In which there's stormy weather elsewhere, but in reptile la la land, just the contemptibly craven Craven, and the Dames, Groan and Slap (no tickle please) ...

 

Look, the pond doesn't expect the reptiles to lead with a story about the ongoing humanitarian nightmare, the roiling genocide in Gaze, or even the resignation of a diplomat from the State department over the ongoing US attitude to the disaster. 

The pond accepts that the reptiles are at one with the fundamentalist crusade to exterminate Palestinians and the notion of a separate Palestine state, so that Israel might be in control from the river to the sea.

Nor does the pond expect a story about the owls of Nepal or the two hundredth birthday of Beethoven's Ninth. What a woke waste of time was that symphony, how sickeningly woke was Beethoven. 

The pond accepts that's the sort of stuff you'll find as filler on the BBC between bursts of news about famine as a weapon of war and collective punishment.

But overnight was Stormy's day, and while the BBC tutted about the salacious elements to her story, they at least honoured the yarn and led with it. 

Elsewhere, you might discover that back in the day workers in the adult sex industry were tested for STDs on a 30 day basis, helping explain how the orange Jesus could overcome his germ phobia and perform the ritual of the beast with two backs. They also used condoms, which possibly helped.

All the great tidbits and tasty mushrooms were there, despite the defence attempt yet again to call on a mis-trial, with the pond's personal favourite - giving the great man a whack on the bum with a magazine - given another airing.

Surely the reptiles wouldn't deny Stormy a position as centrefold queen of the day ... surely an allegedly great "newspaper" (the pond uses the term loosely) would rise to the occasion, in a priapic way suitable to a Murdochian rag ...

How little the pond knows or understands of the reptile mind. 

After all these years of herpetology studies the pond still doesn't get it. EV reptile road rage as the centrefold? 

And over in the highly desired, much esteemed far right 'top of the digital world ma' slot the reptiles ran with a standard bromancer rant about China?

The pond wondered if it was totally wrong, or if indeed, the reptiles lived in an entirely different world.

Sure enough the NY Times found room right below the masthead ...

Locally, even though the pond never bothers to visit, the Nine rags knew a story when it 'shroomed in front of them, and they also put it just below the masthead ...

The Graudian gave it one of their infamous LIVE wraps ...

The pond could have tied the WaPo treatment to its masthead, if it hadn't been for the bloody ad they put in the pond's way ... but at least they had a court artist impression of the Stormy couple ...

So there you go, the pond wasn't wrong, it was just another day in the lizard Oz bubble-wrapped hive mind, chanting "om" and hoping the stormy weather would go away.

The pond made such a fuss because what was left was truly grum, as they say across the dutch ...

Of all the reptile columnists, the pond has a particular form of profound contempt for the craven Craven, and given the epic reptile failure noted above, it was even more ironic that he should make journalism his subject ...

This epic wanker dares to deplore onanism? As for the rest, it's nonsense. Anyone with half a journalistic bit of nous would realise that there are still stories to be found, such as in The New Daily, Bruce Lehrmann sued by his former landlord.

But the pond refuses to dwell on the Lehrmann matter or the way the reptiles keep on insisting on drawing attention to Higgins ...

It's bad enough having to spend time with the contemptibly craven Craven, showing that projection is more than something you find in picture theatres, it actually crawls out of psychology textbooks and finds its way into the lizard Oz, courtesy the always projecting Craven...

Ah, a typically specious and mindless distinction, and it was with great good humour that the pond returned to Robert McChesney and John Nichols opening their December 2005 piece The Rise of Professional Journalism thusly ...

It comes as a surprise to many to learn that the notion of objectivity or simply professional journalism is a relatively recent development in the United States. In the first one hundred-plus years of the republic, journalism tended to be highly opinionated and partisan. Indeed, the first few generations of U.S. journalists – the years from Madison and Jefferson to Jackson and Lincoln – were diametrically opposed to what many Americans think is intended by the First Amendment: a commitment to neutral, values-free news reporting. Horace Greeley did not write, ​“Both the East and the West have their relative merits for a recent college grad”; he wrote, ​“Go West, young man.” And that was not his only pronouncement. Greeley’s New York Tribune, the great American journal of the mid-nineteenth century, was never neutral. It prodded the still-new nation to address the sin of slavery, to consider the dangers of imperialism and to recognize the need to provide for the common welfare. Greeley’s writers were anything but impartial observers; one of his regular correspondents, and arguably among the greatest journalists of the nineteenth century, was a German scholar named Karl Marx. The Tribune was typical of its times and, with other newspapers of its kind, essential to the progress that America achieved in the period of transition from revolutionary republic to global superpower.

