In which it's a typically sodden Monday with the Major and the Caterist ...

 

At the start of another likely sodden week, the pond thought it might start with a little Murdochian comedy, and thought this gutting of Gutfield might serve ...

Fox host, 58, complains college kids not hot any more
Kids these days, eh? They’re all “deliberately ugly-fying themselves”. That’s according to Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, anyway. The 58-year-old recently went on a weird tirade about how college students aren’t adhering to his beauty standards. “You see them on TikTok, they’re out of shape, asexual,” Gutfeld said on Thursday, during a conversation about college loans. “They’re rejecting the truth in beauty, they all look like rejects from a loony bin.”
There’s nothing particularly surprising about a Fox anchor going on a creepy rant about the physical appearance of people three decades younger than him. Ninety per cent of the “news” on Fox, after all, seems to be bizarre commentary on how women look. (Remember when they speculated about whether anyone would listen to congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if she “was fat and in her 60s”?)

Oh come on Arwa Madhawi, we're dealing with an Adonis here ...

... and he's got just the right sort of glasses for the leering ...

Sure you might think those glasses are a deliberate attempt at uglification, but it's just one of many branches of reptile learning ... “Reeling and Writhing of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied, 'and the different branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.” 

And so to another Adonis, this one down under, but one entirely unaware, in an activist publication, of the irony of carrying on in an activist way, while apparently completely unaware of his activism ...

Yes, it had to be the Major ... and he goes on and on in his activism, and as usual, it's all about climate science denialism and the reptiles' deep love of dinkum clean innocent Oz coal...

Does the Major ever pause when blathering this way that News Corp is short for News Corporation, which is to say peak corporate activism, featuring such key corporate activists as the Bolter?

Nope, navel gazing and fluff gathering never leads to any form of self-awareness in the lizard Oz... and so on and on he goes ..

Eek, a snap of a corporate activist busy at work for the corporation, with bonus smarmy smirk, and just under a reference to another branch of the corporation, just as activist but cloaking its activism with a faux claim to the patented WSJ brand of faux objectivity ...

And so it goes, and so we will come to the usual enemies of the corporate activists ...

The usual enemies of the corporate activists ... the Graudian and the cardigan wearers ...

That rant about the usual suspects reminded the pond of Marina Hyde's splendid invocation of the enemy ...

...Anyway: the anti-growth coalition. This is a shadowy group bent on scuppering our heroine. It includes, but is not limited to: TV pundits, Extinction Rebellion, markets, unions, possibly Jamie Oliver, all other political parties, thinktanks, people who voted remain, podcasters, Twitter users, people who “taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio”… the list goes on and on. Liz Truss appears to hate more elements of Britain than the hard left. Worryingly, this was the most popular bit of her speech in the hall.

It’s all very well for politicians to find elegant ways of defining themselves against things in the interests of showing voters who they are. But imagine standing on stage and barking out an actual list of your enemies. It’s a bit Ernst Röhm, isn’t it? And that’s before you get to the eye-catching inclusion of the descriptor “north London”. Does this phrase, interpreted as a dog whistle in the past, no longer mean what it has been seen to before – or are Truss’s speechwriters so devoid of historical and cultural hinterland that they don’t even know what they’ve picked up off the floor and put in her mouth?

In the meantime, you can tell how desperate the gambit is from the fact that Iain Duncan Smith decided it gave the Tories something to unite against. Great to hear advice from him on how to win over the British public. Were Holly and Phil not available?

Yet the anti-growth coalition is the government’s favourite new conspiracy theory, the mindblowing catch-all cabal which somehow explains it all. Redpilled prime minister Liz Truss is like that relative who no longer trusts what the government says about anything, and prefers to “do her own research”. The trouble is – and I’m sorry if this is one of the many things she doesn’t like to hear – TRUSS IS THE ACTUAL GOVERNMENT. Creating some mad conspiracy to explain your shortcomings really is the last refuge of the loon. On this form, Liz is very close to claiming that paedophiles are using BBC taxis to transport children to remoaner pound-shorters. Watch out for signs of radicalisation, then – we’ve officially entered the era of L-Anon.

Dare the pond use caps and remind the Major he's actually being an activist for an ACTUAL FOREIGN-OWNED CORPORATION?

Here, have an infallible Pope the pond saved for a climate science denialism day ...

Oh never mind, the pond is only here for the entertainment, and that's the end of this branch line ...

