In which Polonius and nattering "Ned" deliver a generous dose of verbiage ...

 

The pond likes to relax on a Sunday, though you could hardly call reading Marina Hyde a relaxing hobby. 

Yesterday, down under time, she was scribbling Trump is too old and incited a coup. Biden is too old and mixes up names. America, how to choose? and the pond got the familiar sensation of seeing the 'roos in the spotlight in Wake in Fright ...

...Biden had almost left the stage last night when he returned to the podium to take a question on the Israel-Gaza conflict, in which he unfortunately referred to the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as “the Mexican president”. On the one hand, this was always going to happen just at the moment he was insisting his memory was great, just as it is a truth universally acknowledged that people correcting someone else’s grammar or spelling will normally involuntarily commit some howler of their own in the process. Call it the pedants’ curse – or indeed, the pedant’s curse.

The pond frequently falls pray to the pedant's curse, and to the Hyde dilemma ...

...As someone who believes the likely Republican candidate is hideously, overwhelmingly worse, I fear that Joe Biden is gearing up for a gruelling election at precisely this vibes-based disadvantage. Both he and Trump are at the stage of life when sensible ordinary people find the strength to turn to their families and ask: be honest, should I still be driving? Yet Trump’s great power is defying rationality, like some dark lord of the vibes. He is possessed of a mesmerising ability to make every single thing feel like it is playing into his hands, which is why we now all watch news reports of various criminal charges being brought against him and go, “Oh this’ll play well for him”. Will it? And if so, why should it? Who really knows, but the vibes say so.
After the last time I touched on the gerontocracy in these pages, the Guardian printed three letters from older male readers under the headline, What’s age got to do with it, Marina Hyde? Ageism was mentioned, with one of the correspondents advancing details of how he spent his days, as an argument against what we might kindly have termed my own argument about when big hitters should leave the professional stage. Now, no one more than me welcomes a good bollocking on the letters page, and all the three men were very nice about the rest of my output. Thank you!
However. At the risk of drawing further correspondence, I feel I still have to hold to the position that being president of the United States is not the same as “writing, teaching, and volunteering in a residential home”, and is a job for a younger man than either Biden and Trump. Not a younger woman, of course – that would be genuinely insane in the strictest clinical sense of the term. But younger than 86 at conclusion of office. So I end this column with a challenge: if any readers of this newspaper are able to get to the end of the lengthy forthcoming US election campaign and think it showcased a vibrant, healthy and sprightly democracy, then I urge them to write in on 6 November, and suggest mandatory retirement for me.

And yet here we are and there they'll be in November ... both too old, but seemingly the only alternative a medical event or a nightmare ...

On the upside, when the cracking Crace lets his hair down, he can be quite amiable. 

The pond even began to take an interest in Tottenham Hotspur because he's a football tragic (that's roughly equivalent to Kermode reviewing a wrestling movie). 

Crace skipped lightly over many of the days in his Digested week: media frenzy over king’s cancer does no one any favours, but to his great credit, Rish! can't come at him, and he can't come at Rish!, with this just a culmination of encounters ...

Friday

We’ve gained an insight into Sunak’s soul this week. And what we’ve found there ain’t pretty. First we caught him being bounced into a £1,000 bet with one of journalism’s prime narcissists who tries to conceal his thin-skinned lack of self-worth behind a macho, big-wallet veneer. No one thinks for a minute that Sunak is a betting man, but when push came to shove he was unable to stand up to Piers Morgan. He didn’t have the integrity to say, “I don’t think it’s clever or honourable to make bets on the lives of refugees,” which would have killed the conversation and shown the leadership required of a prime minister.

Sunak showed similar weakness during PMQs when he made a trans joke that he and the health secretary, Victoria Atkins, found hysterically funny. It would have been inappropriate in parliament at the best of times and all the more so when he had been told Esther Ghey was in the gallery watching. Even if you find that kind of gag amusing, most people might have realised this was neither the time or place to offend a grieving parent. Sunak was invited to apologise, but again he proved he does not have the strength of character to admit he had been insensitive. Later that day, Brianna’s father, Peter Spooner, said he had found the prime minister’s remarks “dehumanising” and he too asked for an apology. Sunak merely doubled down, saying it was all Keir Starmer’s fault – come again? – and that maybe Esther and Peter should chill out a bit. They could whistle for their apology. This was a new low. When the UK prime minister picks a fight with the parents of a murdered teenage girl, then the game is up.

All this is by way of filibustering the inevitable, prattling Polonius railing at the ABC ...

A strange portrait of Polonius, that bald egg shape doesn't quite catch the likeness, but the song is the same ...

It's an awkward position for Polonius. If he attacked Barry,  then he might implicitly be thought to be defending the ABC. Of course it being Polonius he wants to invent a variation that allows him to do both ... maintain his rage at the ABC and Barry and Lattouf and the whole damn thing ...

Speaking of persecution, and still seeking distraction, the pond was reminded of a story in Haaretz and also in WaPo, there as A Palestinian posted a message on Oct. 7. Then came the death threats ... (paywall)

In the scheme of things, Lattouf might even begin to count herself as lucky ... she's only facing the endless war by reptile and Jewish lobby grooups ... with Polonius just one of the regular contributorst to the hate fest ... though when you crawl under the rock, the intensity of the lobbying that went down is startling, as can be read in Secret WhatsApp messages show co-ordinated campaign to oust Antoinette Lattouf from ABC ...

