The pond is inclined of late to turn into a quivering jellyfish at the thought of reading the lizard Oz, and the quivering is at its worst with the weekend edition. Look at all the monomaniacal ratbags at the top today ...
There's Dame Slap still going on about the Lehrmann matter, with another outing featured further down.
As usual, The Weekly Beast provided astute analysis of Dame Slap's brutalising of Samantha Maiden, dubbing Dame Slap's recent efforts a 'blue on blue attack'.
Well you could hardly call it a friendly fire incident because Dame Slap has always been unfriendly and in recent times has verged on the sociopathic, such is the obsessive compulsive way she's gone about her unsavoury business. The venerable Meade ended her piece by quoting Maiden:
Maiden, a former reporter on the Australian, was given a separate panel for a 350-word response, and she used it to great effect with a pointed final line: “In fact, I caught up with Higgins recently, and I was struck by the fact that the kind and thoughtful woman I spent time with bears no relationship to the person who emerges in some of the reporting by those who have never bothered to pick up a phone and speak to her”.
Meow. And that's all the pond needs to say about Dame Slap and the sociopaths at the lizard Oz in relation to the matter...
Meanwhile, keen eyes will note that the Kelly gang were dominating the Voice coverage at the top of the digital edition (somehow on the left), and the pond felt so bold as to turn immediately to the gang's leader, nattering "Ned" Kelly ...
So far, so predictable, and the pond was reminded of a
Crikey story (paywall) about some academics who thought they might make a dent in the impenetrable hide of the lizard Oz, with the yarn ending this way ...
....“Self-regulation through the Press Council or broadcast regulation through ACMA is not having a meaningful impact on media standards when it comes to bias and misinformation,” she said. “In this context, it is important that the country’s largest and most partisan media organisation’s Voice coverage be scrutinised.”
The research will also try to capture how often both cases are presented to audiences of News Corp’s coverage of the referendum, in a bid to measure balance and move to assess how much Voice coverage across the News Corp stable amounts to political campaigning.
“A key element of media campaigning is when an author or television presenter — whether they be a journalist, commentator, panellist, or guest — advocates for the audience to take a position by making their views clear and presenting an obviously-one-sided assessment,” Fielding said.
A News Corp Australia spokesman rejected the claim and told Crikey: “News Corp Australia’s publications are not campaigning against the Voice. We are publishing the views and positions of all sides of the debate to inform the community.”
The platforming of “disinformation and hateful ideas” across News Corp will also be targets of the research which Fielding argued there was “already evidence” of. The research would measure the inclusion of misinformation and disinformation, along with hateful ideas.
“This includes accusations by the No camp such as the Voice causing segregation and creating an apartheid state, that the Voice gives Aboriginal people special privileges and will lead to more land rights claims, and that the Voice will be able to veto decisions made by the Australian Parliament,” she said.
The researchers said they would use the coverage of News Corp’s competitors — Nine newspapers, the ABC, Guardian Australia — to identify voices and ideas that had been excluded from News Corp coverage, or to “identify how Yes ideas are being misrepresented or attacked” in News Corp coverage.
The commissioned research comes just one week after the campaign’s co-chairs, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Sharan Burrow, co-wrote an opinion piece in Guardian Australia branding Sky News a misinformation machine and its new 24/7 “Voice Debate” channel “an affront to the foundations of Australian democracy”.
Good luck with that, the pond thought.
The reptiles have never, not for a nanosecond, shown any sense of shame, remorse or desire for balance, and are rat cunning at how they go about their business. Take "Ned" as the classic duplicitous example. He's always just asking questions, like how to "actually deliver a more united country?", which is to say, a country united around the baleful authoritarian regime the reptiles routinely cry out for ...
The pond realised its folly and settled in for a long "Ned" tirade, featuring much hand-wringing, Chicken Little clucking, and running about shouting at clouds, while just asking questions ...
And so on to the next baleful, insidious gobbet full of random assertions of doom and gloom and patent falsehoods about a Voice run rampant.
What's that you say? There's no next gobbet? "Ned" only managed two gobbets?
Huzzah, no, triple huzzah.
It was like being let out of jail, which is more than Navalny can say when the sociopath's muppets have done their work. The pond almost rushed out into the Sydney drizzle, wild and free, crying "no more 'Ned' and his wretched pencil and his dirty looks ..."
Yep, it could have been "Ned" on that couch ... and as for the climate voices, perhaps another day.
And then it was off to the comments section ...
Bill Gates and the Bjorn-again one are going to save the world? Does Gates realise he's keeping company with an expert climate science denier?
The pond was reminded of another cartoon featuring the filthy rich and their filthy follies ...
Meanwhile, there was the problem of the dog botherer. Climate science denialist one day, and Voice devotee the next.
