In which the pond endures a serve of craven Craven and culture wars "Ned" ...

 

Just to continue the ABC bashing for the moment, on the principle that it shouldn't just come from the reptiles at the lizard Oz or from Media Watch, the pond was pleased to read Christopher Warren in Crikey with How to fix the ABC’s conflict-addled obsession? First, axe the Insiders approach (paywall).

...It’s been sad to watch the program (The Insiders) tilt from its must-watch lifting of the lid of Parliament House, with a teaser on what’s likely to happen next, into an after-the-fact laundering of the ABC’s passive acceptance of News Corp’s judgments on what constitutes news. 
The Murdoch media innovation was to recognise it could take the semiotics of traditional news — its look and feel — and use them to masquerade the campaigning media voice of the populist right. It took a while, but most of the political and journalistic world, particularly in the United States, has figured out what’s going on and adjusted accordingly.
Almost alone, the ABC seems convinced it should follow along with the US corporation’s interpretation of the media landscape, embracing News Corp’s focus that the politics of politics (however manufactured) is what makes “news”. Spoiler: it’s not.

Here Warren reinforces the pond's key problem. If you want News Corp, why get it diluted into the soft mash that the ABC routinely serves up? Thus The Insiders has turned into a tedious recycling of reptile talking points, but with the special added ingredient of boredom, without any comedy routines of the Marr v Polonius kind, or even Akker Dakker starring as the show's yaroop garoah Billy Bunter ... 

Cue a little more Warren:

...We saw how this all works again on the weekend, with host David Speers desperately attempting to flog a few final faltering steps out of the all-but-dead horse that was Donald Trump’s ramble on Kevin Rudd as Australia’s ambassador to the United States. (Watching the original GB News video, it’s not certain Trump had the faintest idea who Kevin Rudd was, but he was happy to go along with the stunt as a favour to his political ally as interviewer, Nigel Farage.)
Sure, nothing excites the provincial mindset of Australia’s traditional media more than the thought that someone, somewhere in the global imperial centre, has noticed us. And it’s no surprise Australia’s right-wing media would grab the opportunity to kick back at one of its domestic enemies. It’s a sign, too, of the balance of power between the political and media wings of Australia’s right that the federal Liberals felt the need to try to kick the story along in Parliament — despite the criticism they received.
But the ABC embracing the stunt as the key news of the week demonstrates just how blind the broadcaster’s political news judgment has become.
It’s not a one-off; it follows the avid promotion of News-driven talking points over the past few months, all given legitimacy through Insiders’ focus: the nuclear renaissance, the “ute tax” lens on emissions standards, and the “broken promise” framing of Labor’s restructuring of stage three tax cuts.
There are some signs the ABC recognises its Insiders problem, at least since respected former editor of The Australian David Armstrong’s public critique of Speers, tweeting: “He is interested in superficial political analysis because he is incapable of delving deeply into policy”...

And so on, with the pond gagging on the notion that David Armstrong is respected outside Murdoch la la land. He did what might be called the new Ronna McDaniel pike and flip back in 2019, having set the current deplorable ship in motion - who remembers Xian Kerr these days? - and later recanted, as recorded by the venerable Meade... Dull, predictable, too rightwing': former editor of the Australian lets rip.

A former editor-in-chief of the Australian, David Armstrong, stirred up quite the debate on Facebook when he revealed he was cancelling his subscription to the Oz: “I thought, do I really need so many right-wing columnists in my life? I know I don’t have to read them all but if I subscribe, I have to pay for them.”
Asked to elaborate, Armstrong said: “I do think many columnists are dull and have been there too long – and I didn’t want to keep paying for them. If the readers overall love them, good luck to them.”

The rest of the read is fun - it was when Speers jumped ship and so began the descent of The Insiders into mind-numbing tedium best avoided - and it reminded the pond of the latest antics at NBC, celebrated by Luckovich ...

But enough of nostalgia, back to the usual reptile bashing, as much fun as snake-bashing day in Springfield ... with the pond able to offer a certificate of authenticity,  because you won't find anything diluted or watered down here, you will only find Murdochian loons of the first water ... winkled out from the morass and minefields of misinformation masquerading as news ...

Look, there in the top far right hotly contested perch, the baleful glare of "Ned" ...

With a sigh, the pond realised it would have to go there, what with "Ned" keeping alive the latest great reptile hope for a culture war, but was there any easy way to slide into that patented torpor?

The pond instantly regretted asking that question, as it made its usual mistake and surveyed the offerings below the fold ...

The pond never bothers with the bouffant one beating the drum of chaos. Try Gaza or Ukraine if you want chaos ... and at least the pond could avoid Ramesh celebrating the ongoing genocide, getting worse by the day, by offering up a Wilcox ...

But that left the craven Craven, as contemptible a loon as any to swing on to the reptile gravy train of late, and dear sweet long absent lord, was his offering this day a doozy ...

Yep, this is what passes for climate science in the lizard Oz. 

Usually the pond would attempt some sort of alternative when confronted by Lloydie of the Amazon or the Riddster. You know, yeah, but what about Big oil uncovered or Fears for the future of the great British pint of beer or Andean alarm: climate crisis increases fears of glacial lake flood in Peru...

But the craven Craven is such a half wit or dimwit - the pond refuses to demean the category of fuckwit by including him in it - that there's no need, what with the craven Craven attempting to show that he's a wit ...

Oh okay, the pond spoke too soon. Why deny the craven Craven the status of a complete and utter fuckwit?

At this point, the lizard Oz decided it would interrupt the flow of folly with some snaps ...

Would that it were as easy to interrupt the craven Craven all the time...

Ah, in the face of the ongoing feeble attempts at comedy, there's a chance to offer the infallible Pope of the day, which manages to combine the craven Craven's vehicle of choice with another conceit ...

