With the Democrats sleepwalking towards disaster, led by sleepy Joe, and seemingly incapable of getting their collective act together, the pond has begun to dread its time with the reptiles.
We all know that they're willing and able to fall in behind a cult leader.
The pond was reminded of this reading the venerable Meade's Weekly Beast, with her sub-section titled Editors pile on the Murdoch praise.
Thank the long absent lord she's paid to wade her way through the suppurating stench:
Rupert Murdoch did not make it to Australia for the 60th anniversary of his most cherished title, The Australian newspaper, but he did turn up unexpectedly at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in what the New York Times said was a show of support for Donald Trump, with whom he has had a somewhat up and down relationship.
Murdoch and his US executives were also in attendance to line up behind News Corp’s editorial team from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News and others.
But the 93-year-old’s no-show down under did not dampen the enthusiastic praise heaped upon him by The Australian’s editors, who fell over one another to laud the founder of the national broadsheet in 1964.
To be fair, launching a new national newspaper – one that was at first liberal in its approach under the increasingly decrepit Menzies government – was an ambitious undertaking. However, the scale of the celebrations and the praise might risk surpassing the event itself.
We bring you a sample from the Sky News Australia documentary: The Australian 60 Years of News, which includes an “exclusive” interview with Murdoch.
Sky News chief executive, Paul Whittaker, who took on the task of interviewing his boss: “Rupert Murdoch, congratulations on 60 years of The Australian, how are you feeling about reaching such an incredible milestone?
Associate editor Chris Kenny, who narrates the doco: “Murdoch’s initial genius and determination in founding The Oz became a mission that continues to inspire.”
Editor-at-large Paul Kelly: “I don’t think there’s been anyone to match Rupert Murdoch in his comprehensive, not just knowledge of the industry, his feel for the industry. With Rupert, it’s tangible; it’s tangible. He knows the production process. He’s a natural journalist.”
Former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell: “Like most good journalists you know, Rupert is an inveterate gossip, and he loves talking at that level.”
We’ll leave you with this statement from the paper’s editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn in which the word “fairly” does some heavy lifting.
“Our masthead aims to have fairly straight news reporting,” Gunn said. “This is something Chris Mitchell said. It’s something that all editors-in-chief that I’ve worked with have been devoted to.”
Murdoch and his US executives were also in attendance to line up behind News Corp’s editorial team from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News and others.
But the 93-year-old’s no-show down under did not dampen the enthusiastic praise heaped upon him by The Australian’s editors, who fell over one another to laud the founder of the national broadsheet in 1964.
To be fair, launching a new national newspaper – one that was at first liberal in its approach under the increasingly decrepit Menzies government – was an ambitious undertaking. However, the scale of the celebrations and the praise might risk surpassing the event itself.
We bring you a sample from the Sky News Australia documentary: The Australian 60 Years of News, which includes an “exclusive” interview with Murdoch.
Sky News chief executive, Paul Whittaker, who took on the task of interviewing his boss: “Rupert Murdoch, congratulations on 60 years of The Australian, how are you feeling about reaching such an incredible milestone?
Associate editor Chris Kenny, who narrates the doco: “Murdoch’s initial genius and determination in founding The Oz became a mission that continues to inspire.”
Editor-at-large Paul Kelly: “I don’t think there’s been anyone to match Rupert Murdoch in his comprehensive, not just knowledge of the industry, his feel for the industry. With Rupert, it’s tangible; it’s tangible. He knows the production process. He’s a natural journalist.”
Former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell: “Like most good journalists you know, Rupert is an inveterate gossip, and he loves talking at that level.”
We’ll leave you with this statement from the paper’s editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn in which the word “fairly” does some heavy lifting.
“Our masthead aims to have fairly straight news reporting,” Gunn said. “This is something Chris Mitchell said. It’s something that all editors-in-chief that I’ve worked with have been devoted to.”
Truly astonishing in a fairly remarkable hagiographic, fawning way ...
So it's hardly surprising that a conga line of reptiles were ready to do the dance for the mango Mussolini. If the pond might borrow a header from Marina Hyde, Welcome to 2024’s saddest race – who gets to be the lizard Oz’s ‘Trump whisperer’?
