in which the pond admits the venerable Meade is a better herpetologist, but then has little to offer apart from a standard bro and a sexist lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

The pond swears it hadn't read the venerable Meade's So long and thanks for all the biffs: Murdoch press may miss the man they called Dictator Dan before compiling yesterday's outing (the pond had predicted the departure of comrade Dan would result in a crisis for the reptile business model).

The pond frequently rips off, or tips the hat, to the venerable Meade, as expert a herpetologist as can be found, but always acknowledges the rip or the tip. 

Of course the pond would have quoted the venerable Meade lock, stock and barrel if it had known ...

The Murdoch press made no secret of wanting Daniel Andrews out of power, but they may just miss covering the Victorian premier they labelled “Dictator Dan”. After all, he gave them a plethora of memorable headlines – including Danslide when he won the second of three elections in 2018.
Many a Herald Sun front page was built around a disdain for Andrews, particularly during the Covid lockdown of Melbourne. But the Labor politician made great tabloid fodder.
Material included everything from a fall down the stairs which broke his back, a car crash involving his wife, to decisions to remove level crossings and allow assisted dying and a safe injecting room. And he cancelled the Commonwealth Games.
The premier’s reputation as “Dictator Dan” hardened during Covid when media critics said his strict lockdowns were ruining the economy and a quarantine bungle gave them ample ammunition. The Herald Sun delivered the verdict “You Failed Victoria” in one headline about hotel quarantine policy in 2020.
The anti-Dan press was not confined to the state of Victoria. Over the border in New South Wales, News Corp’s Daily Telegraph was no fan either. The Sydney paper devoted its front page to Andrews on more than one occasion, with headlines such as “It’s God-Dan disgraceful”, “Dan-made disaster”, “Victoria bitter” and “Bordering on madness”. The Daily Telegraph’s editor Ben English defended his campaign and labelled the premier a “fool”.
There was no greater source of vitriol about Andrews than from Sky News host Peta Credlin, who famously clashed with Andrews at a press conference and later made a “documentary” titled The Cult of Daniel Andrews.
Andrews repeatedly refused to accept her line of questioning, saying: “I’m not going to stand here and have things put to me in an attempt to perhaps have them put to me so often that they become the truth.”
But it didn’t matter what Credlin and her colleagues threw at him, Andrews defied the bad press by winning three elections, convincingly, thereby triggering more irritation and a new nickname – Teflon Dan...

And so on and on, and the Terror chipping in reminded the pond that comrade Dan was just another sign of the war on Victoria.

Despite what might be called the RMIT effect, Melbourne is a civilised town. They have trams, and in the CBD they're free. They love style and black. The one thing that can be held against the small pack of rabid neo-Nazis roaming the streets in approved HUN style is that they refuse to dress in a manner befitting Nazis, who always had a sense of dress ... (take it from Hermann Göring) ...

Never mind, the point is that there's a deep resentment at the way that Victorians manage to get by, and as sure as the venerable Meade mentioned petulant Peta, there she was in the lizard Oz today ...

Brutal reign of madness? 

That is, and the pond says it with some understatement, a deeply psychotic headline, with so much resentment beneath, because clearly petulant Peta would have liked to have been a brutally effective political player, but got lumbered with the onion muncher ...

Meanwhile, the venerable Meade was using the reptile compulsive repulsive disorder for another story, Albanese says attacks on Dan Andrews ‘low point in journalism’ as News Corp vitriol continues after resignation.

The Sunday Herald Sun’s front-page photo of the stairs which broke Daniel Andrews’ back was a “low point in journalism”, Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday as the Victorian premier’s exit was farewelled with brickbats in much of the media.
Andrews’ electoral popularity over nine years was a “cult” and his legacy was nothing but a state “deep in debt”, according to the front pages of two major critics: Murdoch’s Herald Sun and national broadsheet the Australian.
“Dan cult over, bill left behind”, read the Australian front page. “Debt Man Walking”, said the Herald Sun...

