Today is the day the pond almost cracked and gave up herpetological studies completely, or at least began to think it was time to roam more freely.
Let's face it, could any reptile at the lizard Oz come up with the sort of unaware, post-ironic, post-Domain headline?
It even had an animation, and it reminded the pond of all the real estate stories the pond had once consumed back in the day when Fairfax was Fairfax and the eastern suburbs was a thing ...
Meanwhile, back at the lizard Oz, what could they come up with? Turned out that this day was a valley of parched real estate desert ...
It was too much for a bear to bear, let alone, the pond, and the tree killer edition promised no better ...
Sure some might get a laugh at the line at the bottom, "Now is the time to be misinformed", but the pond had rung the juice out of reptile promotions long ago ...
Below the fold was even more depressing ...
Simplistic Simon, the craven Craven doing Bazza and Warren still blathering about the voice?
What's the pond supposed to do with that Mötley Crüe?
Look at the opposition, look at what was on top of WaPo this morning ...
The pond could go for any of those. A rape trial, the spectacle of the GOP actually trying to govern, and the house of mouse stepping up its war with Ron DeSanctus a notch! Now that's entertainment ... and it would be easy enough to step around the paywall and indulge.
Reluctantly the pond decided it would be content with a two minute warning and it would give a new reptile a go ... just to fill in the time ...
And so to a bonus, and all the pond could find was a lizard Oz editorial.
Now the pond had already done its research and watched the Jimmy Kimmel opener that had induced laughter in Morning Joe, and so was pretty much up for it ...
Indeed, indeed, and the controller of News Corp and Faux Noise is aged ... (well, here's a tip, he was born on 11th March 1931 in Melbourne, you do the math or go catch a tram).
Okay, okay, amid that scenario, the reptiles are deeply fucked ... and perhaps it does explain why there's been so much trouble in recent times ...
Sheesh, and is that the best cartoon they've got? A snake oil salesman joke, as if the best original snake oil sellers had ceded their claim to fame?
The pond would settle for almost any other sort of cartoon, even one from The New Yorker ...
What new messiah is around the corner to spew bile at the lizard Oz, let alone Faux Noise? And what of the old messiah?
That's a relief ... and how's the family going?
As for the rest the immortal Rowe had provide all the commentary the pond needed ...
Meanwhile, the lizard Oz editorialist was still fixated in a final gobbet ...
That reminded the pond of a piece by David Hardaker in Crikey, Where to now for Lachlan Keith Murdoch and the values he espouses?
There'll be a paywall, but just a sampler, and sadly he's no longer in the vulgar youff category ...
That Intercept story can be read at Power Transfer How Lachlan Murdoch Went From Studying Philosophy at Princeton to Exploiting White Nationalism at Fox News ...
You just have to go there, and not just for the thesis, though the thesis is rich pickings ...
And so on and so forth, and what a reminder to Succession devotees that they're on the wrong horse. You simply couldn't slip in a Kantian Lachy to the storyline and sell it to lovers of superior soap ... and yet here we are. If you're hungry for a snack, why not snack on a Lachy?
Never mind, tomorrow will be better, likely the hole in the bucket man will come down from the attic to lecture vulgar youff on their failings and on Thucydides, and the pond can get back to business as usual ... and perhaps even offer tidy solutions to current reptile dilemmas ...
Oh that cartoon set the pond off again.
The pond simply can't let it go without mentioning Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic, asking Will Tucker Carlson Become Alex Jones?, some time ago now, but some things never get old ...
The final moments of Tucker Carlson’s last Fox News broadcast are perfect. His studio desk is strewn with pizza boxes. Across from him is the delivery man who’d traveled from Pennsylvania to bring him his favorite slice: sausage and pineapple. “It is a disgusting order, but I have no shame,” Carlson says with this mouth full, grinning. He then turns to the camera to wrap the broadcast with one final lie—“We’ll be back on Monday”—and a plug for the Fox Nation docuseries Let Them Eat Bugs, which alleges that the environmental movement to eat insects is, somehow, part of a global conspiracy. That’s it: One of America’s most popular and influential cable news shows ends with its host sharing the frame with a massive bug dead on a plate...
Forget the dead bug metaphor. The pond has said it before and will say it again. Canned pineapple and canned beetroot are reminders that civilisation died in a canning factory ...
Warzel added a rider, another reminder that reality always beats Succession ...
...It felt like this final, absurd moment was ripped straight from Infowars, the far-right conspiracy website founded by Alex Jones. The Infowars model revolves around constructing a durable, alternative reality based on grievance. It reduces the world to a battle between good and evil (the site’s tagline is “There’s a war on for your mind!”), using lies, conspiracy theories, and theatrics to incite fear in the audience while positioning the host as a noble crusader. And it relies on alternating between righteous indignation and a winking, farcical tone that helps obscure the show’s real political project: taking dangerous, hateful, and reality-defying ideologies from the fringe and projecting them into millions of households every weeknight.
And that's why pineapple on pizza flourishes. Warzel went on to do an extended comparison of Tuckyo with that other scumbag ...and ended this way ...