It was an all hands on deck competition:
For those who can't read the fine print, there was Dame Slap sucking up to JD, and never mind The 'Hillbilly Elegy' Movie Is as Bad as Everyone Said It Was (paywall).
Ah Netflix, you did it again. But then Dame Slap has always loved donning her MAGA cap and pretending she's not one of the Murdochian 'leets.
There was also Killer at the Konvention, there was the dog botherer doing down Joe, there was "Ned", there was the bromancer, and there was even prattling Polonius blathering about objective reporting.
It's true that there was the Angelic one reviving the Pellist saga, but the pond had to save that for the Sunday, and there was garrulous Gemma grating on about SS Australia - metaphors r'us - but the pond had to bite the bit, and go with the reptile flow of a new Don dawning...
The pond turned first to the Ughmann, if only because that talk of the Donald being inert for 187 minutes seemed to go against the reptile flow ...
Now there's a surprise, what with the Ughmann seemingly incapable of doing the reptile thing, and bowing down to kiss the ring ...
He carried on as he started ...
The pond was so astonished it had to call a time out and sing along with Bob ...
Oh, my name, it ain't nothin', my age, it means less
The country I come from is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there, the laws to abide
And that the land that I live in has God on its side
Oh, the history books tell it, they tell it so well
The cavalries charged, the Indians fell
The cavalries charged, the Indians died
Oh, the country was young with God on its side
The Spanish-American War had its day
And the Civil War too was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize
With guns in their hands and God on their side
The First World War, boys, it came and it went
The reason for fightin' I never did get
But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead when God's on your side
The Second World War came to an end
We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends
Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried
The Germans now too have God on their side
I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life
If another war comes, it's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide
And accept it all bravely with God on my side
But now we've got weapons of chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to, then fire them we must
One push of the button and they shot the world wide
And you never ask questions when God's on your side
Through many dark hour I been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you, you'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side
So now as I'm leavin', I'm weary as hell
The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor
That if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war
The country I come from is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there, the laws to abide
And that the land that I live in has God on its side
Oh, the history books tell it, they tell it so well
The cavalries charged, the Indians fell
The cavalries charged, the Indians died
Oh, the country was young with God on its side
The Spanish-American War had its day
And the Civil War too was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes I was made to memorize
With guns in their hands and God on their side
The First World War, boys, it came and it went
The reason for fightin' I never did get
But I learned to accept it, accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead when God's on your side
The Second World War came to an end
We forgave the Germans, and then we were friends
Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried
The Germans now too have God on their side
I learned to hate the Russians all through my whole life
If another war comes, it's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them, to run and to hide
And accept it all bravely with God on my side
But now we've got weapons of chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to, then fire them we must
One push of the button and they shot the world wide
And you never ask questions when God's on your side
Through many dark hour I been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you, you'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side
So now as I'm leavin', I'm weary as hell
The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head, and they fall to the floor
That if God's on our side, he'll stop the next war
What a relief, a musical interlude, and a cartoon as well, celebrating a man who has Hitler on his side ...
Then it was back to the Ughmann for a final gobbet and mucho Lincoln ...
We already know the answer to that ... though apparently the Ughmann slept through that speech celebrated in the Graudian thusly ...
...“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America,” he said at the start of his speech, which lasted around 91 minutes. He was interrupted by chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” from the audience.
Trump went on to kiss the helmet and embrace the uniform of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was killed as he shielded his family as Trump was shot at in Butler Township, Pennsylvania.
But that tone ended shortly after.
Trump went on to attack Democrats over the numerous criminal cases that he faces. “The Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponents as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true,” he said.
“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch-hunts.”
Improvising and moving away from prepared remarks, he went on to label Nancy Pelosi as “crazy”. And he falsely accused Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election – a topic that speakers during the previous week nearly avoided entirely as they looked towards the next election. “The election result we’ll never let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat.”
At one point in his speech Trump declared: “I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.” Trump and his allies unsuccessfully sought to overturn legitimate election results in several swing states in 2020 and stop congressional efforts to certify the vote. He faces criminal charges in both Georgia and federal courts for those efforts.
