In which the Major goes AWOL and the pond gets stuck with the cratering Caterist and the craven Craven ...

 

There's no need to read Major Mitchell whining about the mejia, not when there's a chance to read Tim Alberta's piece for The Atlantic, Inside the Meltdown at CNN. (Use your free clicks wisely).

It's some 15,000 words long, but it's a riveting read, with the lede setting the tone: CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?

The usual American narcissism, and egotism, and allowing a journalist what reads like 24/7 access, is the short answer.

As for the clue that Alberta's reporting hit the Lichtian mark? There's reporters reporting on the reporting, as in The Graudian's ‘Extra Trumpy’: Atlantic profile of CNN chief Licht details town hall disaster.

The line the pond loved in that one?

Bill Grueskin, a Columbia Journalism School professor, said: “It wouldn’t be fair to say a trained seal could do a better job running CNN than Chris Licht. It’s just that, after reading this piece, it feels like we should give the trained seal a shot.” (he was tweeting here).

All sorts piled in, from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety to Vanity Fair (just google - naturally Brian Stelter couldn't resist), but if the pond had to select another quote, it would come from Business Insider:

I spent the last couple days at a conference in a fancy resort town with current and former bosses of news organizations. We shared notes. We tried to figure out how to survive a world where AI models are vacuuming up everything we write without giving credit, and Facebook has basically stopped serving news links.
Most of the details would bore you.
But then, yesterday morning, over coffee and chia seed pudding, I sensed a change in the air. Something had happened.
Then I heard someone say, "I couldn't keep reading it. It was like watching a snuff film."

And then the hapless captain of the Titanic got lumped with a COO, who has been his boss's sidekick, David C. Leavy Named COO Of CNN Worldwide

Talk abut an epic distraction from the usual reptile fodder, but as we're speaking of trained seals, or watching snuff films, time to note that the Major went AWOL this day, and so there were other badly trained seals to note ...

The pond selected that snap of the smirking Malware, because it was the only way that the pond could avoid the reptile obsession with Higgins and Wilkinson featured in the reptile rotating fickle finger of fame. 

As usual that story began with a lie. When it said "five minutes ago", it really meant to say "8.26 pm last night", with the pond taking a screen snap some 21 minutes after the reptiles first ran with it. 

Why do the reptiles lie with their date stamps? Because they can. Why do reptiles rabbit on about commentators pretending to be journalists and vice versa and how that ruins everything? Because they can, and because they never notice the blatant hypocrisy of the bizarrely obsessed Dame Slap, one day "reporting" (the pond uses the term loosely), and the next day ranting (the pond understands the word is an understatement) ...

Moving right along, the Lehrmann Daily - never a day without a report from the lad - had a genuine triptych of terror ...

Some days the pond can't take the reptile circus, but then a correspondent steps in with a winning line - Amazing! The Liar from the Shire has literary aspirations and Murdoch has a Christian publishing division, yet more evidence that there is no supreme being that would deliver Devine retribution - and the pond can carry on ...

No need to add anything to that, simply too Devine, and instead the pond plucked up the courage to look at the rabble below the fold ...

Slim pickings and with the Major AWOL, perforce the pond had to run with the Caterist.

The pond had actually lined up a tidy climate denialist theme for the Caterist on the off chance the floodwaters in quarries whisperer was in his usual form ... 

There was a story How climate change is causing housing market chaos, Climate change is making it harder to build houses in Arizona or to insure them in California and Florida:

...“Climate risk is driving insurer decisions like never before,” Benjamin Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, argued last month in a New York Times op-ed. “From insurers’ perspectives, it’s ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ with heightened risks of floods, droughts, wildfires and more. To have the necessary buffer to pay out claims after catastrophic losses, insurers will need more reserves and more reinsurance, and they will pass those costs on to policyholders in the form of higher premiums.”

There was a link to a story in the NY Times, Your Homeowners’ Insurance Bill Is the Canary in the Climate Coal Mine, (possible paywall), where there was more of the same:

The government should manage expectations through better disclosure and better assessment of climate perils. An easy first step would be to make detailed risk data more accessible and interpretable. Potential property owners deserve loud and crystal-clear warnings of climate-related risks, especially if prices are not yet providing a sufficient signal on their own.

Private insurers are sending a warning signal about heightened climate risks that homeowners and potential buyers need to receive. Insurers’ decisions are leaving households with fewer choices, less protection, and more financial distress. Homeowners should understand the potential hazards and find the right insurance policy or policies to protect them from harm. And they need to be aware that the costs of living in harm’s way are going to rise in coming years.

An era of complacency is ending. If you decide to buy that condo where you can hear the ocean’s waves, realize that you are likely to pay more for that privilege — one way or the other.

Just the pond's usual bad luck that the Caterist would for once forsake his usual desire to nuke the country and possibly the planet, and instead fly into a woke frenzy about PwC ...

Indeed, indeed, and when on the topic of self-serving hypocrisy, and grubby cash in the paw, the pond always likes to report on the Caterist, railing at big government, and yet ready to take a nice little earner, and whaddya know there was a recent nice little earner to hand ...

Does the Caterist ever feel any shame? 

Tip to PwC: feel no shame or embarrassment whatsoever ... there is absolutely no need to make any claims about higher ethical standards. Just shove your paw in the government coffers and make off with what cash you can ...

At this point, the wretched and despondent remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department decided to throw in a couple of very large snaps, as if to add weight to the Caterist's blather ...

That feels better suitably downsized, and the downsizing cleared the way for the Caterist to do a Ron DeSanctus and take on the house of mouse and other businesses attempting to appeal to as wide a base as possible...

Is there any upside to the Caterist going full MAGA? Well there's a chance for a few cartoons ...

And then it's back for a final gobbet of Caterist drivel ...