It would perhaps only come as a surprise to a few, those who haven't heard about William Randolph Hearst, his sense that wars helped sell rags, not to mention his taste for Hollywood stars and rosebuds ...

All the same anything is better than the contemptibly craven Craven ...

For anybody wondering if that link led to a story about that famous, catastrophic libel case, relax. In classic reptile hive mind fashion, click on it and you landed on an Ellie Dudley yarn, Who is Taylor Auerbach? Bruce Lehrmann, Network Ten & Lisa Wilkinson case returns to court.

It was a classic example of a bait and switch ... and speaking of projection, naturally the craven Craven went on in classic reptile way to invoke the ABC ...

What a contemptible wretch he is ... but at least there's only one last contemptible gobbet ...

Yep, the Zen of green vegetables is what passes for wit in the mind of a constitutional lawyer ... and the pontificating loon, always lured on by the spotlight, showed that when you have a narcissist as the messenger, all you can expect is a tear-saturated message about himself ...

After that trip through a sewage plant, how about a relaxing breather, a groan about Victoria? 

It isn't long, and it helps the pond maintain its devotion to Dame Groan, with Victoria rooned ... another day, another complete disaster, and the pond understands that down in the deep south you can't even find grass to eat like a Gazan can ...

This is terrible news for the pond which will be taking a week off to visit the deep south in the middle of June ... with the natives looking terribly unhappy and deeply guilty ...

Then as promised there was just a gobbet of groaning to go ...

Naturally Dame Groan is astonished by the ratings agencies, what with her having already downgraded the entire country to junk bond status. 

Amazingly she failed to mention one matter, but luckily that's why the pond always turns to the infallible Pope ...

And with that fun out of the way, it was time to replace Dame Groan with Dame Slap. 

Usually the pond would red card Dame Slap, but she didn't go on about the Lehrmann matter endlessly, there was also the noble Riddster of the IPA to celebrate ...

But billy goat butt, why the long face? The Riddster has gone on to do some splendid climate science denialist science at Dame Slap's alma mater, the IPA, reassuring the world that all is well with the coral ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a news gobbet in relation to the ongoing humanitarian nightmare and genocide...

The pond would have much preferred an immortal Rowe ...

Some chicken, some neck ...

She wants students to understand a few salient points? And then the reptiles interrupt with a snap of a martyr, a huge portrait of the Riddster?

That triggered the pond ... through the primordial sludge came a memory of another Dame Slap favourite being given a hard time ...

Asked a few hard questions by Stephen Sackur, Haidt came across as a posturing lightweight, eager for his fifteen minutes of fame ...

But isn't that the way with all Dame Slap's heroes? One day Jordan, the next day freak out in Russia, one day "Lord" Monckton, the next day fraud and liar, one day the Riddster crowing in the lizard Oz, the next day a massive bleaching event ...

Sorry, back to the lecture about lectures ...

At this point the reptiles produced another snap...

,,, but surely this Wilcox was more to the point ...

The pond should probably have warned that when Dame Slap gets on to one of these rages, the venting can seem endless ...

Sorry, the pond can't shed any light on those New York arrests via that alleged link. 

When the pond clicked on the link, the pond stayed inside the reptile hive mind with a November 2023 Natasha Bita story, Universities promise action to prevent and punish sexual assaults on campus.

If you turn to a more reliable newspaper, you'll find that in her usual way, Dame Slap has exaggerated and distorted the actual figures ... and then a sigh of relief because there was just one final snap to downsize ...

And then there was just one final gobbet to go ...in which in the usual surreal and bizarre way only Dame Slap can manage, she fancies herself as a liberal, when in reality she's sounding like Sly shaking his head and announcing, in best fascist style, "you're a disease and I'm the cure ...", as you'd expect of someone who donned a MAGA cap and slipped out into the night to celebrate the triumph of the mango Mussolini, a devout liberal when he's not liberally promoting coups ...

Oh the pond already answered that one ... the purpose of a university is incredibly clear ...

At this point there might be some disappointment at the pond not having covered the bromancer, fulminating away in the top far right position and planning his war with China by Xmas ...

Luckily it was just the usual and readers of the pond could have written it in their sleep. There was the usual display of kit to get the bromancer wildly excited - onanism seems to be the go this day ...

... and here's a couple of sample gobbets, spoiler alert, the last two, just so nobody will go away entirely empty handed, and instead will be ordering in a couple of bits of kits to help out the bromancer with his war with China...

By golly, it sounds like the bromancer's war with China by Xmas is struggling to get off the ground...but there is a way forward. 

He needs to take a lesson from MTG and Kristi and head off to the gravel pit to teach Xi a lesson...