They never get tired of their deep love of clean, dinkum, pure innocent coal, but the pond finds it quite tiring ... and so to other activists at work for the foreign-owned corporation ...

The pond has made it a rule never to spend even minor time with the rat in the ranks from the deep north, the Milner, especially when he's pleading for the super-rich to get off paying taxes, even more than they do currently thanks to the deep arts of tax avoidance, but not to worry, the Caterist was on hand, and he was preaching ... wait for it, that corporate giants need to lower their voices, in the way of the barely strangled shriek the Caterist routinely manages, whenever he thinks he sees a woke creature in the corporate woodwork.

Another loon sublimely unaware that he's scribbling for an always shouty foreign-owned corporation ... even if his home base is an alleged institute, a thinly disguised way to pocket government cash in the paw to pay for Liberal party propaganda ...

The irony of a member of the Murdochian corporate herd blathering on about corporate herds? A corporate herd routinely full of maladroit zeal, but sublimely untroubled by it? 

A fuckwit so inept, such a failed backer of useless causes that he managed to cop a huge defamation award against him, not least for rampant stupidity?

Every day, but especially on a Monday, the pond wakes and feels like Sideshow Bob ...

D'oh ... it's another corporate voice banging on about the voice, and all the pond can think is that he should be back studying the movement of flood waters in quarries, or at least the different branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, he did it again, he learns nothing, it's all wasted on him ... a reminder for those who came in late on the Facebook logarithms and reading the fine print with the venerable Meade ...

And so to a tedious final gobbet ...

Yes, that $500k is a pitiful sum ... why they could have doubled it if they'd just reallocated a couple of years of cash in the paw to the MRC ...

How can you keep the wolf from the Compass Polling door with that pitiful figure?

Second thoughts, the black bashers have the entire activist News Corporation to hand to carry their shrieking, whining, wailing voices into the ether ... surely that will be enough to do the pesky, uppity, difficult blacks down, and save the day for coal, and never mind if the planet is fucked ... there's a short-term profit to be made in corporate activism ...

And now, because the pond feels short-changed this moaning and whining sodden Sydney morning, how about another bonus featuring a prattling priest doing the unctuous smarmy usual?

Oh fuck off Frank, though the pond means that in the most unctuous and respectful creepy crawly way. 

We all know the game here ... and you hinted as much by starting with that ancient gay boy ...

Cornwell went on to suggest at NPR here that Newman and his chum might not have got around to fucking .... perhaps nocturnal emissions were enough, though the pond understands that hair on the palm of the hand is a sure sign of this sort of activity ... and Frank does seem to know a fair amount about how to wank on ... but the pond thinks it can detect the notion that perhaps gay marriage is a thing in the church, provided you don't call it by name, or out it, but instead look at it sideways ...

Indeed, indeed, the pond has never judged the gay Catholic priest in the extended family, nor his cohabiting with his partner, but here's the thing. 

If he were to come out, damn straight, and mention that he was happily and contentedly sharing his life with another man, the church would judge, and there would go any chance of a comfortable retirement after a lifetime dedicated to the corporation ...

That's when the smarmy, unctuous Frank claptrap rubber hits the bigoted road ... but at least there's only a final gobbet to go ...

 

He always felt the need to look over his shoulder?

Questions about Newman's sexuality became widely publicized two years ago. When it was clear Newman was on the path to sainthood, the Catholic Church ordered the cardinal's body to be exhumed and moved to a grander resting place in Birmingham Oratory church. Cornwell says the church sometimes relocates bodies so they're more accessible.

But Martin, like many others, wonders if there's another motive.

"Certainly the idea of pilgrims coming to the grave and seeing John Henry Newman on the tombstone and above him, Ambrose St. John, was certain to raise eyebrows," he says.

That is especially true now, when the Vatican has ordered that gay men cannot enter the priesthood. 

Take your ersatz tolerance Frank, and with the greatest respect, why don't you shove it up your fundament? That's where most of the Catholic church hides its hypocrisy, nicely out of sight ...

Forgive the pond, it's in a feisty mood this day, and short-tempered when confronted by corporate activists, whether for the Murdochian or the Catholic corporation. 

What a business model they have ... it almost makes you forget there's a war on ...

The pond had never thought that it was a war monger, but these days, it thirsts for blood , blood mingling with borscht... much like, it seems, the immortal Rowe ...