Indeed, indeed, here's how to do it. 

Pretend to be appalled by hypocrisy and then stick snout in government trough like a starving pig ...

On the upside, the pond was spared another lesson on how to nuke the country ...

And so to the bonus, and here the pond must break its Voice ban, but in a good cause ... because any chance to slag off the craven Craven should be seized ...

Why has the pond such an enormous contempt for the craven Craven? Well that link was to a lofty pile of condescending Craven doing the two face quick step ...

Smug? Always with the projection, yet here was the craven Craven in the Daily Snail on 23rd March 2023 (sorry, the pond doesn't link to the Snail, but it's easy to google as Law expert slams Anthony Albanese's Voice to Parliament as a 'ruthless con job' that's far worse than expected) ...

A constitutional law expert has slammed Anthony Albanese's Voice to parliament as a 'fatally flawed ruthless con job'. 

On Thursday, the PM finally released details of the referendum and the question Australians will vote on.

Mr Albanese appeared on the verge of tears on at least five occasions as he announced the question, while emotionally calling on Australians to 'get this done'. 

However, Professor Greg Craven, a constitutional lawyer who was one of the experts behind the original proposal of an Indigenous Voice, has slammed Mr Albanese's proposal as a 'con job'. 

He said: 'I think it's fatally flawed because what it does is retain the full range of review of executive action.

'This means the Voice can comment on everything from submarines to parking tickets. 

'We will have regular judicial interventions,' he warned.

Speaking to Ben Fordham on 2GB, Prof Craven explained how the Voice had been 'colonised' by 'left-leaning ideologues'.  

'It was originally a conservative proposal,' he said. 'It was really designed to recognise indigenous people without risking judicial activism. 

'Over the past year, it's really been colonised by left leaning ideologues from this community, trying to turn it from a model that was not run by the judges, to one that absolutely guarantees judicial intervention.

'The reality is that you will have a situation where any person who wants to create difficulty for a government over its decisions can now end up going to the High Court.

'It will be very, very difficult for government to operate either because it will be constantly delayed and tied up in knots, or indeed because the courts end up intervening directly in decisions.'

Opinion polling has indicated Australians are very divided on whether to support the referendum, and Prof Craven thinks a 'No' vote is inevitable. 

Writing in the Australian, he said: 'It is a ruthless con job. It is aimed at the Australian people as a whole and an adoring media barely literate in constitutional reality.

'It puts the final bullet through the head of the referendum. The polls already show a sick referendum. It is now terminal.'

The professor also warned that the inclusion of 'draft principles' were another source of alarm as it could lead to Australians voting on the referendum without specifically knowing what areas the Voice could apply to. 

'The idea is that instead of actual detail or architecture for the referendum, we are meant to be assuaged by motherhood statements so vague that they mean nothing,' Prof Craven wrote. 

'Look at Albanese's enunciated principles: the voice will be proactive, representative, chosen by local communities, transparent and cooperative.

'What on earth does this actually mean? It could cover any commonwealth body from the Australian Defence Force to the ABC.'

Speaking to ABC, he added: 'I'm not pretty frustrated, I'm incredibly frustrated. I think the Government has made multiple errors of process here, one of which is a total lack of clarity. 

'So, this alteration was designed in a black box, we don't know who designed it, now it's been revised in a black box, there's been no attempt to engage wider opinion.

'And I think the total disaster is we've already got a referendum that's heading south in the polls, even before this it was describing the typical arc of a losing referendum. 

'Now with this, I think, firstly, you're gonna have a bad proposal and that's gonna be even worse for the referendum.

'But the most potent argument, surely for the 'no' side, will be, "Even your own Attorney-General and your own Solicitor-General said this proposal should not go forward in the words of executive government, and now you're trying to sell us that." I mean, if the 'no' case needed another argument, it's got an absolute humdinger.'

And here was the smug craven Craven back on 6th January on Sky News, again no link, but easy to google under Greg Craven expects Australians to reject the Indigenous Voice to Parliament 'in droves' - despite his support for it - due to a lack of detail...

Just a sample will do of the vain prating coxcomb doing his usual glib blabbermouth routine ...

It's easy to see why the pond must use screen caps. Anyone tempted to click on that offer might stray into the abysmal world of Sky News - not the UK brand, but the local form of appalling reptile stew ...

Free thinking? Do you get freedumb with that?

Okay, okay, no reason to blame the craven Craven for everything ... he's already got more than enough reasons to feel deeply ashamed ....

Why would anyone listen to this gherkin or take his advice? 

He's been nothing more or less than a pain in the billy goat butt from the get go, as in this yarn in the Graudian back in February...

He's been nothing but a quisling grandstander and self-regarding wrecker, and now he wants attention paid? Having done his level best to wreck the entire enterprise because he felt slighted, now he wants everybody to forget and forgive and get on board with the craven Craven?

What a wretched shameful loon. Of all people to scribble "Nor can we afford a campaign complicated, vexed, egotistical and divided", surely this craven Craven is the worst of the worst, a man who has done more to vex,  make complicated, flash ego and vanity and hubris, and divide than almost anyone on the 'no' side, down there with Captain Spud and Warren "have I got a party I haven't joined yet" Mundine ...

That left the pond feeling particularly tortured this day, and unfortunately the immortal Rowe provided no relief ...

UPDATE:

The pond rarely bothers with an update - what's done is done and then it's move on time - but a correspondent added into the record a tweet which simply had to be added to the post ...

And beyond the next level codswallop dragged from another universe, the source tweet ...

Well yes, 4.2% ABV and not that light with 110 calories per can (that's twenty minutes of suffering on the bike), but what fun to see a manly man like the Caterist - are all third rate sociologists so manly? - blather about Bud Lite when the beer in question is "Bud Light" ...