In which the reptiles lose their mojo and the pond has to turn to other entertainments ...

 

Sad to say, the reptiles at the lizard Oz have lost their mojo today, and the pond doesn't know where to find it ...

The Woolworths affair seemed best taken care of with a couple of cartoons...

There was simplistic Simon in the far right perch touting Captain Spud's team, just the usual day out for the propaganda sheet, and down below there was Dame Slap earning an automatic red card, while petulant Peta was wandering down mammary lane ...

Given the fierce reaction she provokes in pond correspondents, the pond always hesitates to go there, but decided to do a sample ...

That was more than enough, yet another tiresome celebration of an epic failure, the worst PM in living mammary, though perhaps the best onion muncher ...

The pond had to fight hard to resist the temptation to do a Meghan ...

It says a lot about the pond's mood that Meghan should be the go.

Down below there were even more feeble offerings ...

The ponrd red carded Mikko and the apparently corporeal Korporall attempting to blame the Woollies affair on being woke was simply too bizarre, given (a) the interview and (b) questions of price gouging.

The sudden announcement of the departure of Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci has thrown a spotlight on the dangers of chief executives becoming involved in social issues.
While Banducci argued that the timing of his announcement on Wednesday had long been planned and had nothing to do with his disastrous interview this week on Four Corners, or his recent involvement in the controversy over not stocking Australia Day-themed goods, the timing of his announcement means he is exiting bruised by recent events.
While businesses have learned not to align themselves with any political party, given the real possibility of governments changing, high-profile business leaders have seen fit in recent years to become commentators on social issues of the day.
Issues such as same-sex marriage, the Indigenous voice to parliament, the merits of celebrating Australia Day and the war in the Middle East have become areas drawing in some business leaders.
But the pendulum may be swinging the other way, with the risks outweighing the perceived social halo – despite the prevailing corporate speak for having ­“purpose-led” organisations.

Australia Day!?

Dear sweet long absent lord, that's not what the pond notices when it attends a supermarket and endures the latest bout of price gouging.

The pond understands the purpose-led point of News Corp. It's fear, loathing and angertainment, whatever their faux mission statement:

News Corp is a company truly greater than the sum of its parts. Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose, we are dedicated to delivering value to our customers and our shareholders with premium products and services that inform and inspire.

Read all the nonsense... but be warned, a strong stomach is required.

Clearly Glenda never bothered, and why would you, being paid to hack out the usual Oz day crap, but why is it that the cartoonists always ask the relevant question and never the reptiles?

Glenda, Glenda, look at the detail, that's no woke chook, that's a chook making off with the price-gouged golden egg ...

Speaking of supplies, there wasn't even the chance of having a bit of a laugh, as Charlie had a few days ago in Crikey, Meat us halfway: Culture warriors ham it up over diet advice (paywall). ...

The pond had doctors warning the pond off red meat and the plonk way back when ...

Anyhoo, long story short, that's how the pond ended up with Jack this day ... but it should probably note the rest of Charlie's joke first ...

And so to Jack, picking the easy target of the week ...

Of course it's easy pickings, especially as Tuckyo can be presented as a wild-eyed wonder and not a Faux Noise creation, while the Putin-lovers in the GOP, not least the mango Mussolini himself, can be carefully stepped around, unless you happen to read Cathy Young in The Bulwark, J. D. Vance (R-Moscow) ...

And so on, there's a lot more, but the pond has saddled itself with Jack, who in his quest for the easy target even invokes Hogan, which says much more about the reptile demographic than it does about Russia and the quislings in the US ...

Naturally that gave the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department a chance to do a Peta and dance with the ghosts of the past, as well as offering up a few other free pics...

But if the pond was going to read a put down, it'd revive fond memories of Marina Hyde, now a few days old, but never stale, From Tucker Carlson to Johnny Depp, a celebrity bromance is the must-have accessory for the modern dictator:

Behold, the current must-have accessory for all the most grimly murderous dictators – a pet American idiot. Not just any American idiot, obviously. You need a male, mid-50s to early-60s, ideally fire-damaged by a recent career setback, who just wants to see the best in you for coins. In short, you need someone of the … calibre, would you call it? … of Tucker Carlson or Johnny Depp.

The past week or two has seen the formal reveal of two of these new dictator-pet acquisitions: Vladimir Putin’s kind offer to rehome the stray former Fox News host, and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s generous response to the question How Much Is That Deppy in the Window? Answer: a rumoured seven-figure tourism promo deal and forking out for one somewhat indifferent period French film. I know. Pets are very reasonably priced, not to say embarrassingly cheap.

So let’s start with Johnny Depp, the joint subject of a most eye-catching Vanity Fair article headlined “Inside Johnny Depp’s epic bromance with Saudi Crown Prince MBS”. Yes, yes – please take us inside it. Although we reserve the right to leave at any time without being dismembered. The safe-word is Raytheon.

According to the article, Depp first came into contact with the Saudi ruler while working on a precariously financed French film, last year’s Jeanne du Barry. Having secured Saudi funding, the movie’s producers required their star to meet MBS’s cousin – a guy called Prince Badr – who also serves as some kind of cultural bagman. I’m getting huge Ribbentrop energy, but perhaps he’s adorable. Anyway, one thing led to another, and within months Depp was revelling in all-expenses-paid trips and face-to-face time with MBS, listening to his excuses about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and making “a genuine connection”. Hey – the heart wants what it wants. Likewise the wallet. According to Vanity Fair, “both men knew how it felt to suddenly go from golden boy to outcast”. And certainly the fates can be very cruel.

