Meanwhile, Polonius proceeded to explain how we were all racists back then, so what's wrong with being a racist, or perhaps a colonialist, or perhaps an imperialist, or perhaps a jingoist ...
What's notable about this? Not a single mention of it all being the fault of the ABC, which doesn't have Polonius on its staff and is therefore responsible for everything, but plenty of sly innuendo and celebration of what fossil fuels are doing to the planet ...
What a pity the pond used up all its climate cartoons yesterday. Oh what the heck, there might be one new reader ...
At this point, the pond was prompted by Polonius to recall several things.
...If you’re a crap cartoonist, sign the petition, leave your mark, or draw a tiresome picture of a tiny Digger wielding a pen, saying “Nothing funny about not getting a fair go” to protect that most venerable of Aussie traditions from The Bulletin onwards — sleazy, terrible visual jokes confirming our prejudices.
Yrs,
AK, JL, WB, JS and others
The pond couldn't work out all the initials and the readership was also troubled, though it seems obvious enough that the spawn of Leak, a Spoonerism and a how now brown cow were in the signatories ...
And then there was the strange case of Leunig. The pond slipped back to Junkee on 25th October 2021.
Of course he wasn't really dumped, just moved sideways, and he still hangs around in L'Age, and the pond thinks of it as a Melbourne thing, like those mindlessly moronic football songs that have been pounded into Melburnians, in a way worse than years of being made to read Mao's little red book or eat fried dim sims with soy sauce in the corner store...
Sorry, the topic was Leunig ...
Michael Leunig has officially been axed from The Age after his controversial anti-vax cartoon last month. His self-published comparison of Melbourne’s vaccination efforts to the Tiananmen Square massacre proved to be the final straw for the Fairfax newspaper, where the cartoonist had been contributing weekly to since the 1980s.
Leunig told The Australian his contract ending was a ‘purge’ and sarcastically acknowledged that “apparently, I’m out of touch with the readership”.
76-YEAR-OLD WHITE MALE CARTOONIST AXED AFTER BEING SHIT AT HIS JOB FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS.#AUSPOL #LEUNIG
— LEJUAN (@LUCIENLOLZ) OCTOBER 24, 2021
The competitor outlet reported that the piece in question was an “anti-Dan Andrews” cartoon, in which Leunig drew a tank with a needle as the gun barrel, pointed at a solo man in reference to the famous Beijing figure ‘Tank Man’ who stood up to the Chinese military in the name of free speech over 30 years ago. However, a better, more direct justification for his departure is his consistent anti-vax messaging, given the cartoonist has taken swing at different jabs since at least 2015.
After The Age chose not to publish the cartoon, Leunig posted it on his own social media accounts, and received immediate backlash for being insensitive, privileged, and disrespectful. “People were murdered en masse in June 1989,” Melbourne writer Elizabeth Flux responded at the time. “For daring to speak up for a democratic future. For hoping for more freedom.”
“To even try and compare that to being asked to get vaccinated for the good of your community, for the good of your own health…it is not even in the same [realm],” she said.
The Age‘s editor Gay Alcorn reportedly told Leunig that his political thoughts weren’t “in line with public sentiment”, with him retorting that he was trying to “challenge the status quo” against “censorious” readers.
“I come from an earthy working class perspective and values system, but that perspective increasingly seems out-of-touch with The Age‘s cosy, inner-city mindset these days,” he said.
WHENEVER THEY USE THE PHRASE "INNER – CITY MINDSET", YOU KNOW THEY'VE LOST THE ARGUMENT. IT'S AKIN TO RESORTING TO CALLING SOMEONE AN UGLY MOLE BECAUSE THEY DISAGREED WITH YOU.#LEUNIG
— THELMA PARKER (@THELMAJCPARKER) OCTOBER 24, 2021
“I have pulled multiple cartoons by Leunig, almost entirely on the grounds that they expressed anti-vaccination sentiment,” said Alcorn on the matter. “We don’t mind cartoonists challenging the readers. We encourage diversity of thought, but I had a concern with cartoons perceived as anti-vaccination.”
Perhaps Leunig should’ve stuck to drawing ducks instead.
That reminded the pond of Leunig's tendency to draw exceptionally wretched and twee cartoons featuring ducks and creatures with curly hair and whatever ... while at the same time being an anti-vaxxer, an enthusiastic cheerleader for ignorance, and so deluded he thinks of himself as a hearty earthy working class worker up against the inner-city mindset ... while idly making a living cartooning for L'Age.
