"Ned" is now screening in a matinee session, though if you can find F Troop in the same time slot ...

 

Following on from the pond's morning tirade, later in the day, the reptiles rejigged their lineup ...

The bro was now centre stage - covered - and "Ned" had risen to the cherished spot on the top far right, 

Dame Slap had been bumped down, Caroline Overington's agony aunt routine was still hanging around like a bad smell, and Navalny, in the spirit of Vlad the impaler, had been disappeared. 

There was a note that the orange outrage had copped a modest fine, but Navalny so soon?

At the very least, the pond had hoped to scribble some notes on Tuckyo, appearing in The Hill with crocodile tears ...Tucker Carlson: ‘No decent person would defend’ what happened to Navalny.

Meanwhile, over at Rolling Stone, (possible paywall) they'd made the obvious note:

(Egyptian journalist Emad El Din Adeeb) ... questioned why Carlson hadn’t pressed the Russian president on “freedom of speech in Russia” and why he “did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections.” 
Carlson responded that he has spent his “life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader,” he said. “Every leader kills people, some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people, sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”
“Press restriction is universal in the United States, I know because I’ve lived it,” he continued. “So at a certain point, it’s like people can decide whether they think, what countries they think are better, what systems they think are better. I just want to know what he thinks, that was the whole point.” 
The answer was stunning at the time, but Navalny’s death just days later cast an even more sinister pall over the assertion.

Given Tuckyo's recent fawning over low prices, the Moscow subway system  the streets, and suchlike, and his discovery of ancient supermarket technology, perhaps the best line could be found at Slate, Alexei Navalny’s Death Makes Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Even More Dreadful.

The pond thinks Navalny would have enjoyed the grim humour:

Garry Kasparov, the Russian exile, former chess champion, and prominent human rights activist, tweeted Friday morning, “Is Tucker still in Moscow? He will be amazed by the low price of human life in Putin’s Russia.

Kasparov would possible be amazed by the lizard Oz's way of vanishing a significant death.

Best of all there was no need to link to the tweet, though the pond could have done a Stephen King and talked about the site still being a place where Twitterati to go twitter their tweets ... (have you ever X'd outside of Porn Hub?)

Enough with the carping and the whining. The reason that this is appearing late in the afternoon is that the pond is totally over "Ned", and his perch in the top far right slot means he must be noted, but grudgingly and with malice. 

So the pond disappeared him to a timeslot where once you might have looked for a repeat of F Troop or My Favourite Martian ...

The pond has absolutely no interest in "Ned" or what he has to say and the reason for that will become clear enough quickly enough ...

What should sandgropers do to help out?

The pond isn't sure it has a single reader in the far west, but they should take their cue from that half-baked imitation of an Aboriginal dot painting, and secede ...

It's never too late ... it's been tried before and could be tried again ...

That way we'd be spared lizard Oz illustrations ...

... and we'd be spared "Ned" going on interminably about nothing, or should that be, borrowing ideas from anyone he passed in the street, and then using them for endless padding ...

The pond understands why the brand names talk to "Ned". 

Who knows, you could certainly seem like a guru up against "Ned" and being an approved "Ned" expert might help you with some consultancy gig ...

Besides, you get very big snaps, shrunk a lot here, just like the shrinking of the kids ...

Best of all, you can help "Ned" do a pond, and write about himself in the third person, thusly "Richardson tells Inquirer."

The notion that "Ned" is an inquirer, a seeker after truth, is beyond risible.  Chicken Littles don't inquire, they flap and they squawk and they imitate headless chooks. 

Ned's a regurgitator (not the band) and there's a lot of regurgitation going down ...

Why are the sandgropers waiting? They have their own flag ...

And they had a splendid name ...

Coming from the proud state of New England, the pond understands, and if it went down, it would give "Ned" a chance to dribble about something else, while you might be able to hire the bromancer to lick your new defence forces into shape ...

In an idle moment, the pond wondered if "Ned" had been given the blessing and approval of Gina and the IPA for this outburst, this ritual reenactment, where the easterners complain about the westerners and the westerners complain about the city slicker easterners. As if the west hadn't given Alan Bond, Gina and Kerry Stokes to the world ...

It's not too late, you just need Kezza to swing into action ...

If you read Crikey, Power without profit: why Stokes retains the failed Seven network, (paywall), Kezza is happy to take a financial bath for the pleasure of influence:

Who thinks Seven West Media (SWM) is a good investment at the moment? This week, the company revealed its half-year profits had halved as a result of falling revenue and rising costs. Management told investors that, once again, there would be no dividend.