As can movie financing. Seriously, why spend years waiting for your producer to patchwork together some shaky funding from the French film foundation, plus a lottery grant, plus an endowment from the Trudi Styler Cinema in Peril fund, plus fifty quid from Unesco, plus some crappy Belgian tax credits? You have something really important to get made, in which you get to crossly overturn a small occasional table in Versailles – all while wearing a feathered tricorn hat. How DARE “the market” deny the culture this future gem? How dare people think your god-given right to pretend to be someone else for money should depend on such shifting sands? Why not just go to Daddy Bonesaw and get his chump change in five seconds? And listen, MBS’s “Red Sea Film Fund” wants nothing more than to finance a film about a French courtesan. Given that the finished movie contravenes about 437 of his country’s decency and modesty laws, I guess something about Du Barry’s life just spoke to MBS. Maybe the fact a woman gets her head cut off.

For his part, Depp responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment on his new alliance with a lengthy statement claiming to have “experienced first-hand the cultural revolution that is happening” in Saudi, “from emerging young storytellers radiating fresh ideas and works of art to a blossoming film infrastructure and a newfound curiosity for innovation”. Attaboy.

In terms of the old quid pro quo, do remember that Depp has in recent years been saddled with what euphemism forces us to style “expensive legal setbacks”, followed by “expensive legal victories”. He reportedly has an endless array of luxury properties to maintain, including a French village he was trying to sell, and a private Caribbean island. A private island – of course. Has anything good ever come of a white man owning a private Caribbean island? (Don’t write in, Branson, even though I’m using your letters to make a papier-mache sculpture of you carrying a woman in the course of a promotional stunt. I call it “The Ally”.)

Now that's how to do a put down, and Jack isn't in the same league, let alone playing the right game in the ballpark ...

Everybody knows he was bumped off, just like the refugee chopper pilot in Spain ... and lots of other splendid abuse of Tuckyo had already been delivered in fine style ...

...But let’s move on to Tucker Carlson, who recently went all the way to Moscow to interview the Russian president in hardcore lapdoggy style. There is a grim sort of poetic justice to the fact this televised fawnathon took place just days before Putin’s likely murder of Alexei Navalny, which itself seems to have occurred around the time Tucker was filming imbecilically approving videos in a Russian supermarket. Did you see the one where he seems to think he has discovered a cutting-edge Russian invention in the form of supermarket trolleys you need to release with a coin? I love that it reveals how much Tucker’s producer hates him, willingly allowing his super-rich boss to stray into elite self-parody by lauding something freely available to US citizens in Aldis and airports for quite, quite some time now.

In related news, then, a word on pet cruelty. At this stage, Depp has yet to feel the sharp end of an emerging young storyteller radiating fresh ideas. But Tucker’s claim to have been in Moscow doing hard journalism was excruciatingly factchecked by Putin himself, who, shortly after the interview aired, appeared on TV with a smirk to lament the fact Tucker didn’t ask any “tough questions”. How mean. A Tucker should be for life, not just for propaganda Christmas.

Finally, a bizarrely blame-free social media post about Navalny by Donald Trump suggests the Russian president still has old dogs who pee on the rug/Moscow hotel mattress. In fact, speaking of going to the mattresses, the prospect of that particular dictator-hound throwing down for Putin is more grotesque by the day, and the very strongest of arguments for a no-pets rule in the White House.

And that of course is where Jack can't go, he can't dwell on the GOP, or the tangerine tyrant sucking up to Vlad, and the role of Faux Noise and the Emeritus Chairman's mob in giving Vlad the sociopathic impaler a free pass, while still doing their best to get a malevolent mango dictator elected ...

Ultimately, Navalny's death is a reminder of the lick spittle fellow travellers abroad in the GOP and Faux Noise, but Jack isn't up for the reminding, ending with a whimper, not a bang ...

To be sure, he's the child of Faux Noise ... confronted with an actual mango Mussolini, they smile and urge a vote for the fraud ...

Finally a note on what happens with the bro isn't around. The reptiles stick in somebody else to scribble about defence ...

The promises are positive? What planet has this creature come from to dwell among the reptiles? Once again the pond is left yearning for the bro and a serve of paranoid hysteria and war with China by Xmas ...

The pond is so used to bromancer hysteria that this was hard to take, and the conventional snap that was offered was no relief either ...

There was something so earnest about the piece that the pond felt the bromancer loss in every gobbet...

The pond realised why it had begun the mission in the first place. There was a cartoon to hand ...

And then there was a final gobbet of staid analysis, shocking to anyone fed a bromancer diet ...

Well, the pond can't stop there, unpersonned ghost ships ahoy, there was yet another reminder of how dull Jack was this day, and it came in the form of Jon Stewart.

Stewart's return to the fray had been a rocky one, terrified by those who fear a mention of jolly Joe's age will see the mango Mussolini return to power and begin a dictatorship.

It's a reasonable fear, but Stewart was saved by Carlson's folly ...

 

 

And as we're walking down memory lane this day,  here the pair were, way back when ... naturally after this performance the grinning goon with the bow-tie was destined to join Faux Noise ...