...Carlson’s legacy will live on in a legion of angry and paranoid former viewers. But his centrality in our current politics—and all of the danger that represented—came from his platform. Up until this morning Carlson was a man who sat at the very top of a toxic information ecosystem, one that cycles fever-swamp, message-board garbage upward and outward. At least for a moment, the cycle is broken. Carlson’s megaphone is gone, along with a captive audience. Stripped of his time slot, Carlson has lost the last, thin veneer of credibility separating him from the conspiracy theorist he’s been aping. Tonight, the only difference between Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson is that one of them has a show.
Credit where credit is due Charlie.
That's actually the chairman's legacy and he still has a show, in fact he still has a network and a bunch of newspapers down under, and soon the black smoke will rise from the chimney with news of a new messiah... and the rest of us are left with aging Tuckyo jokes ...
That Oz editorial is a lovely example of Reptile subtlety.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who’s not a wingnut expects bias in the regular opinionistas, and factors that in; however some readers may naively assume that an actual Editorial may still contain some vague basis of fact. The Oz, though, subverts this in a couple of ways. First by stating such “facts” as “there is no dispute that Mr Biden is showing signs on mental and physical acuity” and that he is clearly senile, when that’s based on no more solid evidence than the occasional tongue-tied gaffe and the usual comedian cracks about “Sleepy Joe”. There’s also the reverse projection tactic - while Trump’s age and unsuitability are mentioned, his physical and mental state (obesity, odd physical movements, apparent cognitive and verbal decline since the ‘80s and 90s) are ignored. Then there’s the classic Reptile habit of reinforcement via extensive quotations from such “authoritative” sources of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post - ie, other Murdoch publications that sing from the same song sheet.
The end result is that you end up with an editorial voice that sounds as though it’s based on sober assessment - until a few seconds’ thought makes you realise that it’s clearly not.
Ah yes but it's that "few seconds' thought" that is the catch, Anony. Firstly, one has to be able to take a few seconds away from fevered worship of one's heroes and then one has to be actually capable of thought and not just blind acceptance of the reptile lies and propaganda.
DeleteReally difficult achievements, both of them.
Simon Welsh: "...younger australians pay more income tax than older australians on the same income". Well, he's right about that it seems:
ReplyDelete"A series of tax policy decisions over the past three decades — in particular tax-free superannuation income in retirement, refundable franking credits, and special tax offsets for seniors — mean we now ask older Australians to pay a lot less income tax than we once did.
Disturbingly, these and other changes mean older households now pay much less tax than younger households on the same income."
Australia is facing a real generation gap of the kind we can't possibly want
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-19/young-australians-financially-worse-off-than-older-generations/11425428
The past three decades ? Ok, so that's from 1993 till now. And that means mainly Keating Labor (1993-1996), Howard Liberal (1996-2008), Rudd-Gillard Labor (2008-2013), Abbott,Turnbull, Morrison (2013-2022) and Labor again: Albanese 2022-
Yes well then that tax distortion is clearly all due to Labor which has had just about 7 years in government out of the past three decades. More than enough time to have fixed that muckup.
Ooops: "just about 11 years in government"
DeleteWelsh again: "While the Liberals seem focussed on the Australia of the 1990s, the Australia of the 2020s is walking away from them in droves. If I were them, I'd give that more consideration than two sentences on page 47 of an election review." Wau, a reptile contributor with just a tiny bit of grasp of reality. Astounding.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, though they may be "walking away from [the Coalition] in droves" they are not actually walking towards Labor in "droves" - as the recent NSW election and the coming Queensland election will demonstrate. So who knows, maybe we really are in the grip of change, yes ? Or are we just going through "traditional political cycles" as Welsh suggests the Coalition partners believe - and at least the Nats have good reason - not having recently lost the seats that the Libs have - to believe that.
Unfortunately, that comment is the proverbial needle in a haystack of denial. There are a few half reasonable comments in among the debris but you have to search. The outright denial of the reasons for their loss is astounding. It's such a long way back to reality for the Coalition I have no idea how they achieve it. Until the boomers die off a bit more, trying to change direction will be fatal but not changing is also fatal. The true catch 22, and well deserved.
Delete“they are not actually walking towards Labor in "droves" - as the recent NSW election and the coming Queensland election will demonstrate”.
DeleteI couldn’t agree more. I cannot be the only confused old gaffer who sees the Greens as a more centrist party than labour. The greenies are out talking about cost of living and housing affordability. Labor is Talking about fucking AUKUS (hate to miss out on good war), tax cuts for the wealthy and football stadiums. It’s like one of those safety courses where you are supposed to pick “what’s wrong with this photo?”. Pretty damned obvious I would have thought.
Also very sick of Albo’s log cabin story as well - fertile ground for cartoons for years to come if he doesn’t deliver on some sort of social welfare program.