So long as the dog botherer keeps on stoutly swimming against the News Corp tide, the rest of the ratbag pack have some kind of cover, some pretence that they really are just a "both sides" rag ...
That's why the dog botherer provides excellent cover and is a cunning ploy, and makes those academics and their research a dodgy exercise.
While the dog botherer's willing to have a go at the mutton Dutton and the coalition, does he ever attempt to pee inside the News Corp tent? Does he ever have a go at "Ned" for example, or the rest of the gang of coalition and mutton Dutton enablers that surround him on this matter?
Not likely, and in due course, the dog botherer will show how to be kindly to his mob ...
You see? There's vague talk of the "meejia" or "political commentators", but at the same time, the dog botherer makes things tough for those academics, because you only need the dog botherer ranting about "grotesque mischaracterisation", for the rest of the rat pack to feel enabled and wander off to produce more grotesque mischaracterisations, channeling voices from the ether in "Ned" style ...
The dog botherer allows the reptiles to pretend that there's a chink in the monolith, and a sliver of light is all that's needed for them to sound righteous in the eyes of their Lord, Rupert ...
The dog botherer has stayed loyal to his mate Noel Pearson, unlike the other reptiles, who once venerated him for being on their side, but at the same time, where's the dog botherer's ravaging of his renegade chums?
Where's his assault on the likes of Dame Slap and the rest of the pack? The pond knew it would never come, and instead there would be generalities, talk of "No campaigners", and the easy target of the boofheaded Dutton ...possibly with a bit of both siderism thrown in, whereby the behaviour of the negativists is all the fault of the positivists (as any reader of the big and little egg endian debate will know is a handy strategy) ...
Ah, you see, when he finally does get around to Dame Slap, there's no attempt to take her down, there's just a gilding of the lily. She's not just a barking mad bigot, she's raising legitimate arguments, there are constitutional risks, she's exploring them assiduously, these are important issues and constitute an important area worthy of examination.
Does the dog botherer realise that this mealy-mouthed carry on makes him the rough equivalent of the sort of chaff they used to toss from planes to distract from incoming missiles?
Nope, not a clue ... instead he goes out of his way to celebrate strong arguments and reasonable concerns ...
And then at the end, the dog botherer offers a shrivelled billabong of defeatism. In his way, he's the perfect quisling, in this one matter playing the token liberal, of the kind that turns up on Faux Noise, only so they can be given a good hiding ...
Speaking of Faux Noise, it's now past time for the pond to indulge in a treat.
This day the bromancer turned to the matter of the Donald, and the pond will confess that yesterday it wasted some precious time watching Lawrence O'Donnell carry on ...
There's a fair summary in The Independent under the header Moment Trump’s own lawyer ‘admits’ to indictment charge live on TV ...
A lawyer for former President Donald Trump, John Lauro, seemed to admit to a charge listed in the indictment related to January 6 and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, shocking an MSNBC panel.
Mr Lauro on Thursday told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that leading up to January 6, Mr Trump supported Mr Pence sending the election results back to the states.
John Eastman, a lawyer who helped orchestrate Mr Trump’s election scheme, laid out a series of options that were discussed with Vice President Pence, Mr Lauro said on The Ingraham Angle.
Although Mr Pence disagreed, Mr Lauro continued, “What President Trump said is, ‘Let’s go with option D. Let’s just halt, let’s just pause the voting and allow the state legislatures to take one last look and make a determination as to whether or not the elections were handled fairly. That’s constitutional law. That’s not an issue of criminal activity.”
MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell reacted to the clip, saying in shock: “That is a Trump criminal defense lawyer quoting Donald Trump committing a crime.”
There's more, there's always more, there's O'Donnell himself on YouTube, but the pond must put it aside for a bromancer and cartoon fest ... but be warned, this is a lengthy bout of both siderism, Hunter Biden will be mentioned, and the bromancer does his best to turn himself into a "Ned" Everest ... with only the cartoons for relief ...
Uh huh, but it's not that bromancer misrepresentation of the Hunter matter that's the problem ...
The bromancer follows the same credibility curve ...
Um, actually he broke the law. Repeatedly ...
And as a way out he offers paranoia ...
And the bromancer's response? Pretty much standard GOP ...
On the other hand, the bromancer can stretch a long, long way, and that will allow for more cartoons ...
Yes, but he's great at real estate, running universities, flogging steaks, and delivering bankruptcies, and so there's surely some great developments ahead ...
While we're getting down with local cartoonists, why not celebrate another "top of the world ma" moment ...
Meanwhile, the bromancer keeps the gobbets coming ...
Oh yes, there's a cue ...
As for being above the law, why it suits the Donald down to the ground, and also the GOP and inevitably the bromancer ...