There’s been no SWM dividend since 2017, when investors were told there would be a “temporary” pause on dividends. In 2019 the company suffered the ignominy of being dropped from the ASX 200, Australia’s premier list of listed companies. When that happened, its shares were 48 cents. Its share price is now 24 cents, with occasional ventures to 23 cents this week, and its market capitalisation is just $350 million.

When it was formed more than a decade ago by the merger of West Australian Newspapers and the Seven Media Group, it briefly had a market value of $4.1 billion. The company is also carrying $257 million worth of net debt. The company is spending millions of dollars supporting its shares in a buyback, which is keeping the shares around the 24-cent mark. According to the company’s latest accounts, over 14 millions shares, worth $3.86 million, were purchased in the six months to December 31, 2023.

Seven’s management continues to insist things will come good and they still “believe in the power of television”, but its sludgy mix of facile reality TV, sports and right-wing news and current affairs hardly looks appealing.

One of the few people who does think the company is a buy is Kerry Stokes. His Seven Group Holdings has increased its minority shareholding to above 40% — but not for financial reasons. Seven Group has now written nearly a quarter of a billion dollars off the value of its stake in SWM since 2021-22: $83.4 million in 2021-22, $75.9 million in 2022-23, and the largest of the lot, $90.2 million in the December half of 2023-24.

The latest impairment sits pretty poorly with all the brave talk from the War Criminals’ Network about the coming turnaround — though Seven Group Holdings’ stake was valued at $167.1 million at the end of December, which values SWM at around $417 million, well above the $350 million the company is capitalised at this week.

In its 2022-23 annual report, Seven Group was brutally honest about why it was persisting with its shareholding. In the notes to its financial accounts in the annual report, Seven Group explained that Seven West “is the leading listed national multi-platform media business based in Australia. The group’s investment in Seven West Media is held for strategic purposes”.

There you go: “strategic purposes” — a phrase that didn’t appear in the 2021-22 annual report or Tuesday’s 2023-24 interim report.

Why “strategic”? Seven is one of three weakly performing free-to-air linear TV networks with little commercial future. But it can still aggregate lots of eyeballs for its reliably pro-Coalition news and current affairs, and it remains part of the news ecosystem, which gives it political influence. The real power is in Perth, where SWM controls The West Australian as well.

That paper functions as the in-house newsletter and chief enforcer of the mining and fossil fuel lobby that controls that state and its government-for-hire, currently managed by WA Labor. Kerry Stokes and Gina Rinehart dominate the place — their only challenger is Andrew Forrest, who is slowly sounding more and more like a Greens MP, except one with billions of dollars at his disposal.

With WA crucial to Labor’s reelection chances federally, owning the only newspaper and a TV outlet allows Stokes to influence local and national politicians in a way that’s never reflected in SWM’s rotten share price.

He likes to be an influencer, he likes VCs, so get Kezza to embark on a media campaign. It's been done before ...

The sooner the movement cranks back into gear, the sooner "Ned" will have an interesting distraction ... instead of all this regurgitation ...

How much longer can you put up with these eastern staters and their sour grapes? Take a stand ...

Never mind, the pond was only having a tease, anything to avoid suggesting that the pond might have read "Ned" or given a toss or a fig about it all ... and now we've reached the final, albeit seemingly endless, gobbet ...

Bottom line, WA, "Ned" will fight for the rights of the rich to get the lion's share of any tax breaks until he gives up the ghost or everyone is as bored as the pond.

But the pond doesn't want those who made it to the bitter end to go away empty-handed.

The pond was pleased to note that this ...

... led to some versification by a pond correspondent ...

Pitiful Drunk
(Apologies to Linda Ronstadt and Michael Nesmith's Different Drum)

Here am I
Flat out on the street like a pitiful drunk
You can tell that my brain's defunct
Any time you catch sight of me
Woo hoo!

I tried
To phone the missus but I passed out
A passer-by put a video up
Now everybody's down on me
Oh woh!

But it's not a crime
To drink yourself senseless
Or make a call
When you're non compos mentis
And then fall off a planter box...so
Pardon me!

And I'm not saying that was pretty
All I'm saying's it's a pity
That the council placed those things
To trip up drunken loons
Just like me

So oh
Goodbye
I'll be leaving
I think I've finished
Lying down here
But it can't be much longer
Till you've seen
The last of me! (Kez)

And at the time the pond should have noted the painting was not just famous for being Smart, but because it featured on a book cover, even if cropped, or otherwise abused...

 

And that leads to another link, How Fatness Is Associated With Capitalism: The Fat Man in The History by Peter Carey.

And at that link are some splendid historical portraits ... and they say all Barners is good for is pretending to be road kill on a book cover...