Is it possible for anyone to be up themselves more comprehensively? You really need an L. Ron Hubbard to reach that level of delusion.
Well the pond isn't going to ruin a perfect record by running a Leunig cartoon to prove the point, so best return to Polonius, diligently explaining how we were all once racists, so what's wrong with racism?
What the pond most dislikes is the way that the reptiles never allow anyone to stray outside the hive mind and the paywall.
It would have been perfectly easy for the reptiles to link to that bio in ADB ... it's here, and this is the par in question ...
Inspired by what he saw on regular visits to the United States (to California above all), Walkley dreamed of an Australian continent holding 150 million people, especially if the government built highways for settlement and defence, and diverted coastal rivers inland. The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme provided a triumphant example of publicly funded infrastructure, creating the conditions for private investment, both large and small. In 1961 Walkley contributed an article to the Sydney Morning Herald series, 'If I ran this country'. He began by saying that, 'under-populated and under-developed', Australia 'will cease to be a white man's country . . . Australians are but a drop of white in a sea of colour that teems with more than 1,200 million land-hungry Asiatics'. Immigration made sense to him on a personal level: he was a migrant (and the son of migrants) who returned regularly to London, the city that his parents had left in hope of betterment. Moreover, immigration made sense for his core business, the sale of motor oils.
Sadly, oils aren't what oils used to be, and as for his good deeds, it was mainly sporty stuff ... no doubt because that's the best way to produce healthy Ayrans who will fight for Lebensraum ...
Ampol targeted the sporting public by sponsoring contests that ranged from polocrosse to fishing. O'Callaghan and Walkley, both ardent golfers, established the Ampol tournament in 1947. By the mid-1950s it was the richest tournament outside the United States. The company paid leading American and other foreign golfers to play in Australia. As Australian representative (1957) on the International Golf Association, Walkley arranged for the seventh annual Canada Cup to be held at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in 1959. The company put up half the money and he chaired the organizing committee, of which the governor of Victoria was honorary president.
The pond thought it would dig a little further, and came up with the good oil, though you probably have to click on it to make it readable ...
The pond left in that hint of a Code of Ethics for Corporations for anyone wanting to visit the page here (it's on page two)... what with it being an amusing sideline to recent discussions of corporations ...
The revealing bit came in the first three columns ...
As a correspondent noted, a lot of these establishers of awards, be they Nobel or Pulitzer or Walkley, have feet of clay, and do it out of guilt, or to sanitise and cleanse, and it's simply no excuse to say that we were all racists then, though it's understandable for Polonius, who never really left the 1950s or the NCC ...
A bigger question is why cartoonists can't take themselves seriously. After all, if an addle-brained Polonial loon thinks he sounds serious, he really should try to look on the lighter side ...
And so to a bonus, and here the pond was badly stretched by its handing out of so many red cards to so reptiles attempting to do over the Voice, as if there wasn't a howling pack of mutton Duttons already to hand. It meant there'd be no "Ned", no Dame Slap, no dog botherer, but deep down, the pond didn't mind ...
So that's how the pond ended up back with Jack from a few days ago, trawling through a cult, and reminding the pond of its enduring fascination with cults.
The pond tried to explain this interest in cults to a friend over lunch the other day, but the friend simply didn't understand.
The pond began to expound on all the assorted cults that had provided entertainment ... the Brexit cult, the NRA cult which resulted in mass killings, the GOP cult that had many branches of weirdness, the QAnon cult, which was really just the GOP in drag, the cult of fascist leaders, and the cult of screwing people to make a quick quid, otherwise known as American Hustle... because the sooner you can get them into a cult, the quicker you can fleece them ...
Of course the pond grew up in one of the biggest cults of all, the Catholic church, and it's perhaps best to get all the snaps of the cultists featured in the yarn out of the way ...
And the pond doesn't propose to go down the path of the latest scandal, involving a sordid rapist protected by the cultists, though Jack did go there ...
But the pond would like to marvel at the yarn behind the cult. It was
featured in the LA Times way back in November 1985 when the paper got hold of secret documents containing the cults most sacred beliefs, and as you'd expect of a sci fi hack, they were pure space opera ...
...Scientology is widely known for its use of “auditing,” a form of one-on-one counseling in which a lie detector-like instrument called an E meter is used to help a person erase negative experiences, assertedly freeing him to achieve his full potential. The group bases its beliefs on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the reclusive science-fiction writer who in the early 1950s published the best seller “Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health.”