Trump promised to lower inflation and “end every single international crisis”, without mentioning anything specific about how he would do so other than drilling for oil and closing the border.
“If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it. The 10 worst. Added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done,” he said, pledging to only use the president’s name once in his speech.
Much of his convention speech resembled the freewheeling stump speeches Trump has become known for. He pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” while reciting falsehoods about who was coming into the United States. Claiming that countries were emptying asylums to send people to the US, Trump veered into a bizarre segue about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal villain from the film Silence of the Lambs.
“Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs, the late great Hannibal Lecter, he’d love to have you for dinner,” Trump says.
He lied about crime levels – claiming crime was rising when it is actually falling.
Mark Boldger, a Texas delegate, told the Guardian he thought Trump was off his usual rhetorical track. “He was all over the place,” said Boldger. “I think he might’ve put a few people to sleep tonight and I don’t like that. I don’t think he worked the crowd into the fever he normally does.”
The shooting, Boldger speculated, “really shook him up”.
Trump went on to kiss the helmet and embrace the uniform of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was killed as he shielded his family as Trump was shot at in Butler Township, Pennsylvania.
But that tone ended shortly after.
Trump went on to attack Democrats over the numerous criminal cases that he faces. “The Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponents as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true,” he said.
“If Democrats want to unify our country, they should drop these partisan witch-hunts.”
Improvising and moving away from prepared remarks, he went on to label Nancy Pelosi as “crazy”. And he falsely accused Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election – a topic that speakers during the previous week nearly avoided entirely as they looked towards the next election. “The election result we’ll never let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat.”
At one point in his speech Trump declared: “I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.” Trump and his allies unsuccessfully sought to overturn legitimate election results in several swing states in 2020 and stop congressional efforts to certify the vote. He faces criminal charges in both Georgia and federal courts for those efforts.
Trump promised to lower inflation and “end every single international crisis”, without mentioning anything specific about how he would do so other than drilling for oil and closing the border.
“If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it. The 10 worst. Added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done,” he said, pledging to only use the president’s name once in his speech.
Much of his convention speech resembled the freewheeling stump speeches Trump has become known for. He pledged “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” while reciting falsehoods about who was coming into the United States. Claiming that countries were emptying asylums to send people to the US, Trump veered into a bizarre segue about Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal villain from the film Silence of the Lambs.
“Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs, the late great Hannibal Lecter, he’d love to have you for dinner,” Trump says.
He lied about crime levels – claiming crime was rising when it is actually falling.
Mark Boldger, a Texas delegate, told the Guardian he thought Trump was off his usual rhetorical track. “He was all over the place,” said Boldger. “I think he might’ve put a few people to sleep tonight and I don’t like that. I don’t think he worked the crowd into the fever he normally does.”
The shooting, Boldger speculated, “really shook him up”.
The pond was also really shook up and decided to keep on with the shaking by turning to the bromancer ...
An aria? Clearly the bromancer thinks lyrics about the great Hannibal Lecter are just right for his sort of opera, a kind of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for the masses ...
The reptiles only interrupted the bromancer with a couple of snaps, one providing evidence of how early they start the young in the cult ...
The pond wasn't sure if it was the cap, or the tie and the suit that were more disturbing ...
Thus far not a word about Project 2025, but then it's easy to forget ...
Even so, there are hints that the bromancer might be having a little buyer's remorse ...
Regal? Regal serenity? Of course ...
Sorry, sorry, the pond keeps trying to stop, and then the bromancer does a feed line... and how can the pond resist a reminder of that ancient Greenland gag ...
Say what? The bromancer has a problem? But surely he's at one with the vision ...
Then came a little billy goat butt, before going full hillbilly ...
Been there, done all that ...
Then came another billy goat butt in the form of an "on the other hand"...
And with that it was time to quickly turn to "Ned", because he produced yet another Everest of turd-polishing.
The pond will understand if even the most devoted herpetologists leave the room, that's why "Ned" always comes at the end ... and for some reason, the reptiles decided to do "Ned" snap-free, so there was nothing to break up the tedium, nihil, nada, zilch, zero by way of visual distractions after the first fist pump ...
