In which the pond stays true to herpetology students by delivering Polonius and the bro, but keeps getting distracted by trivia and 'toons ...

 

To state the bleeding obvious, it's Sunday, so please allow the pond to kick back heels and enjoy a few ironies before offering up a few reptiles, as is the duty and responsibility of a site dedicated to herpetology studies.

The Chairman gifted to the world the right to tell all sorts of lies in pursuit of greed and power, so it was with considerable relish that the pond read in The Daily Beast MAGA Media Warns Fox News Viewers: Lachlan Murdoch Is ‘Super Woke’ (paywall)

This is the world the Chairman devised: argument, division, the right to spruik nonsense, as in this sample ...

You could be as far right as Genghis Khan and still somewhere some Faux Noise inspired loon would be shouting at you "super woke".  

It's just as outlined in Jonathan Freedland's Rupert Murdoch's toxic legacy. The powerful can now blame the world's ills on 'the elite' ... the 'leet and the woke ... why even Howard Stern describes himself as woke ...

Another distraction. That pious humbug David Brooks posted this to uncle Elon's attempt to match the Chairman at baleful division and fruitless argument ...

35.6 million views! Airport food! And who could imagine anyone coming to the defence of airport food, unless it happened to involve a gormless twit wittering away...

Lordy, long absent lordy, was there a pile on or what. You need to be able to get past the WaPo paywall to read David Brooks and the $78 airport meal the internet is talking about, but you could head off to The New Republic for David Brooks Is Getting Absolutely Roasted Over His $78 Airport Meal, The New York Times columnist seems to have left out some details about his tab.

The Graudian ran with New York Times writer draws ire for blaming Biden’s economy for $78 airport meal.

There were a couple of fine moments in all of it. Jacob Bacharach posted a great mathematical zinger: A typical airport burger and fries is in the $18 dollar range; a typical double well whiskey rocks is in the $20 range. Solve for x: 18+20x=78. 

The pond was never good at maths and what if the babbling Brook was more in the $40 whiskey range? What would that do the maths and 'X'? (Yes, the pond saw his gormless apology on PBS News at the end of his session with Jonathan Capehart, and a deep pity for Capehart and PBS welled up, only to quickly vanish. If that's the company you keep ...)

Never mind, there was an inspiration for the pond's poetry-inclined comments section:

Bacharach wrote Brooks a sonnet: 

“[E]ven in New Jersey, one must scrounge / 

and scrape a scotch while waiting for a status bump / 

to first-select. This is what got us Trump.”

And then:

Black said: “It’s true, you guys. My family has had to cut back to only eating at airport restaurants four nights a week. THANKS JOE BIDEN!”

Sadly, it can't all be about fun. 

It can always be all about idle speculation ...at least for those who read John Cassidy's Rupert Murdoch Takes a Step Back - Not Away in The New Yorker (paywall) ...

What a chance to indulge in wild-eyed dreaming ...

...The apparent handover of power doesn’t completely settle things, however. When Murdoch dies, ultimate control of both his companies will pass to a family trust in which his four eldest children—Prudence, Lachlan, James, and Elizabeth—each have an equal vote. James, who held senior roles in the family companies before resigning in 2020, citing “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,” has long been viewed as an alternative (and less conservative) future leader of the Murdoch empire. If he could persuade his sisters to support him, he could theoretically oust Lachlan and take it in a different direction, or even sell it off.

All of that is just speculation. What is beyond dispute is that 2023 has been extremely trying for Murdoch and his businesses... 

Well yes, and over at the Graudian there was a vague hope that the Murdochan rags down under, including the lizard Oz, might end up in free fall ...

While Rupert’s decision to hand the keys of the empire, including the role of chairman of both News Corp and Fox Corp, to his eldest son ends speculation over his desired plan for succession, a future dispute between the Murdoch heirs could prompt a rethink of the newspaper assets.

Under a trust, four Murdoch children share jointly in the family stake. James has strongly criticised his family’s news outlets for downplaying the impact of climate change.

And then came this, the hard reality of Lachy and the company he keeps, per the Graudian ...Lachlan Murdoch endorses Tony Abbott to join Fox Corporation board of directors, Former Australian prime minister’s nomination revealed a day after Rupert Murdoch retired as chair of Fox and News Corp

Huzzah, a man with no discernible business skills, but with a deep narcissist need to be seen and talked about. Not here ...

In the end, the pond had to put aside its toys, and turn to prattling Polonius for a proper Sunday meditation ...

Frankly, and with no disrespect to the victorious students, the pond would rather be reading Haaretz and the sign that Benji has gone full Sharpie, mango Mussolin style ...

The trouble of course is that the barking mad far right calls these days come from inside the house ...

In such a predicament, Netanyahu showed up on Friday as a peace-seeking hippie. But all he did was to gaslight his listeners. Netanyahu avoided any reference to the greatest crisis in Israel's history and the unprecedented protest that gushed outside the UN building in Manhattan as he was speaking.

But he knew how to handle a sharpie and might well be able to chart the course of a hurricane with it ...

Meanwhile Polonius was still droning on with his prattle ...

Keen students of Polonius will note with some astonishment that to this point there hasn't been a single mention of it being the fault of the ABC, nor that the ABC lacks a single commentator of a conservative kind ...

For that sort of talk, you need to revert to the Weekly Beast ...

Amanda Vanstone may have been “counselled” by her ABC managers for calling Kamilaroi science expert Corey Tutt a “fuckwit” after she recorded an interview with him for her Radio National program Counterpoint, but she doesn’t sound sorry.