What is rarely discussed, however, is Hubbard’s secret teachings, which reveal his thoughts on why mankind has been plagued by problems through history, the topic of the disputed documents.
Before Scientology attorneys had requested an order to seal the documents, The Times obtained them from the court file. Generally, they suggest that a major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeach, was part of a confederation of 90 planets under the leadership of a tyrannical ruler named Xemu. Then, as now, the materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation.
Xemu, the documents state, decided to take radical measures to overcome the overpopulation problem. Beings were captured on Earth and on other planets and flown to at least 10 volcanoes on Earth.
The documents state that H-bombs far more powerful than any in existence today were dropped on these volcanoes, destroying the people but freeing their spirits--called thetans-- which attached themselves to one another in clusters.
After the nuclear explosions, according to the documents, the thetans were trapped in a compound of frozen alcohol and glycol and, during a 36-day period, Xemu “implanted” in them the seeds of aberrant behavior for generations to come. When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.
Before a Scientologist can learn about these thetans and how to eradicate them, he must go through a progression of costly programs.
In arguing to keep the court documents sealed, the church has told its members that it could be physically and spiritually harmful for them to learn about the upper levels of Scientology before they have mastered the preparatory courses.
Scientology’s chief attorney, Earle Cooley, said outside the courtroom Monday that unsealing the materials amounted to “the biggest threat to this religion so far.”
He said the materials were stolen from the church and altered to hold the church’s beliefs up to “ridicule, hatred and contempt”--allegations that attorneys for Wollersheim deny.
It's a very rare day that the pond will
link to the Daily Mail, but just this once the header said it all,
Inside Danny Masterson's life as a Scientologist: How actor grew up in a close family dedicated to its teachings until his dad was kicked out for rejecting them while church lawyers 'protected' devoted star when rape claims first emerged ...
There were a couple of lines the pond liked ...
Masterson said it wasn't until high school that he started taking his participation in the church more seriously. He said he read Dianetics, a book of ideas written by the Church Of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard
It wasn't until Masterson was 15 years old - when both Joe and Carole were both lay members of the church - that he started to study the book Dianetics: The Modern Science Of Mental Health, a set of pseudoscientific ideas created by the Church's founder L. Ron Hubbard that studies the 'metaphysical relationship' between the mind and body.
'[Hubbard] basically spent his entire life studying every great religion, found everything that worked, found things that didn't work, took the stuff that worked, started like questioning it and grilling it and drilling it, going over and over until he could find the things that worked every time, guaranteed,' Masterson said.
Xenu worked every time, guaranteed? And then there were a few quotes in this
Business Insider yarn featuring a film about the cult ...
As Gibney says via narration in the film, "He would write that he sunk two Japanese subs. But in fact, just off the coast of Oregon, he opened fire on what turned out to be a log and dropped most of his depth charges on underwater magnetic rocks. When he accidentally shelled a Mexican island, he was relieved of his command."
"Going Clear" director Alex Gibney obtained Northrup's recollections of her time with Hubbard. Northrup wrote that Hubbard wooed her by saying he “was a war hero” and that he was the captain of a ship that was downed in the Pacific. He also reportedly told her that he “spent weeks on a raft, had been blinded by the sun, and his back was broken” during his time at war. The HBO doc found his 900-page military records revealing the only maladies he ever suffered were mild arthritis and conjunctivitis.
And there was this at the start of the yarn ...
Hubbard published over a thousand books and holds the Guinness World Record for the number of books published, according to the film. In fact, he also holds Guinness records for the most translated author, most audio books published by an author, and most translated author of the same book ("The Way to Happiness").
Most of his writing was science fiction, specifically about missions into space — themes that would later come up again in Scientology's unbelievable theory of how the world began.
The pond knew there was a reason too much bad sci fi was bad for the mind and is grateful it stayed with the Sheckleys and the Sturgeons and the Vonneguts ...
Back to Jack ...
And that brings the pond back to that harrowing story in the Daily Snail ...
...Masterson grew up in a family that practiced Scientology. His step-father Joe Reaiche and mother Carole Masterson had been members of the Sea Org, the 'clergy' of the controversial faith.
Danny Masterson was nine when his parents moved into the Sea Org's Clearwater, Florida, headquarters, having signed obligatory contracts vowing allegiance to the church for 'a billion years.'
Joe previously told DailyMail.com in 2015 how being a Sea Org was tantamount to 'slave labor' as he and Carole worked 60 or 70 hour weeks for $30 a week.
'You're basically signing your soul away,' he said. 'And it goes from bad to worse at that point,' he said.
