In which y'artz hunting in the Athens of the South gives way to a celebration of Rita, meter maid, panhandling for the Chairman Emeritus ...

 

As a dedicated travel blogger and reformed herpetology student, the pond eventually made it to the Potter, but was disappointed at the y'artz on display.

With the best will in the world, and with the greatest respect, Grace Crowley and Ralph Balson were minor figures in the world of abstraction, yet they took up a lot of shelf space. 

There was one exhibition, by Nina Sanadze, which caught the eye ... especially as Russia now has a new Stalin or perhaps Tsar ...

There were a few old favourites, reminders of the times that Victoria had splendidly barking mad artists of the Tucker and Brack kind ...

That parrot immediately reminded the pond of the lizard Oz's Major Mitchell, while the barmaid had the air of a Dame Slap or a Dame Groan about her, but there's no point doing the entire gallery, because there are better illustrations on the NGV site.

Instead the pond began to think about other native flora and fauna, the sort that escapes the northern cockroach eye ... and immediately the Bolter sprang to mind.

But surely the best days of the Bolter are behind him. When you're a rage machine, it's hard to keep it up, and the pond can't begin to remember when the Bolter last infringed on the pond's awareness of the world.

The Bolter is a bit like the character featured in Michael Schaffer's story in Politico, The Disappearing Tucker Carlson. A major publisher just canceled a big-budget book on the former Fox News star, cementing his mainstream absence.

...the cancellation stems at least in part from the belief that Carlson, once the biggest name on cable, no longer has the kind of cultural footprint to warrant a pricey, complicated book by a top-shelf writer. According to several sources in the publishing industry who have followed the project, a combination of delays and the changes in Carlson’s once dominant media presence caused a loss of enthusiasm on the part of a publishing house going through its own internal tumult.
It’s a far cry from the situation in 2021, when Carlson was zooming past Sean Hannity to become cable’s top talker, with a legion of fans on the right and an army of detractors in the center and on the left — and even speculation about a possible presidential bid. That’s when Little, Brown and Co. tapped Zengerle, a New York Times Magazine contributor and one of the leading magazine writers on contemporary politics, to do a book on the political-media titan.
At the time, with Trump-driven fury selling books all over the place, the contract seemed like a no-brainer. For editors interested in enriching readers’ minds, understanding the Carlson phenomenon was seen as key to understanding American politics. For publishers interested in enriching shareholders’ wallets, there was potential gold in a tome on the man blue America loves to hate.
Since then, it’s been a rocky ride for both Carlson and the political-book business.

In much the same way, the assorted martyrdoms of the Bolter are now old hat.

...After the shock firing, Carlson quickly reestablished himself on Twitter, now X, finding a devoted audience. But his programming — including a softball interview with Vladimir Putin — has rarely generated the kind of sustained attention or outrage of the closely monitored Fox monologues he did when he was the highest-rated host in history. Like Oprah Winfrey or Howard Stern, becoming his own brand made him less relevant to the broader conversation.

This week, he announced plans for a 15-city arena tour alongside figures like Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a classic example of the sort of thing that can draw huge throngs of the devoted but not register on the media radar of a fragmented country. (Janet Jackson and blink-182 are also on arena tours this summer.)

Can the Bolter rage his way back into relevance? Likely not, likely he'll need to do an arena tour of the club circuit (remember to include Tamworth and Barners in the tour) if he wants to get back his mojo.

On the other hand, lovely Rita, meter maid, is a rage machine of the first HUN water, helped by regular appearances on Sky, though sad to say, the pond hasn't seen any of them.

Just look at Rita's output ... and her logo, "telling it like it is," which in reptile speak, is lying your stockings off with a glib, facile smile ...

It's all there, the "woke" and the "bully boys" and "putrid politics" and Comrade Dan (hold your nose at the stench emanating from the HUN),  and so on and on ...

And she knows the vibe ... cue wood heaters, the posturing pretenders at the AFL and so on ...

The pond didn't have a way to sample any of them, and the first rule is never to pay for reptile studies - coursework should be free - but did come across one sample, which put her very much into the anti-vax, anti-mask turf inhabited by Killer...

Her tweets showed the way ...

Actually Covid might have fuelled excessive deaths, but never mind ... needle paranoia is always a good angle ... fear the jab, forget about the disease ...

Cue blather about "vaccine zealots", a fancy way to disguise anti-vax sentiments ...

Sure it's an old piece, but the pound found revisiting this sort of nonsense strangely beguiling. 

There's a special place reserved in Murdochian Valhalla for migrants that rant about migrants and all the other thought crimes assaulting the reptiles ... and this Rita knows how to rant and rage, especially as there was a bonus featuring a standard conflation of anti-Semitism and genocide, and never mind that you can find plenty of leftist Jews sounding sane in Haaretz ...