And so on and on, rabid attack dogs at play, and yet there's no hope of sanity, with this in the lizard Oz today...

 

So don't win three elections in a row and thereby send the reptiles into a psychotic fury ...

Meanwhile, the psychosis explosion left the rag bereft ... and the pond short of anything to offer, as if the pond would pay attention to a lesser member of the Kelly gang celebrating Petey boy ...

That was just a footwarmer routine by an old sock for the appearance of Petey boy himself in the commentary section ...

You have to hand it to the reptiles, they drag old dullards of the Petey boy kind out of the woodwork at the drop of a hat, but as a result, the pond simply had no way to do a decent segue to the infallible Pope of the day... heck, no need for a segue, just run it, run it live ...

But after all that, the pond was bereft, because there was only the bromancer ranting in his usual way about the inability of the country to wage war with China by Xmas. At that point, the irony of Wood's reference to "armchair critics" was the best the pond could do for a cosmic joke ...

The last time the pond dipped into the bro, the pond seems to remember Xi and China were on their last legs, tottering about and ready to fall, like a cream puff paper dragon, but today he was back on his old hobby horse ...

The pond just has to pause to note that reference to the Keystone Cops, because the Keystone Cops were a pretty able slapstick comedy team.

It takes skill to do slapstick ... and the Golden Age was a time for vintage slapstick ...

If the reptiles ran the lizard Oz in half as good a style as the Keystone Cops, they'd have a half way decent newspaper. Instead they have petulant Peta screeching about reigns of madness, which is a kind of comedy, but abject and pitiful ...

Never mind, on with the bro, and instead of peanuts, this week it's nothingburgers and deck chairs, because never a cliché is left undisturbed by armchair bro ...

The pond has heard it all a zillion times before, but even the pond did a double take at the bromancer getting agitated about "cancelling that armour" ...

Once upon a time he never shut up about the need to cancel all that armour ...

And so on, and at this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of a chopper ...

It was around this point that the pond had realised it had been had. The bro needed to fill a column, and he didn't have petulant Peta's or Fergo's right to take the easy and cheap path to a column with a rant about dictator Dan, so he got himself a port, settled into the leather armchair in the club, had a yet another rant about him not being appointed chief of the defence force, and then spluttered a space filler about the military into the reptile void ...

What's this talk about building deterrence? Aren't we preparing for war with China by Xmas?

After the bro, all this left the pond short of a decent segue for the immortal Rowe of the day ...

But that does give the pond a chance to spend some quality time with the undisguised, unalloyed sexism on parade on the lizard Oz editorial department ...

Forget that Spooner cartoon. Something funny happened to Spooner, a bit like the tendency of lizard Oz cartoonists to fall off balconies ...

More to the point, why do the Joan Kirner routine? 

Please allow the pond to answer that rhetorical question. It's because they're both women, and as everyone at the lizard Oz knows, women are frail and inclined to hysteria (see petulant Peta), and so must be admonished and disciplined and brought into line for a good hectoring lecture ...

At this point a snap of Kirner was paraded ...

What a chance the reptiles missed to remind themselves of the real reason they hated Kirner ...

Ah, those were the days ... and so for a final gobbet of hectoring, and lecturing and admonishing ...

A new sense of possibility and purpose?  Jeff Kennett? He was the reason Labor had such a resurgence ...

That'd probably be part of the "Deeming-Kroger Effect", mentioned by a pond correspondent with a sense of humour ...

As for clipping the wings, of course the reptiles want to clip three election wins in a row in the bud, and so the pond was wrong. Dictator Dan might have gone away, say hello to the new Jacinda Adern ...

Ruthless streak!

Usually at this point the pond would end with a cartoon, but again is in urgent need of a segue, and surely the mango Mussolini provides an excuse ...

Cartoonists have been on a roll, valuing the estate ...

And Luckovich  has also been on a roll ...

And while it doesn't have anything to do with the mango Mussolini, damn it, the pond has been itching to run this one for days...

All the more so because it ran ... on Twitter, occasionally known as home to XXX ...