Joe said he decided to part with the church after seeing the punishments they rolled out.
He recalled in 2015: 'I saw things. People in their boiler room outfits with a black band on their left arm and they have to run from station to station, they can't talk, they can't eat with the rest of the members.
'They're basically ridiculed and abused. It's horrible but that's what happens. Once you're in it you just say you've got to avoid it.
Joe and his wife left the Sea Orgs in 1986 and they became lay members of the church. Their family uprooted to California and the children, including Danny, started to audition for acting roles.
Joe then got a job in New York and the family moved to Garden City in Long Island where, in 1988, Alanna was born.
Both Carole and Joe were still taking course after course on the Church of Scientology's insistence that it was necessary and shelling out tens of thousands of dollars each year.
It became a strain on their relationship with the church and on the marriage. A failed business venture that ended up costing him thousands placed even more pressure on the already strained union and, in 1995, Carole and Joe divorced.
By then, Joe admitted, he was 'just done' with Scientology. He said in 2015: 'You begin to lose the faith and you start to see that you're buying the idea of being a supreme being but that's not being delivered.
'And you can't see anyone for whom it is being delivered. They said they could deliver telekinesis and I started to question can they really deliver the product?
'It's like I went to buy a Ferrari for $180,000 and you deliver a Mazda or a Toyota, then you've ripped me off. You've deceived me.'
Telekinesis as a product? But there are thousands of such tales of woe - the pond was once rammed by a car driven by a struggling actor who'd come down from the bush and hooked up with the cult, and didn't have a penny or car insurance to her name.
The pond developed the thesis that actors are particularly vulnerable because some have no centre, they play many roles but they struggle to play themselves, and so seek outside props and signs of meaning...
Never mind, as Jack noted the High Court sold the country down the river, and we've been a home for the cult ever since ...
The pond thinks that all the cults should be stripped of their tax exempt status, especially the ones ripping off the government to provide what was once government services. When you think about it, Xenu isn't that far from a burning bush, the Garden of Eden and the whole shebang flung together in seven days ...
But in case the pond is started to sound too high and mighty, too rational and coherent, the pond should acknowledge it too is in the grip of a cult ... the cult of reptiles.
How weird is this cult?
Beyond the valley of the deeply weird, and the pond cites these letters to the lizard Oz as proof of how the cult can warp the brain beyond repair ...
Dammit, they actually like it, they take it seriously. No wonder the pond prefers serious cartoonists...
L. Ron Hubbard and Henry Ergas, peas in a cult pod ...
But as the pond tried to explain the enduring appeal of cults to the pond's clueless friend, they finally began to understand the corollary: if there were no cults, what would we do for entertainment?
What would cartoonists do for cartoons? Even TT can see that the cults are good for business ...
The wonderful thing about commenting on the views of a pedant is that it allows free licence to our own inner pedant. Polonius admonishes critics of Walkley’s views, saying that they were clearly set out in an entry written for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (a publication that doubtless has pride of place in every Australian home) back in 2002. Hendo then states that the author of that sketch “cited Walkley’s comment of some six decades previously”. If, however, that sketch was written in 2002, and it refers to an article published in 1961, then surely Polonius should have stated that this was four (and a little bit….) decades earlier, rather than six?
ReplyDeleteOf course this is a minor error, and would normally be dismissed as such. In the case of Polonius, though, I believe that we need to apply a higher standard - this after all is a fierce and inflexible critic of the slightest error in the conservative-free ABC and such leftist rag as the SMH, Age and Saturday Paper. For his own honour and reputation-such as it is - Polonius must immediately issue a written apology and retraction, cease contributing to the Lizard Oz and close his blog forever. He could then perhaps embark on a new career as a cartoonist.
But you know, Anony, that Polonius always relates everything to himself; so from his perspective - of the entirely 'himself here and now' state - it was six decades ago.
DeleteThe withdrawal of most of the decent cartoonists from the Walkleys will at least shine a long-overdue spotlight on some of Australia’s numerous really crap cartoonists. I’d add Spooner in the Lizard Oz to those listed above; he has the amazing ability to make Leak Jr look like a master of wit and style by comparison.
ReplyDeleteAustralia has a long and proud history of producing untalented, conservative political cartoonists. I have particularly dreary childhood memories of two who worked for the Sydney Morning Herald for many years; Molnar, who was a Professor of Architecture and could at least sketch, though I don’t think he realised that a sense of humour was useful in cartooning, and Emeric, who could neither joke nor draw; he’s my personal nominee for this country’s worst-ever political cartoonist. No doubt correspondents with a less NSW-centric upbringing than mine will have other suggestions.