Of course the speech is manna from heaven for "Ned" because he can do what he always does, which is fill up his word machine with the Donald's thought diarrhoea ...
Speaking of God ...
Then it was on to "Ned" repeating the gospel ...
Yes, the venture capitalist hillbilly will make his appearance in due course...
Of course they do, they're supporting a king with a temporary ear patch ...
Then it was back to "Ned", swept away by the vision ...
And there you have it. "Ned" in the camp of mad uncle Elon and transphobic hysteria ...with bonus hillbilly ... and with "Ned" showing he also knows how to take a shot ...
At this point in the tedium, "Ned" showed an astonishing tone deafness. Did he even listen to the speech? Did he watch the convention? Or even the edited highlights?
...Minutes after Trump recounted his harrowing tale in the speech, the former president, as he so often does, stepped on his own message. Often veering away from his prepared remarks displayed on a teleprompter, Trump peppered his speech with interjections about the former Democratic House speaker (“crazy Nancy Pelosi”) or a hated news program (“De-Face the Nation”). While promising to “make America great once again”, he painted a picture of an American hellscape under Joe Biden’s leadership, torn apart by “a devastating inflation crisis” and “a massive invasion on our southern border”.
The speech reflected a pattern that played out again and again over the course of the week in Milwaukee, as Republicans tried to project a message of unity with decidedly mixed success. Trump’s newly minted running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, preached a message of economic opportunity for all as convention attendees waved signs reading: “Mass deportation now!” Nikki Haley emphasized the need for Republicans to build a big-tent party based on decency just before Ron DeSantis stepped up to sneer at Biden’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” presidency.
Some speeches veered from the somewhat controversial to the downright bizarre. The former Trump adviser Peter Navarro spoke on Wednesday just hours after being released from federal prison, telling the audience: “I went to prison so you don’t have to.” He ended his angry remarks by pulling his fiancee in for an awkward kiss.
In what may become the most enduring image from the convention, former wrestler Hulk Hogan took to the stage on Friday to deliver a full-throated endorsement of Trump. The speech culminated with Hogan tearing off his shirt to reveal a Trump-Vance shirt underneath, sparking loud applause from the cheering crowd. (Graudian)
Not to mention that bizarre kultural figure, Kid Rock, but cue delusional "Ned" for a last gobbet of the big suck on the mango Mussolini sauce bottle ...
The pond realises "Ned" has always been a creepy crawly panderer, but this bout of simpering and fawning takes the cake after a long hard slog through the reptile pack of sycophants ...
Pass the vomit bucket, or better still, pass the pond a Tom Tomorrow cartoon ...
Here's to the Spaffing! syco-phants at RNC...
ReplyDeleteMarina Hyde; "Because this side of the [loon-]pond’s amusing-spectacle-of-the-week was surely UK politicians wetting their pants over a JD Vance joke about the UK being the first Islamist country with the bomb. The comment was clearly not to the collective taste, but, guys – our foreign secretary once called Donald Trump “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.
"The prize on offer, I read, is the chance to fill the role of “Trump whisperer”, a sort of unofficial backchannel position that I assume is officially located in the presidential backchannel."
Marina introduced me to "spaffing". And how to use it as acid on Boris Johnson - and by association "Liz Truss, Nigel Farage, Russell Brand".
To wit; "Johnson was not so much casting his pearls before swine as spaffing them all over an empty pigsty."
See offensive slang...
~ spaff~
verb [ T ] UK informal
~ "to waste money on something:
- Don't spaff money on clothes you don't really need.
- If there are fans out there silly enough to spaff thousands on aticket, it's up to them.
offensive slang
- to ejaculate (= to produce a sudden flow of semen from the penis)
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/spaff
###
"Welcome to 2024’s saddest race – who gets to be Britain’s ‘Trump whisperer’?
Marina Hyde
"Boris Johnson’s supporters will always tell you he is hugely popular in the US, so the spectacle of the former British prime minister addressing a ballroomful of empty chairs at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee is hideously poignant. Politically speaking, it is obviously even worse than when Cheryl got binned off the US X Factor. The idea of one or other of The Anecdotes falling with no one to hear it … well, Johnson was not so much casting his pearls before swine as spaffing them all over an empty pigsty."
