In which the pond meets a couple of colossal wrecks and foresees the end ...

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, a prescient poet, foreshadowed the end a long time ago:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Rupert Murdoch, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

And so eventually it came to pass ...

Funnily enough, the randy old goat cared so little about the lizard Oz that he made his announcement US time, leaving the tree killer edition to miss the news, and Carry on Covid regardless ...

So little in his dotage did he care for his colonial spawn ...

It's also a big day for the pond. Many years ago the pond swore on the skull of the Phantom's father that there would be an end to blogging the day that chairman Rupert died, or that News Corp went bankrupt, or was sold off to another entity.

The pond gives the randy old goat six months as "chairman emeritus", as he watches his inept spawn drive the company into the ground - Lachy isn't the sharpest spanner in the shed - and that will be time for the pond to call it quits. 

Frankly you can't give away the stuff they serve up at the lizard Oz, and blogging as a format is the proverbial Norwegian blue ... and these days the pond only does it for the comments and the poems.

So today is something of an anticipatory celebration. It's not quite the end, but it's the beginning of the end, and what better way to start the end times than with a terrific bout of epic brown nosing by an expert in the art ...

It had to be nattering "Ned" of course. What other News Corp brown noser could possibly do the job, smoothing out the wrinkles, forgetting the criminality, celebrating the man who has done more in his lifetime to ruin the United States, the UK, Australia and the planet.

When you think of other media moguls - Berlusconi, Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black, Subhash Chandra, Kerry Packer, Ted Turner, Jeff Bezos and so on - they all pale up against the ruination that chairman Rupert has supervised and encouraged, all in the name of personal greed ...

Even latter day eccentric weirdo billionaires can only manage small scale dumpster fires ...

... up against what chairman Rupert wrought with Faux Noise and the coming of the mango Mussolini.

Of course when brown nosing, no need to mention any of that ... just keep the nose well in place ...

Ah yes, breaking the unions ...

And a sense of mission? And a billionaire blathering about elites? What a contemptible man he was, and is, and how naked and transparent is the huckterism and the boosterism, and only a clown in his carnival of clowns of the order of a "Ned" could swallow the notion that chairman Rupert wasn't part of the 'leets ...

At this point the reptiles introduced the first of a number of hagiographic snaps, and the pond ran them together in the now standard way ...

That snap of the chairman clutching The Sun reminded the pond that they still maintain the rage in Liverpool ...

Back to the expert brown nosing ...

Ah, Faux Noise, and the contemptible Sky after dark, and what's the proudest achievement of Faux Noise? A party in thrall to an authoritarian leader of a coup and yet too frightened to call it out ...

And now Chairman Rupert has trotted off to pasture, and left the mango Mussolini and chaos behind ...

A Big Australia? So we should all cash in our citizenship for a mess of pottage, and head off to the United States in the name of personal and corporate greed?

He's a bloody Yank, by choice and by greed, and not even an expert brown noser blathering about Big Australia can hide it ...

Rupert Murdoch was heckled by some members of the audience today when he was named the most influential Australian of all time - despite being an American citizen.

Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, one of the world's largest media empires, headed a list of 100 notable Australians compiled by the Bulletin magazine.

The 75-year-old press baron, whose business interests include the Times, the Sun and the American Fox film and television conglomerate, said at the award lunch that he was "very humbled" by the accolade. He told reporters in Sydney that there were others on the list who had "done a great deal more to improve the whole world".

The expression of modesty did not impress some members of the audience. A local union activist and environmental campaigner who interrupted him asked: "How can the most influential Australian of all time be an American?"

Mr Murdoch, who was born in Melbourne, relinquished his Australian citizenship in 1985 to become an American citizen, allowing him to clear a legal hurdle that blocked non-citizens from owning US television stations. (Graudian).