:)³ Talk about evoking great memories ...
DeleteAnonymous - Humourless conservatism was sustained in Queensland, in the 'Curious Snail' by the aptly-named Ian Gall. His work was similar to that of many cartoonists that we used to see in the odd UK paper - fairly ordinary drawing, with every item requiring a label so the reader could, perhaps, work out the funny part. Gall imagined himself to be an artist of talent because he also contributed to a kind of 'nature notes' column - bits of folklore about flora and fauna, most often fish - but difficult to recognise from his sketches. Still, clearly, he suited the editorial line, and, it seems, was a fishing companion of Hiley - prominent Liberal polly, sometime leader, for much of the '50s and 60s.
DeleteOh - maintaining the NSW cultural tradition, I see the spawn of Leak has the temerity to 'adapt' the truly famous Stan Cross 'For gorsake stop laughing' for the Flagship this weekend. It rather emphasizes the lack of any of the desirable talents for cartooning manifest in the later Leak.
But, Anonymous, NSW was not all bad. Brisbane's evening 'Telegraph' carried the whimsical work of Emile Mercier, who, mercifully, did not attempt to engage in the politics of Queensland, but rather entertained us with his great sketches of inner Sydney and its inhabitants. He also produced remarkable comic books - his 'Supa Dupa Man' was almost a harbinger of the classic days of 'Mad'.
When there's 7 or 8+ billion of us, then all sorts of things go on that nobody has ever heard of; except perhaps for you and DP.
DeleteThe only Leunig I ever liked:
ReplyDeletehttps://th.bing.com/th/id/R.41d53a01a617a94785db1b4a2d9c6f87?rik=w%2bzpKru%2bGJPo6w&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.leunig.com.au%2fimages%2fgalleries%2fcartoons%2fwhat-bottle.jpg&ehk=LwNL%2fsy2bLefaDmENZoMAq1M%2f0YET%2fq9lCwUoQBTGjM%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
:)³ Bottler
DeleteRe Walkley's bit of racism, Polonius would like to say that: "he wrote this less than two decades after the end of the Pacific War when Australia's security was threatened by imperial Japan." Now it may come as a shock to Polonius, but Australia's war against Japan involved those strange non-white peoples such as the 'fuzzy wuzzy angels':
ReplyDelete"Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was the name given by Australian soldiers to Papua New Guinean war carriers who, during World War II, were recruited or forced into service to bring supplies up to the front and carry injured Australian troops down the Kokoda trail during the Kokoda Campaign."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Wuzzy_Angels
"In June 2008, Australian senator Guy Barnett called for his country's Parliament to give official recognition to Papua New Guineans' courage and contributions to the war effort.
I was stunned to learn that Australia has not officially recognised these wonderful PNG nationals who saved the lives of Australian servicemen. They carried stretchers, stores and sometimes wounded diggers directly on their shoulders over some of the toughest terrain in the world. Without them I think the Kokoda campaign would have been far more difficult than it was."
:)³ Wrapped in the cocoon of delusion and white privilege, it probably comes as a surprise to Polonius that racism was a little more complicated during the war years, unless you happened to think that Aryanism was the future. (Think also of the help the Timorese provided at some fair cost).
Deletehttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-am-tired-of-earth-these-people
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbnpuQgaXkQ
Walkley: "The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme provided a triumphant example of publicly funded infrastructure, creating the conditions for private investment, both large and small." Oh dear, Ms Rand would be having apoplexy, but Walkley got it right: get other people to pay for every big and little thing that you can. Then "maximise your profit" from it all.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, what about that Xenu thing:
"There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, though nearly all of them have regionally based, relatively small followings. Four religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—account for over 77% of the world's population, and 92% of the world either follows one of those four religions or identifies as nonreligious, meaning that the remaining 9,000+ faiths account for only 8% of the population combined."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
I guess scientology would be one of those 9000+ "faiths". But as for Masterson's parents, well they're just following that ancient wisdom: if you don't have to sacrifice, then it isn't worth anything.
Yep. Jack almost seems to have forgotten some long-ago-Treasurer's (in)exclusive brethrenship with the Xenuites, and the Commonwealth Solicitor's role, besides, in bringing the scientism(s) of freedom of religion(s) to freedom(s) from taxation(s), to these ancient shores, in his almost-catholic account.
ReplyDelete