As Barry noted in Media Watch, Lattouf's actual appearances on radio - the pond never listens to that form of ABC radio, so has to rely on him - what she said and did was bland and conformed to the station profile. 

ANTOINETTE LATTOUF: But what do you do every year to celebrate the holidays? I want to hear about your Christmas traditions, whether they're religious ones or just quirky ones …- Mornings, ABC Sydney, 19 December, 2023

Most of Lattouf’s short stint on air was spent discussing light and fluffy issues that would have upset nobody:

ANTOINETTE LATTOUF: Is Oli the first cat to sail in the Sydney to Hobart?- Mornings, ABC Sydney, 19 December, 2023

And on day three she was set to sail through the week:

ANTOINETTE LATTOUF: I'm Antoinette Lattouf. I'm back tomorrow. Can't wait. I'll talk to you then. - Mornings, ABC Sydney, 20 December, 2023

There's a reason the pond never listens to 702 or local radio.

But she'd been dubbed an enemy of the people, or at least the Jewish lawyer lobby group ...

Given what's since gone down with allegedly private WhatsApp groups, Hundreds of Jewish creatives have names, details taken in leak, published online, there's a rich irony in the biters bit, and the conspirators revealed ...

The story was also in The Graudian, with talk of death threats, but these days death threats seem to be pro forma ...

Meanwhile, back at that WaPo story, it wasn't just death threats ...

Oh dear, cue Haaretz heretics ...

So what's the benefit of this Polonial rehashing of an already very sorry saga of incompetence, vindictiveness and lobbying at its worst? Be fair, if you say anything about a genocide, you need to be taken down ...

At this point, the pond would usually seize the chance to suggest that's nothing up against what's actually being done to those crammed into a very small space in Gaza ... cue collective punishment, collective displacement, hunger, disease, and many deaths on the road to genocide ...

But instead yesterday there was a curious headline in Haaretz ... Benji wasn't just doing it to Gazans, he was doing it to Israel ...

Amazing really ...

And so on ... and it provided a handy distraction from Polonius's usual bee in bonnet ramblings...

The pond has to rate that as a pretty feeble effort, even by feeble Polonial standards. 

If Polonius was so agitated by the omission at the ABC, he could have insisted that the reptiles insert either appropriate visuals or a sound bite with the offending words in the middle of his own text.

It isn't hard to do - at one point the reptiles were offering "Ned" reading his own words, until terminal boredom intervened.

Of course they never do ... The only media link was in-house to simpering Sharri (disrespect): Sharri Markson exposes protest ‘cover-up’ by NSW Police amid fresh revelations.

Alternatively, Polonius could have linked to YouTube for the footage. 

Of course they never do, they never want readers to live the hive mind, to step outside the walled garden and breathe fresh air. That would have been pandering to the enemy.

So sadly we're left with a dog with a predictable bark ... (let's forget Polonial fantasies about being an actual dog, though Freudians could have a field day).

Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion’s ability, but I saw by the Inspector’s face that his attention had been keenly aroused by the Lattouf matter.

“You consider that to be important?” he asked.

“Exceedingly so.”

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the war in Gaza. The collective punishment, the collective displacement, the famine, the disease, the many deaths on the road to genocide.”

“But the Polonial dog said nothing, barked not once, in the day or the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

And so to the Everest, "Ned", still trying to deal with tax matters.

Everybody else has moved on, but not the reptiles. 

The pond was confronted with this yesterday as the dog botherer resorted to trash TV to work out a line of defence. 

Alas, "Ned" doesn't even have that ruse in his kit bag ... verbiage is his game, a never ending flow of verbiage, better than glyphosate when it comes to producing a wasteland ...

As Media Watch noted, the reptiles are still reeling from their failed campaign, which was a big and sustained effort ...

Regrouping after all that effort requires a lot of verbiage and in due course "Ned" resorting to another's words to add to the verbiage...

It's possible to smell the fear exuding from "Ned's" pores. It wasn't supposed to be like this. The reptile campaign against the tax changes were supposed to be a slam dunk winner, but now the FUD the reptiles spread has turned, and the fear, uncertainty and doubt is at play in "Ned's"mind ...

At this point what's left of the lizard Oz graphics department inserted a snap of Captain Spud braying and pointing, as a way of geeing up "Ned", and giving the old jellyback a little spine with which to handle his saucy doubts and fears ...

But it wasn't enough ... "Ned" was in full Chicken Little shouting at clouds panic mode ...

Say what? What about those old faithful geysers ...

But "Ned" was inconsolable ...

Thank the long absent lord, a prof to help out "Ned" and explain that what we want is a leader that can be trusted ....

Sorry, the pond couldn't resist the urge to go the Sunday cartoon, especially as the reptiles had decided this would be. their visual break ...

None of it helped "Ned" ... nor his visiting prof ...

Yeah, yeah, though it could be worse ...

Sorry, it's the only way the pond can get to the end of the Everest climb these days, because watching "Ned" try to revive his spirits is enough to send the pond off the bandwagon ...

If the pond might paraphrase, come election day, voters will only remember the reptiles ranting about tax lies and betrayal and forget the rest ... in an election which can still run up to September 2025.

That's the best that "Ned" and his supine prof have got? Is there anybody to hand to tell them that they're dreaming.

The world moves on, shit happens, who knows where we'll be by Xmas, let alone Xmas in July next year ...

Only one thing's certain. By tomorrow, the pond will have completely forgotten "Ned's" drivel, and with it, the lickspittle lackey offerings of this McAllister, the mystery prof cat ...

On the upside, the pond was spared having to deal with other lickspittles ...