What made it doubly weird back in the day was that Rita, meter maid, had berated the government for failing to get out the vaccines quik stix ...

In short, that changed quickly enough. 

Sweden!

And yet on October 2022 you could head off to a Swedish blog and read this ... (oh okay it's not really Swedish, it's Seattle Yanks who think they're Swedish) ...

The CDC’s go-ahead for vaccinating kids is a major landmark in protecting everyone as we move back into normal life and to the people and things we love. Experts say vaccinating kids under 12 will help prevent about 600,000 new COVID-19 cases in the coming months. Vaccines for children will also be a boon to public health by re-invigorating routine immunization programs, which have stalled with COVID restrictions. Our young children also benefit emotionally as vaccines help keep them in school with friends and able to participate in sports and other social activities.   

We understand that additional questions come with all this new information. To help you make the most educated decision possible for your family, we asked Swedish pediatrician John Hawes, M.D., to answer some important questions about the CDC’s new guidance for kids and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Should my child get vaccinated?

Yes. Public health experts, including leading doctors’ groups, agree that kids should get vaccinated to protect their families and themselves. Nearly two million children ages 5 to 11 in the U.S. are known to have been infected with COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. And even though adults are at risk for more severe infections, over 8,000 kids have been hospitalized with COVID-19, with a third of those children requiring treatment in intensive care. 173 kids in the age group have died from COVID-19.

Will my child receive the same dose as an adult?

Infants and children up to age 11 will receive a smaller dose; kids ages 12 and older get the same dose as adults. Additionally, the CDC says children should get the dose that’s right for their age on the day of vaccination; so, if your child is 11 on the day of their vaccination, they would receive a child’s dose.

While visiting olden day rants - they don't do things differently there, at least in reptile rags - the pond came across this panhandling howl ...

The pond was eerily reminded of the "march" by some thirty loons down Swanston street on the Sunday ...

You don't have to look far for the local source of the disease, a key infection point ... the HUN is a major carrier ...

In every way, this rage machine knows how to hit the talkback radio anger talking points ... sorry, Lithgow, she was there years ago, that's how long this reptile infection has been raging ...

What a relief not to have to go anywhere near Rita the meter maid on a regular basis, but it does help explain why Melbourne is so weird. 

The HUN exists for the AFL, and that's how worms are dropped into local brains, with football the same sort of tool as lollies are to groomers, where mad Victorians, not content with football at funerals and weddings (yes the pond has seen it in the flesh!) contentedly munch on and excrete conspiracy theories by the score ...

With travel fatigue increasing, the pond was almost tempted to return to the lizard Oz, but then this piece by Jeff Sparrow in Crikey (paywall) reminded the pond of what the pond had been missing, and suddenly mindless travel felt good all over again ...

Sparrow forgot to mention that just like Hitler, Adam Bandt loves dogs and they were both inclined to support a vegan lifestyle - remember the fuss about "vegan terrorists"? - but the pond will cut Sparrow some slack so it can his final note in spoiler style ...

...the distinctive character of The Australian (and its opinion pages in particular) comes from its translation of a social media sensibility into a broadsheet format, almost as if its editors decided that the belligerent elderly would really love 4chan if they could somehow access it without a new-fangled computer. 

Think of the anonymous character describing himself as “The Mocker”; think of the sealioning pedantry of Gerard “Reply Guy” Henderson. The Australian lives and breathes troll culture, from the regular and vengeful pile-ons targeting designated enemies to the array of contrarians columnists prepared to argue anything at all for the sake of pwnage.

In part, its evolution represents a broader (and mostly unconscious) adaption by the media as a whole to norms established online. But, more specifically, it reflects the influence over the Australian right of an American conservatism now far more committed to culture war than any coherent philosophy.

If you actually care about antisemitism, the pernicious consequences of Galbally’s “everyone-I-don’t-like-is-a-fascist” argument should be obvious. As the Gaza war becomes increasingly indefensible, many of Israel’s supporters resort to monstering as an incorrigible racist anyone who defends the Palestinians. But if Adam Bandt becomes a Nazi for *checks notes* opposing genocide, the concept of fascism loses all meaning — and it does so just as the nativist far right breaks through electorally across Europe.

Now, more than ever, we need real conversations about racism. But The Australian only cares about owning the libs.

The pond left in that last link to Politico because it was part of revisiting ancient history this day, almost as ancient as prattling Polonius, with the pond forced by Sparrow to rush off to brush up on sealioning, with a wiki here and a study here, with cartoon...

And speaking of toons, time to catch up with the immortal Rowe and Tsarist rats ...

As a bonus, the pond treasured this effort ...

After that astonishing effort, who could resist breaking Godwin's Law?

Oh there's a grand time coming ...