"But the erstwhile PM was not alone. I mean, he was virtually alone in the ballroom – but he had a peer group out there in Milwaukee. Liz Truss, Nigel Farage, Russell Brand – it’s almost as if the US election will be fought more edifyingly than the contest to be the most desperate Brit at the RNC. Nothing says “our empire ended several decades ago” like the scramble to get in on the end of theirs.
...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/britain-trump-whisperer-boris-johnson-liz-truss-nigel-farage-republican-national-convention
Spent.... "Humiliating photo shows Boris Johnson speaking to almost empty room at Republican convention"
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/humiliating-photo-shows-boris-johnson-33254064
###
"The pond was so astonished it had to call a time out and sing along with Bob ..." Top reference DP. Nothing new under the sun, as good ol' Bob wrote about this in the 60's...
And "With God on Our Side" provides Movie recommendations too...
- "With God on Our Side" plays over the closing credits of two films, Oren Jacoby's 2007 documentary on anti-Semitism, Constantine's Sword, and Oliver Stone's 2008 biography of George W. Bush, W.
- "Used several times in Ken Burns' The Vietnam War.
- "K'naan's version of the song was used during the ending credits in Michael Moore's 2018 film Fahrenheit 11/9."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_God_on_Our_Side_(song)
Dot, Kez, et all, what song do you recommend for Loonpond's theme song?
Please! Not... "An aria? Clearly the bromancer thinks lyrics about the great Hannibal Lecter are just right for his sort of opera, a kind of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for the masses ...".
Gulp! "Pass the vomit bucket" said Looppond.
Biff replied: "Obviously the only response is THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS!"
They've all been quaffing too much...
Delete"Lilac Wine"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LT38CIgRse4
Sound familiar? Apologies to "Godwin's law of Nazi analogies;: "As an "Downmarket Mussolini"(tm) grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches."
ReplyDelete"Sleepwalking Into an Amerikan Nightmare"
Nina Illingworth July 19, 2024
"I’m not going to lie to you, the situation is bad and rapidly deteriorating. If you aren’t some kind of mouth-breathing fascist or open nihilist, nothing I’m about to tell you is going to sound like good news. It isn’t. When I write about the fact that mainstream American society, and in particular its media, bears a tremendous amount of responsibility for the rise of violent, overt fascism in American politics, the recent mainstream media coverage of the Republican National Convention is a very good example of what I mean.
"Right now mainstream media outlets and Very Serious People(tm) all over the anglosphere are covering what is literally the biggest nazi rally since the production of Triumph of the Will like they’re reporting on the fucking Met Gala, and what we’re really here for is the “ownz.” Simultaneously, the entire goddamned crowd full of cracker American nazis, populated by the kind of professional class pig fascists who can afford to attend the Republican National Convention, are waving matching, professionally designed and mass produced signs in GOP/Trump campaign colors that say “Mass Deportation Now!” And yet somehow this rates less coverage and commentary in our media than the fact that Downmarket Mussolini fell asleep during his nazi failson’s speech.
"Meanwhile the very same professional media and political classes that are too squeamish to even utter the word fascism to describe the obvious fascism we’re watching, are clutching their pearls and trying to tell me that some 20 year-old loser reactionary taking a shot at America’s Fuhrer-To-Be means people who are correctly identifying Trump and his movement as fascist need to “turn down the temperature” and “moderate our rhetoric.” I feel like I’ve been transported to some kind of nightmare realm where cracking a joke about someone taking a shot at Adolf Hitler is completely unacceptable, but open callsfor ethnic cleansing in America are unremarkable forms of protected political expression. The problem however, is that I’m wide awake and the nightmare is real."
...
https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2024/07/19/how-it-happens-here/
1. "Who Goes Nazi?"
"In 1934, Dorothy Thompson became the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany for writing critically & unfavorably about the regime and its leader, Adolf Hitler:
"He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man."
...
https://kottke.org/24/07/who-goes-nazi
... "Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big [RNC] you go to."
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Well at least Ms Thompson got expelled and not locked up incommunicado in a Chinese or Russian prison for a decade or two.