Tremendous stuff and for just a moment the reptiles snapped and slipped in a huge snap of a smirking Joe Biden grinning and riding a bike. The infamy of it ...
And so to Hillary and all that jazz ... and Hunter, there must be more Hunter ...
At this point, the pond decided it would reach for is sharpie, or at least a
Luckovich showing the right way to use a sharpie ...
And so to the penultimate gobbet, with the now standard ploy, look over there, anywhere but here ...
And so we reach the last tweeny weeny gobbet, down there with small groping hands, but with an astonishingly convincing argument, though perhaps this cartoon put it a shorter, sweeter way...
Let the pond be quite clear. The bromancer is quite clear. He's clear that it's perfectly fine to do what has to be done to defend a serial pussy groper and snake oil salesman and con artist and spiv and criminally corrupt man who attempted a coup, albeit a profoundly comical one involving comical Ali's of the Rudy kind ...
And what of the debased, shabby, poisonous nature of News Corp and Faux Noise which enabled the whole wretched comedy?
Alas, there the bromancer falls silent, what with him being a feature, not a bug, in the whole criminal enterprise, and routinely invited on to the ABC to spread his poison, and all that's left is the hope that a suitable home might be found for all the criminal conspiracies to be found in politics and journalism ...
Oh, Bromancer - we all know that you’re not quite as dumb as a box of hammers, but it’s almost cute when you try to give the impression that you are. Today’s offering has it all - Hillary’s emails, Hunter’s laptop, Hunter’s dodgy former business associate and his “compelling “ evidence, Sleepy Joe, look over there, same-same, looming US civil war, and possibly best of all, citing the ghost of William F Buckley Jr in the form of the National Review - a publication that makes Quadrant or the Aussie Spec look like socialist collectives - as some sort of objective, credible source.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Pell gets a gurnsey too. Of course he does.
Saying that the Bro’s hysterical contribution is a pile of steaming crap is almost superfluous, and probably a gross insult to all fresh deposits of bodily waste. I wonder though, yet again, whether his rants are ever subject to editorial attention. I know that he’s described as “Foreign Editor”, but like a lot of Greg’s output this reads as though he’s banged out several thousand words of spiel in a single burst, pushed “send” without bothering to read or revise, and whichever junior Reptile receives it has done pretty much the same, dumping it into the mulch of the next edition without changing a word. At least I hope that’s the case - I’d hate to think that this was the carefully checked, revised, corrected and concise version
"Dame Slap has always been unfriendly and in recent times has verged on the sociopathic, such is the obsessive compulsive way she's gone about her unsavoury business. " Is she just trying hard to be Tuckyo's successor, or has she always been this bad. Does this really bring in crowds of readers and subscribers ?
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence, GB, made me wonder just what or who in the Oz might actually bring in readers & subscribers. Apart from corporate and government subscriptions, just many folk out there turn to either the digital or tree killer editions for genuine enlightenment or entertainment? Obviously there are some, particularly those of a conservative bent. There must also be at least a few who are still sucked by the corporate propaganda that the rag represents a national perspective and is genuinely informative, quality journalism. It’s difficult to believe though that squillions of folk turn to Ned or the Major in the belief that he has his finger on the pulse of the nation, or Henry for a distillation of the wisdom of the ages, or Dame Slap for a balanced, nuanced view on current issues, or the Bro for an informed, comprehensive discussion of defence and international issues, or the Cackler for “the women’s perspective”, or Dame Groan for well-researched, fact-based, statistically sound economic think-pieces? Does anyone find the Botherer’s the Caterist’s or Killer’s occasional attempts at wit and humour to actually be entertaining? Who out there believes that Polonius has something relevant to say, on a topic he hasn’t whinged about a hundred times before? Are there people who actually nod along thoughtfully with Sister Angela as she takes a break from the Rosary to bewail the terrible discrimination against Catholicism that is endemic in modern society? Hypothetically, there may be dedicated fans of any and all of them out there - but it’s hard to believe that many of them could’ve under 60.
DeleteHe's truly an aging and ineffective sad sack, our Ned: "How does creating in perpetuity an Indigenous political body in the Australian Constitution with separate and near unlimited advisory powers to parliament and government actually deliver a more united country?"
ReplyDeleteSo: "in perpetuity"- does that mean The Voice will still be here in a million years ? Or what exactly does "in perpetuity" mean ? Does it mean that this Voice can't just be arbitrarily stilled or ignored as all its 'predecessors' have been ?
"unlimited advisory powers" ? Now what does that mean exactly - that The Voice can say whatever it wishes to parliament or the executive (but not the judiciary) ? If so what do these "unlimited advisory powers" really achieve ? It doesn't control parliament or the executive, does it - so what does it achieve ? Other that some long denied attention to the needs and desires of the First Nation peoples ... and wouldn't that be at least just a teensy bit 'uniting' ?
