In which the pond prattles with Polonius, and decides to go with a hagiographic dog botherer ...

 

If the Ughmann offers relief from current terrifying realities, then think of the absolution that prattling Polonius offers ...pompous pedantry and genteel misrepresentations, perhaps over a scone and cup of tea ... and here there's an advantage to being old, and being able to recall what was in essence a tyke political party with its HQ in Melbourne ...

This is Polonial lying, and distraction and conflation and confusion elevated to a high art. 

The DLP was riddled with Catholics, with the NCC and B. A. Santamaria playing a key role ...something Polonius well knows ...

It was perceived as a Catholic party, pushing Catholic causes.

Just for fun, the pond took a dive in Trove, and there were plenty of mentions of the DLP. This one came in The Bulletin, 26th August 1967 ... (Take a squiz at that cover. The pond hasn't seen that many nuns since its days at St Nicholas primary school).

Since the Labor split of 1955 the Democratic Labor party has worked hard to make public contrast between its own political unity and the internal divisions and faction fights in the ALP. Some years ago there was a rumpus, stirred up by former parliamentarians Bourke and Keon, about the influence of the National Civic Council on the DLP's membership and policies, but the appearance of unity was quickly re-established and harmony restored.
In recent months there have been signs of mounting tension beneath the skin. A significant eruption occurred at this month’s annual conference of the Victorian DLP. At the closed Sunday morning session the Caulfield branch moved this resolution:
“The Conference declares that the DLP in its 12 years of service to this nation has fulfilled the first stage of its historic task by preventing the establishment of a pro-Communist Government in Australia. And that this conference directs the Central Executive to streamline its ideology, its social, economic, foreign, and cultural policies, and its organisation, with a view to initiating the second stage of its mission, that of winning the Government of this country.”
According to one delegate: “Then, a real Donnybrook broke out. Apart from a bit of a skirmish over the executive’s report on the Corio by-election, the conference had been going along very smoothly. But this motion really split the boys down the middle.”
Most of the delegates saw the motion as a challenge to the prevailing DLP orthodoxy that the Party should persist in keeping the ALP out of office but remain ready to do a deal with the ALP, and even rejoin it, when that Party finally destroys its Left-wing faction and adopts an anti-Communist and pro-American foreign policy.
But there is now a strong faction in the DLP which has lost interest in the possibility of an eventual merger with the ALP and wants the DLP to forget Whitlam and Barnard and go all out for the “second stage” objective of “winning the Government of this country.” Proponents of this policy are known as the “Third Party men.”
Support for the Third Party policy in Victoria comes largely from the younger members who joined the DLP after the split and regard the ALP as out of date and reactionary, from the strong Western District branches which believe that they will shortly be able to win seats in the State Parliament, from New Australians who believe that the ALP is basically hostile to Continental migrants, and from middle-class members who would like the DLP to shed the title “Labor.”
The vote on the “two stages” motion showed their combined strength. After the fierce debate it was carried 78 to 59. According to one source, a DLP leader voted for the motion on the voices, but with some signs of reluctance voted against it when a division was called.
Most of the permanent officials of the Party, and those members who are influenced by the National Civic Council of Mr. Santamaria, were opposed to the motion and made their opposition loud and clear. They believe that the motion is unrealistic and that the DLP can never hope to increase its vote much beyond present figures. The Young Turks and their country and New Australian allies believe that the DLP has a big future if it can get rid of jts Catholic image and sell itself on its positive policies. Despite Corio, they say that the ALP is dead and the DLP can fill the vacuum within a generation.
Just how the DLP could slough off its Catholic image and where it could pick up its new supporters are the questions which remain to be answered.

How to slough off its Catholic image? Why just get Polonius to lie about its status as a Catholic party...

The pond appreciates Polonius's attempt to discount the Muslim vote, but can't let go of that DLP thing, not least because the pond has some skin in the game. 

In the pond's extended family, a false karass if you will, there was a barking mad fundamentalist one time NCC operative and naturally a full blown Catholic.

This southern infestation produced all sorts of consternation and division in the church, because outside Victoria others weren't convinced of the wisdom of having a nakedly Catholic political party ... especially when it came to funding Catholic schools courtesy of taxpayers, as a way of keeping the Ponzi scheme alive on the cheap ...

There was another amusing sighting in The Bulletin, 8th September 1962 under the header Santamaria Moves North, A Nice Question for Rome ...

B. A. Santamaria’s National Civic Council turned on one of its periodical surprises in Brisbane last Sunday morning (September 2) when it began a weekly paid session on Channel 7 Television Station. The element of surprise was contained in the fact that the programme sponsored was “Sunday Magazine”, the official weekly 15-minute Catholic television programme in Melbourne, in which Mr Santamaria gives a regular talk on current (and other) affairs.

The Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Brisbane was not associated with the presentation of the programme, so that the situation was that an official programme of the Catholic Church in Melbourne was presented in Brisbane by a lay organisation, which is in no way

connected with the Church there or anywhere else.

The Catholic set-up in television is that each Archdiocese of Australia has its own television and radio committee, and each committee is responsible for the production of local programmes.

The Brisbane Archdiocesan television committee (of which the Coadjutor-Archbishop, Archbishop O'Donnell, is chairman, was not approached by the National Civic Council concerning its move to import into Brisbane a Catholic programme of another Archdiocese.

The Brisbane committee had the first opportunity to discuss the NCC move on Tuesday of this week, only after “Sunday Magazine” was seen last Sunday.

