day ... and the pond's only excuse is that it stops the pond from contemplating King Tampon Chuck III ...

As usual, "Ned" goes on and on and on - there are seven gobbets in all - and the pond only presents this Everest of natter as a public duty for the few who are remotely interested, or can summon the strength to wade through the tedium.

It's more than a bit like being trapped with a bore at a party ...

Not the bigger government routine. Oh kill the pond now ... but "Ned" was just warming up with his natter, which as usual featured the borrowed second and third hand thoughts of others ...

The pond has made endless references to Chicken Little when presenting "Ned's" natter ... the furrowed brow, the sighing at the sky, the running around in circles saying that the sky is falling in or big government is here to stay, and there will be taxation, but given "Ned's" propensity to be a bower bird and cheekily steal bright, flashy things and thoughts from others, how about a reference to "borrowed plumage" ...

Well there's not much point having "borrowed plumage" if you can't fluff away, so it's on with the fluffing and flapping of borrowed feathers ...

Where are we heading with all this? Patience, it will all become clear at the end of this gobbet ...

There we go, thar he blows ...

"There is no need for any further decision on these tax cuts at this stage."

And at that point, the pond regretted wasting this Wilcox earlier in the week, but dammit, the pond is not too proud to do a little recycling ...

Now back to the borrowed plumage ...

It seems to the pond that the level of delusion is strong. The notion that it can all be fixed by having another election made the pond regret it had wasted another Wilcox earlier in the week ...

Back to the borrowed plumage and domestic sinking ships and tax cuts for the rich ...

By this point the pond was heartily sick of the borrowed plumage. It comes with the free use of words of the "Australia must" and "we need" kind ...

As soon as the pond hears thoughts about musty needs, it knows that the needs of the musty rich must be foremost in mind ... but the good news is that there's just one gobbet to go, and needs be, it begins with another "We need" ...

So once again it's all up to Labor and "Ned" is the headmaster handing out the assignment? As usual, the pond came away from the "Ned" Everest with a strong sense of doom ...

On the upside, between little sleeps, the pond didn't spare a thought about King Tampon Chuck III, and will now only allow a mention of the royals because it involves the infallible Pope ...

It's the markers that caught the pond's eye ...