Sheesh, it's impossible to convey how much the pond loathes RAM vehicles, even when virtuously crushing an Uncle Elon ... and now there's just one gobbet of massive stupidity to go ...

Yep, a galactic fuckwit, and worse, someone who imagines he's a wit and a literary stylist. The pond can't begin to imagine the suffering of ACU students running up their HECS debts in the name of being lectured to by a loon of the first water.

As for the links, the pond must again note that nothing in the craven Craven's links allows light to escape the black hole of the reptile bubble-wrapped hive mind. 

That last link in the last Craven gobbet was to a Killer piece, with the Killer being his usual Killer self ...

What of poor young Madeleine Achenza of "NCA Newswire" attempting a straight bit of reporting "From the Newsroom" with Groundbreaking Seize the Decade report explains how to hit climate targets in crucial decade (sorry, the pond doesn't link to reptile publications, especially the lizard Oz)

A groundbreaking new report has outlined a pathway to ensure Australia escapes climate disaster and emphasises that current federal targets are not good enough.

TheSeize the Decade report was released on Wednesday and explains what must be done in the next six years to reduce climate pollution and stop the worst effects of climate change before they eventuate.

It’s the culmination of 12 months of hard work from Climate Council scientists, analysts, researchers and policy advisers.

Climate Council head of policy Jennifer Rayner said the Albanese government had always recognised its climate targets as a “floor and not a ceiling”, and this road map showed what needed to be done to get on track to net zero by 2035.

Australia’s 43 per cent target is an important step in the right direction,” she said.

“But the government knows, everybody knows that target will not be enough to see us to tackle harmful climate change this decade and protect our kids from worse to come.

“A science-aligned target for Australia would be to cut climate pollution by 75 per cent this decade and get on track to net zero by 2035.”

There was even a graph ...

... and a bunch of dot points ...

The report breaks down how every major sector of the economy can work together to reach these targets, including:

• Supercharging solar, wind and storage to build a bigger electricity system and reach 94 per cent renewable energy in our grid by 2030
• Putting solar panels on the rooftops of two in three Australian homes to help drive down the cost of living
• Swapping polluting vehicles for cleaner, cheaper-to-run electric cars and choosing public transport more often
• Making new buildings all-electric, electrifying existing homes and businesses and upgrading their energy efficiency
• Using clean energy and readily available alternatives in our industrial processes to cut industrial use of coal by 41 per cent, oil by 86 per cent and gas by 31 per cent.

Last week, the CSIRO released a report comparing the costs of different types of energy technology and found that clean wind and solar were the cheapest and fastest way to replace existing power generation.

“Australia’s current coal-fired power generators are ageing, unreliable and expensive, so we are in a race to get more new power online to replace them,” Dr Rayner said.

“It’s also one of the fastest ways to do it and we need to get new power online quickly”.

Dr Rayner said the reality was simple; if we didn't achieve these targets, people were going to experience significant impacts.

“People who are in their 20s today are going to live to see a lot of climate impacts if we don’t cut pollution steeply this decade,” she said.

“Australians are being hurtled from floods to fires to droughts to extreme weather.

“That is only going to keep accelerating and keep doing more harm to Australians if we don’t get on track to slash climate pollution.”

The Climate Council is confident that all of these targets are attainable and achievable, they just need to be accelerated.

Forty per cent of power in the nation’s electricity grid is already generated by renewables and more than three million homes have solar on their roof.

“So this is an opportunity to keep building on that momentum to do more this decade to cut climate pollution further and faster,” Dr Rayner said.

“It’s not about starting from scratch, we just have to keep going and accelerate.”

Sorry, spit on a rapidly heating griddle, and never featured where it might matter. 

What the punters get on the front page of the digital edition is the craven Craven and the likes of Killer Creighton ... and that's how the nation's IQ crumbles day by day ...

And so to "Ned" trying to lather up the latest reptile culture war, keen to maintain the right to bigotry, prejudice and the abuse of minorities ...

There's nothing to be said here. "Ned" is determined on a culture war, and the pond simply reports because "Ned" is there, and the Everest must be climbed in the usual way.

Sure, the pond is sullen, sure, the pond doesn't even have the strength to carry on in the usual way about "Ned" doing a chicken little, but sometimes you just have to lie there and suffer ...

The pond will allow itself one bit of irony. When "Ned" says "in short", most days of the week you can guarantee that "Ned" will not be short. In short, "Ned" is never in short, and each outing is an interminable outing, a mind-numbing exercise in putting one word after another, one foot after another until the peak is reached. In short, at great ennui-inducing length, "Ned" thinks he's capable of being in short ...

Potentially terrible? Clearly "Ned" was never molested, but there were plenty that were and the pond still bears the scars from the Dominican nuns, though in those days they dressed like penguins out of a Fellini movie ...

At this point the reptiles interrupted "Ned" with a picture of Satan himself ...

The pond should seize the chance to apologise for never being able to tackle other issues. 

When the reptiles get into one of their culture war moods, everything else is excluded, and so the pond is unable to provide a segue to cartoons which might appeal to Melburnians ...

Instead the pond is left with "Ned" stuck somewhere in the mindset of Leviticus, back with the bigotry and prejudices of the goat herders, though with nary a cry about the way that some Catholic school uniforms manage to mix fabrics and thereby condemn the hapless children to an eternity of hellfire. Shatnez, the pond shouts, as "Ned" carries on ...

Translation; bigots gotta bigot ... and as for human rights, fahgedit ...

And so to a final apology. Thanks to the craven Craven and "Ned" there's simply been no room to touch on a fabulous business opportunity from the man that brought you Trump University and Trump Shuttle and Trump steaks ... but at least the pond can end with an immortal Rowe highlighting capitalism in its purest and finest form ...