It's just another big lies, innate for a man who specialises in big lies ... imagining he can be Australian or American, as it suits his sentiments and his wallet, and the brown nosers will go along with him... especially if, in the process, they can polish up their own hypocrisy, as you'd polish a turd and imagine it a diamond ...

Robust in challenging the intellectual orthodoxy of the progressive establishment?

And so to US politics today ...

And so to a short final gobbet of brown nosing ...

His ongoing role as "Chairman Emeritus", the sort of 'leet title only a billionaire ponce member of the 'leet class might dream up? 

The pond gives him and this blog six months, but in that time we can celebrate the culture he's produced ...

Meanwhile, down below, in the comments section, the lizard Oz commentariat were caught short and there was no sign of more brown nosing ...

Cackling Claire doing more tranny bashing? Yeah, nah, and ditto for the Covid carry on, and especially the oscillating fan ... and so there was no one else to offer as a bonus but the hole in the bucket man, and he produced something of a cosmic ripper, so good that the pond reluctantly decided not to red card it because of the apocalyptic denunciation of the Voice. There's more than enough full throated hysteria to go around on just about everything ...

Sometimes when a bigot goes into full featherless flight, the spectacle is worth the cost, especially as the silly old loon somehow thinks his burblings represent "common sense" and are somehow "quintessentially Australian" ...

Splendid stuff, and the remnants of the wretched lizard Oz graphics department finally have to admit that they now do their graphics shopping at iStock ... as low rent as you can get ...

And as climate has been mentioned, and it's going to be a long haul, a Broelman in lieu of an infallible Pope ...

Now on with the bigot in full Xian rant, because when you don't have a clue about actual climate science, always go the Xian rant...

The pond will concede that the pompous, portentous old bigot isn't firing on all cylinders, what with the emphasis on Xian nonsense, and the confusing and conflating of religion and science, with a dash of Schopenhauer thrown in.

The result is a distinct lack of classical references of the usual humbug kind ...

There'll be no talk of Macedonians, nor any mention of Thucydides this day ... just an apocalyptic denunciation of apocalyptic thinking, a ranting and a raving, which suggests our hole in the bucket man might not be that convinced by Xian fervour, and that perhaps the rapture isn't just around the corner, and we're going to get a long hot summer in lieu of hell ...

Keating's cultural nationalism is of course a vile and disgusting thing ...

What do we need in its place? Why, didn't the pond just read this?

The Australian, ultimately, is unique because it aspires to represent the whole nation, not one segment. Rupert was always the arch-enemy of the Little Australia brigade; he always wanted a Big Australia, looking outwards, not inwards, standing up for what it believed, having influence in the world.

And there's the acclaim that greeted Rupert Murdoch's cultural nationalism, as performed by a Yank ...

And that's why the pond is looking forward to retirement, and then there'll be no need to downsize reptile snaps, reflexively shoved in to break up the Henry ranting, because you can only take so much before you need a shot of former Chairman Rudd having a cuddle ...

Heck, if we're going to show a politician having a cuddle, the pond can slip in a Luckovich ...

Now back to the ranting ... and this day your word for the day is Durkheim ...

And so our Henry reveals not so much the Rosseau in him as what might be called the Corporal Jones, with that disdain for the fuzzy wuzzies. Does he have the first clue how deep the racism is embedded within his imperial, colonial, Queen Victoria loving heart?

Probably not, but as always, after a full, highly emotional, verging on the hysterical, denunciation, there has to be a billy goat butt, and this day it takes the form of "That is not to deny" ... which is to say, that is not to deny that full blown hysteria and rampant emotion has its place in Henry's scribbling ... any hysteria you like, just don't mention the science ...

What to say? Nothing much. The hole in the bucket man's time has passed, he's just not up to recognising it, and to be fair, chairman Rupert had to get to 92 before he gave up the game ...

Meanwhile, our Henry might yearn for this ...

... but the pond will settle for the immortal Rowe of the day, it being as close to Covid as the pond needs to get ...