DeleteAh, the day (about Trump) finally dawned ( I may be slow, but at least sometimes I do finally get there):
ReplyDelete"Kids will use lying to establish an identity, even if that identity is false. This can be used to impress their peers, perhaps in response to peer pressure. Your child might lie to his peers about things he says he’s done (that he hasn’t) to make himself sound more impressive. This is not unusual, and we all know adults who still do this in one way or another."
https://www.empoweringparents.com/article/how-to-deal-with-lying-in-children-and-teens/#:~
That's our Trumpkins, isn't it: though in the guise of an increasingly senile adult, he is just a child after all.
At least (last?) Ned arrives at some understanding: "Yet Trump knows his supporters - they just want him in office; they are forever loyal and will accept whatever he does." A point that Biden and chums seem absolutely incapable of grasping.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's just exactly that supporter loyalty which puts him in the same group along with Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Xi and all. The key point being exactly this: "...[his supporters] will accept whatever he does". Watching teev the other night, we were shown a trump supporter who said words to the effect of "look at the humility on his face". And sure enough, great humility is what she thought she saw.
And, it might be added, regarding Biden: they will reject whatever he does. They just want him out of office.
Indonesia returns to its historical traditions:
ReplyDeleteJournalists in Indonesia are being killed, threatened and jailed. A new draft law could make things even worse
https://theconversation.com/journalists-in-indonesia-are-being-killed-threatened-and-jailed-a-new-draft-law-could-make-things-even-worse-234564
From Amanda Marcotte at Salon.com, at the RNC: "Perhaps the most telling video we did, however, involved asking people what “make America great again” means to them. Specifically, we wanted to know when they feel America was “great” and when it stopped being “great.”
ReplyDeleteWhat we found is that, whether they’re 30 or 70 years old, the typical RNC attendee thinks America was “great” when they were kids. They believe America lost its way coincidentally right at the time they were maturing into adulthood."
In short, their 'perceptions' bear very little connection to reality. snafu.
DeleteThere is a brief line from Leonard Cohen asking Do You Want It Darker
ReplyDeleteSuch is of course what the Illingworth essay describes.
What is also interesting is how many so called conservatives pretend that the boy-wonder J D Vance is the standard bearer for the future of the MAGA cultural renewal project - the benighted Rod Dreher specializes in promoting this delusion.
That having been said this essay titled A Senator From the Unconscious provides a very interesting perspective on Vance's deeply troubling psychology
www.nplusonemag.com/issue-45/politics/j-d-vance-changes-the-subject-2
Is Vance's "psychology" as deeply troubling as Trump's ?
DeleteWith no real sense of awareness, the Dog Bovverer interviews Johannes Leak on Sky, about two cartoons involving Senator Mehreen Faruqi, on the broader theme of persons in public life being unhappy with how they might be portrayed in the name of satire. I won't offer a link, because this Leak cartoons only a little better than he speaks, and that is not saying much. My personal problem with his speech starts with his 'you know' quotient exceeding 50%.
ReplyDeleteOur Bovverer does say, towards the end of the, er - interview - that he feels a little self-conscious about the whole thing, because of his history with THAT portrayal of him by the ABC, but passes that off with an invitation to Johannes to depict him - Kenny - however he wants. Perhaps Johannes thinks Kenny is self-parodying anyway. I did also wonder if some of the claimed self-consciousness was because their reference for statements by Senator Faruqi was her interview on 'Insiders' - on that dreadful, Conservative-free, ABC. But Kenny and Leak both happily cite the ABC, because Sky did not manage to get any kind of useful interview with the Senator, just, in best Rupert style, purloined what they could use from the other side.
On with the celebration of 60 triumphant years of the Flagship.
Unfortunately that which Leaks wouldn't have the wherewithal or a decent sense of satire to show the Bovver boy rogering a dog in the way that made him sue the Chaser boys. At that point, the pond really would enjoy the sixtieth celebration of the descent into madness ...
DeletePeople are going barnygargles with that "you know" verbal fillin, aren't they - not only the reptiles and their ilk but all over the TV screen now as soon as any simple citizen is 'interviewed' on screen.
Delete