GuyM: just some light reading:
DeleteAlan Kohler: If the Liberals hope to survive it must be as progressive conservatives
https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2023/04/10/liberal-party-change-or-die-kohler/
Bef: I reckon the days of 'traditional' Labor are nearly about as dead as the days of the Libs. Though I'm not sure why the Nats seem to be surviving essentially untouched. But changing and remaking appear to have been much more a property of the conservatives in Australia than of say the Tories of the UK or the Repugs of the USA.
Maybe it's because the Nats have a 'built in identity' as country farmers or summat, whereas Australia's 'conservatives' have never really established a continuing identity. After all, remember that Menzies, after he lost power in WWII, had to start completely anew, and since the departure of Johny Howard there's nobody in the conservative ranks with any sort of 'visionary' identity at all. Abbott ? Turnbull ? Morrison ? Dutton ? Who the hell are they ?
GB, Befuddled and other friends. Writing from within state electorate with high Nat. margin, nestled within the federal electorate with the largest Nat margin, all I can offer is that the Nats I observe vote that way because they are not inclined to change - anything. They work the land as their fathers and grandfathers did, tell us each year that the first frost comes on Anzac morning - which was true 60 years ago, but has drifted out a couple of weeks now - and are suckers for the messages from the local members, who are prairie populists at best. Local voters show no interest in trying to relate their own circumstances to what the member has said he has tried to do. Example you have seen me quote is of Littleproud promising special visa for agricultural workers, and delivering not one, not one single warm body, in the 20 months from when he put out the story, and went out of office.
DeleteThis is a very different party affiliation from the one my grandfather helped to found - when it was, definitely, 'Country Party', and which took the local seat from Labor in 1947 McEwen pointed it in an entirely new direction nationally - and the locals seem oblivious to what he did. Just south of us, three generations of Anthonys went seamlessly from Country party, with policies, to National, who wouldn't know a working policy if it kicked them in the metaphorics; which many Liberal policies actually do.
I don't get into holts with my neighbours, even over fire minimisation practices, because so much just does not register with them. Bushfire prevention is 'Ya have a burn-off in September, 'cos that's when the dad did his burn.' In the year in which our immediate area had massive fire damage, the council could not agree on the content for a submission to the Royal Commission.
We have pleasant times with almost all the locals - by not venturing into anything remotely resembling 'politics'. Of our time here, that has included fluoride in water ('get it out!') and, gasp, people of the same sex getting married. So have to look in mass media from time to time to know what not to talk about, in any way.
Thanks, Chad. I think I can consider my attribution of an 'identity' to have been reinforced: "the bush" is the place of the cocky-blokes and the CWA; though these days it appears that the CWA "ladies" are measurably more 'progressive' than the cocky-blokes.
DeleteLooking at the history of 'conservatives' in Australia, though, it has been a 'make and break' story, hasn't it. But I think that as 'the City' moves further out into the bush, and as the bush folk get closer to the City (and more widely spread higher education), then there is a steady merging happening.
In some ways it's "the Left" though that is really changing: nobody believes in communism nowadays and hardly anybody believes in socialism either. So the foundation for 'the Left' is fading fast. Which is why, perhaps, that the 'progressive' Greens, and maybe some teals as well, are slowly starting to rise. Especially as, bit by bit, the ALP loses its 'Union' foundation and identity.
GB - I grew up aware of two 'factions' in the Country Party. In Queensland/Northern NSW, it had something in common with the ALP. The Country Party was for small farmers, many of whom needed seasonal employment on the big runs to make up their annual budget (the equivalent now Is for 'the missus' to have permanent employment - teaching is highly regarded) and there was strong European tradition of 'Farmers Unions' - from Netherlands and Scandinavia in particular - which explained the support for co-ops in supplying goods and services and in handling and marketing product. Co-ops were inimical to Tory graziers.
DeleteWhile there were co-ops, mainly in dairying, in the south, it was graziers in western Victoria and drier parts of South Australia who had the time, and income, to be influential in rural politics.
You mean like Jeparit (pop. about 350), birthplace of the great Robert Gordon Menzies ? I was thinking about persistent voting patterns more than visible influence on politics. It's like the 'red wall' electorates in Britain which persistently voted Labour regardless of whatever was going on around them - well, until recently, anyway.
DeleteBut I guess there's always at least two 'factions' in everything: the quite well-to-do and the less so. And how voting patterns have remained quite stable despite the world changing around them.
For someone who claims we and he doesn't know enough about the Voice to vote for it, Warren (Currently Liberal Party) certainly knows enough to lie about it daily, and with Murdoch's full support
ReplyDeleteOh dear, those reptiles have been telling us fibs again:
ReplyDelete"Australia’s record levels of renewable energy helped extend the slide in wholesale power prices in the first three months of 2023, displacing fossil fuels and sending carbon emissions from the sector to new lows for the first quarter."
Record levels of renewable energy help bring down Australia’s energy prices, says Aemo
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/28/record-levels-of-renewable-energy-help-bring-down-australias-energy-prices-says-aemo
In case anybody wanted to know:
ReplyDelete‘Can’t be racist to white people’: Lidia Thorpe breaks silence on strip club fracas
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/2023/04/27/lidia-thorpe-breaks-silence/