I wonder if Ned has grave concerns about the current Constitution, as it exists “in perpetuity” until it’s amended by referendum. I was also under the impression that any of us can advise the government - indeed, a few of us can do so via tedious, long-running newspaper columns - though unless we’re doing so through some form of representative body, governments aren’t too likely to take much notice of our advice. But of course Ned doesn’t look at this issue in a logical, restrained manner - he’s a very old bloke who’s trembling behind a locked door, terrified that these uppity black fellows will somehow be coming to take his house and yard - or even worse, his newspaper sinecure.
Delete"...he's the perfect quisling..." Yep, indeed playing the (small-l) liberal while actually being an entrenched reactionary - that's the Doggy Bov all the way: "I fear a vast, open and optimistic country will have shrunk overnight; shrivelled like a billabong in a drought." And that's our Boverer: providing cover for the meeja's most dedicated shivellers.
ReplyDeleteUmm "shrivellers"
DeletePopehat says "The National Review also flat-out lies."
ReplyDeleteBromacer the fawning fool says "The National Review, the magazine founded by the legendary [Ed.in my mind] Wlliam F. Buckley Jr and the most venerable conservative journalist in America"
Anonymous1 get is right "the National Review - a publication that makes Quadrant or the Aussie Spec look like socialist collectives - as some sort of objective, credible source."
Why is the bromancer hiding the "most venerable"...Willi Schlamm? - Wikipedia; "Schlamm encouraged William F. Buckley, Jr.to found the conservative magazine, National Review, with Buckley as the sole owner. Schlamm became a senior editor but was later fired by Buckley.[4] He then became associate editor of the John Birch Society's journal, American Opinion.[5]". Oh John Birch Sic. must be outside even the Oz's Overton.
Popehat says "The National Review also flat-out lies." From...
"People Are Lying To You About The Trump Indictment
"National Review Is Lying, For Instance. There Will Be More. Keep An Eye Out."
https://popehat.substack.com/p/people-are-lying-to-you-about-the
Vox re Vidal and Buckley -
"The pair's debating style has left the realm of political commentary and taken up residence in actual politics."
[Worse luck!]
...
"Famously, the whole thing ended with Vidal calling Buckley a "crypto-Nazi"and Buckley threatening — on live TV! — to "sock" the "queer." ABC got what it wanted: a spot back atop the ratings heap."
"And American political discourse has never really recovered."
"Best of Enemies is about Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr., but it might as well be about the 2016 election"
https://www.vox.com/2016/10/3/13081784/best-of-enemies-gore-vidal-william-buckley-pbs
And Buckley quashing a 35yo article by Vidal "Reprinted WITHOUT the permission of Esquire, The Hearst Corporation or the author." From...
"A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley Jr."
by Gore Vidal
"Can there be any justification in calling a man a pro crypto Nazi before ten million people on television?
Originally published in Esquire, September 1969
"Reprinted WITHOUT the permission of Esquire, The Hearst Corporation or the author.
_ _ _ _ _
"In a letter that appears in The National Review on December 31, 2004 and on their website at :
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document200412140834.asp
"the editors, acolytes of William F. Buckley Jr., crow over the court victory that enabled Buckley to quash the reprinting of an article Esquire originally published in 1969. Esquire editors who were not aware of the libel action Buckley brought against Esquire at the time included Vidal's essay a collection entitled Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing, published in 2003. The book was recalled in order to enforce Buckley's original libel action and prevent public dissemination, even thirty-five years later, of Vidal's version of the debates that the two authors conducted during the Republican and Democratic Presidential Nominating Conventions of 1968. Esquire was also required to make available, on line and off, copies of Buckley's original attack on Vidal, published in their August 1969 edition. This article was Vidal's response to Buckley in the following issue.
"More on the controversy can be found at:
[Links and more - worth a read]
https://web.archive.org/web/20050216165523/http://www.columbia.edu/~tdk3/vidalesquire69.html
The Bro: "Millions of Americans, and the vast majority of Republicans ..." Is it worth recalling the precise results of the 2020 presidential election ? Trump got 74,223,975 votes and Biden got 81,283,501. So just maybe "Millions of Americans and the vast majority of Republicans" still isn't enough to come anywhere near winning.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, the reptile story is that: "America needs to move on from both these deeply unattractive, self-seeking and vindictive old men." Right, so that's the 'Big Lie' this time around: no matter how bad Trump and his family and minions have been, Biden and his son Hunter and the US government have been at least as bad, if not worse.
The only thing I really don't get is why the local Murdochians - especially the 'The Australian' lot - are so keen on pushing this bullshat here; us Aussies don't actually get a vote yet do we ? And if not, what's the point ?