Tutt, on the other hand, told RN’s Awaye program that his family has been wounded by her comments and he doesn’t believe he received a sincere apology from the former Liberal senator.r

Vanstone is still defending herself on Twitter over the incident.

She says she wanted Tutt’s interview edited to “make him sound better” and complained her comments were only made public because Tutt “chose to advertise it”.

Vanstone also encouraged people to lobby Tutt to lift his ban on playing the interview so people could hear it for themselves: “Get him to authorise interview running”.

Vanstone was the ABC’s solution to calls by conservatives for a “right wing Philip Adams” and has been hosting the show on the ABC for 10 years.

The ABC declined to comment.

It seemed heaven-sent for Polonial comment - oh if only they'd given the plucky lad the gig, he could have bored listeners into submission without a single vulgarity - but the stout-hearted chap stayed true his new ABC avoiding course, and then proceeded to conflate and confuse anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Benji, and his far right mob of clowns, and the alarming shift of Israel into an authoritarian mugwump swamp ...

Meanwhile, reports have emerged of news of Israel in chaos, but sssh, don't disturb Polonius's doggie dreaming ...

Instead, celebrate. Astonishing really, not one mention of the ABC, and meanwhile Benji goes on his merry Sharpie-waving way without a single disapproving word from Polonius...

And so to the bromancer and his ongoing obsession with China. 

The pond only offers it because it's there and because it suggests that the bromancer's condition is incurable.

It seems only a short time ago China was in the grip of a power-crazed, all powerful dictator intent on war by Xmas, with the entire fanatical nation in his grip, a vast war mongering military behind him and ready for action, and yet now it seems that maybe all that was just an illusion dreamed by a butterfly bromancer ... for now there are questions to be asked about  dictator Xi's judgment and control ...

Strange, was Fred Teiwas referring to the bromancer demanding war with China by Xmas?

Never mind, as we stroll through the bromancer's latest transformation, the pond must insist on some news from the United States ...

Eech, that's one gigantic boil or pimple image that once seen can't be undone ... and now back to the bromancer discovering that the monolith might not be so monolithic ...

Yes, indeed, but what news of disappearances and ridiculous explanations and references to 'leets in the United States?

Back to the bromancer's red pill or given the Chinese tendency to favour red, should that be blue?

Indeed, indeed, it seems that it's all terribly mysterious, and to help out the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department offered a couple of big snaps which no doubt came cheaply from a library ...

The pond downsized them so it could find room for more anarchy from America ...

It's a good thing the bromancer is spending so much time establishing that China is a straw dog in disarray ...

Heaven and Earth are not humane.         

They regard all things as straw dogs.

The sage is not humane.

He regards all people as straw dogs.

Heck, do your own translation ...

天地不仁

以萬物為芻狗

聖人不仁

以百姓為芻狗

Now back to the decline and fall of the Xi empire, which means there might be no bro war by Xmas ...

A good question ... but you might as well ask what's going on in the United States and kink city...

Perhaps the straw dogs wiki has some advice ...

Before the grass-dogs [芻狗 chu gou] are set forth (at the sacrifice), they are deposited in a box or basket, and wrapt up with elegantly embroidered cloths, while the representative of the dead and the officer of prayer prepare themselves by fasting to present them. After they have been set forth, however, passers-by trample on their heads and backs, and the grass-cutters take and burn them in cooking. That is all they are good for.

Back to the trampling, with Xi in the grip of a dementia worthy of Nero or Caligula ...

As for the United States, no light is visible, unless you confuse the light with the light calling for Batman...

The pond isn't sure how illuminating these cartoons are for the bromancer's text, but the bromancer himself seems muddled and confused. 

Once the Chinese monolith seemed immutable, terrifying and in urgent need of destruction, but now it has feet of clay. Perhaps the pond was wrong to think of straw dogs, but rather the book of Daniel ...and that prophetic dreaming ...

...And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.

And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.

And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

What sayeth the bromancer, offering up the seed of men, or at least feet of clay?

So the iron man is insecure, and there's been an erosion of respect that almost matches the erosion of respect for Chairman Rupert? And what we have now is the braying of donkeys?

If only the bromancer had admitted he was completely clueless as to what's going down. How much time could have been saved ...

Could it be that he got it wrong about China being ready for war,  and Xi as a master politician and consummate war monger? Instead in this bro portrait, he sounds like a weak, insecure pussycat in need of a bowl of milk to give him the strength needed to maintain his tenuous grip on dictatorial power ...

No, wait, the first thing a timid pussycat must do is lash out and start a war to secure that bowl of milk ...

Say what? Now the entire country, crippled by corruption, might not be able to bung on a do much better than sociopathic Vlad managed in Ukraine? It looked solid to the bromancer, but next day it did not?

Well the pond has pandered to the bromancer long enough ... this one is for the red-carded Dame Slap ...

And that's enough of Rusty and Rudy, and the pond is surprised that Dame Slap didn't rush to Rudy's defence and stand with him outside Four SeasonsTotal Landscaping ...

Meanwhile, the pond fell into an introspective funk. What had happened to the heady days of the bromancer in full war momgering flight?

It was an inspiration and produced some fine pearls and irritations ...

Now the pond is left confused ...war by Xmas or a regime near collapse ... and with just one gobbet to go to sort it all out ...

So we don't have to do anything? We just have to sit back and watch the uneasy head being lopped, thanks to everything being a complete mess?

They say that Melbourne has four seasons in a day, but it's nothing compared to the four seasons on hand in the bromancer's scribbling ...

At least there's a reliable stability in the United States, as regularly celebrated by TT ...