Several members, including Archbishop O Donnell, who is anything but a supporter of Mr Santamaria and the NCC, were extremely hostile to the move.

Another factor is that last Saturday morning parish priests in the Archdiocese of Brisbane received a circular letter from the local president of the NCC informing them of the programme, pointing out that its sponsorship was a costly move that could be continued only so long as funds were available for the purpose (this w'as seen as an appeal to the clergy for donations) and mentioning that among subjects that Mr Santamaria could be expected to deal with was the Communist influence in the ALP.

Archbishop Duhig is known to have little sympathy with the policies of MrSantamaria and the Goulburn School closure received little support from Archbishop Duhig, because he apparently saw the hand of Santamaria in it. The last issue of “The Catholic Leader” (Brisbane Archdiocesan weekly), for example, offered an editorial entitled “Handling State Aid Is A Grave Challenge To The Catholic Laity”, which concluded with this piece of advice, seen by many to refer to NCC Catholics in the South:

“Interested and active Catholic laity must be prudent and intelligent in whatever they say or do about this question —without of course becoming cowardly or inactive. Laity in one place or belonging to one organisation must remember in justice to their fellow-Catholics else-

where that even good-intentioned actions on their part could prove injurious in the concrete situation to the State Aidcause in other places.”

Another key point provoked by the NCC sponsorship of the Melbourne Catholic television programme in Brisbane is how this squares up with the ruling of the Holy See in Rome on the role of the, organisation led by Mr Santamaria in Australia. The formula conveyed from Rome, when the matter was at issue a few years ago, was that the organisation, previously called the Catholic Social Movement, now known as the National Civic Council, if it were to pursue the lines it wished was to be an independent, non-official organisation of laity, with no official links with the Catholic Church. The question now being asked by anti-Santamaria Catholics in Brisbane is how such an unofficial, lay organisation can sponsor and present an official television programme of the Catholic Church.

Catholics in Queensland are also asking whether Mr Santamaria’s voice in their State, if it persists, will introduce into their State something akin to theapproach of Archbishop Mannix. Archbishop Duhig, who observed his 91st birthday in the Brisbane Mater Hospital last Sunday, where he is recovering from an operation, may have additional reasons to remember September 2, 1962.

All so long ago, and yet, if you asked anyone at the time who happened to be interested in politics, they knew that the DLP was the Catholic party, with a Catholic agenda, and Mannix and Santamaria and the like were its warriors, and they trained young warriors of the onion munching kind in the cause ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a Gaza video ...

... and that seemed excuse enough to slip in a Gaza cartoon ...

... and then it was on to the final Polonial gobbet ...

None have existed before? What a transparently devious and lying fraud he is ...  it's as if Fred Nile and his ratbag mob, the Christian Democratic Party never existed, though Fred managed to get himself a comfortable gig and a perch from which to indulge in gay bashing ... (and you can find others too, if you search ...you could even read The Conversation and Faith-based politics is nothing new in Australia – so what’s Albanese really worried about?

...Even a cursory glance at the historical record indicates a long list of Australian minor parties that were explicitly Christian. Albanese probably disliked each and every one of them, but they have not usually attracted his adverse notice. The parties used by Fred Nile and his wife Elaine – Call to Australia and the Christian Democratic Party – to get themselves elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council are among the best known, but there were many others.

There was a Protestant Independent Labor Party in the 1920s, active mainly in New South Wales, formed by Walter Skelton. He was able to take advantage of a short-lived experiment in multi-member constituencies and proportional representation to get himself a Legislative Assembly seat. Skelton was elected at a time when religious sectarianism was often vicious, and frequently spilt over into mainstream political contention.

Politicians of the centre right – then concentrated in the Nationalist Party – harvested the issue for votes. The most notorious of them was Thomas Ley, a minister in the New South Wales state government and later a federal parliamentarian. He moved on from a career in parliamentary politics and Catholic-baiting to one in crime. Ley was widely suspected of killing a political opponent in 1925 and later, in England, he was convicted of a murder.

Religious sectarianism – essentially conflict between Catholics and Protestants – was once a drain on Australia’s social cohesion. As Australia’s party system emerged, the Labor Party was disproportionately Catholic. Meanwhile, its non-Labor rival – operating under various names before settling on “Liberal” in 1944 – was overwhelmingly Protestant in composition if not invariably in electoral support.

“Be careful, boys. Here comes the Papist”, Robert Menzies would joke in the presence of John Cramer, a rare Catholic bird in the Liberal nest. It is only in recent decades that some Catholics have been able to find a more comfortable home in the Liberal Party.

Two of Labor’s three great splits of the 20th century were deeply influenced by religious sectarianism: in 1916, over conscription for overseas service, and in 1955, over such matters as policy towards communism and the Catholic Church’s involvement in labour movement affairs. The breakaway party that emerged from the latter split, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), was ostensibly secular but Catholic in all but name.

Enough of that brand of patented humbug, time now for a short serve of alternative eccentricity ...

With the greatest respect, shouldn't women be seen, but not heard? After all ...

Women, know your place ... let's not have any of this sort of unseemly posturing of the Deeming kind...

Grothman’s comments Thursday sounded eerily similar to the central theme of The Handmaid’s Tale—that women are subordinate to men and should take on domestic and subservient roles, and that their worth is tied to becoming mothers. Since the overturning of Roe, the women of Atwood’s fictional “Republic of Gilead” have become a battle cry for feminists who have donned the white bonnet and red cloak of the handmaids as they protest against the Supreme Court’s decision.

After Roe was overturned, Atwood took to Instagram to post a picture of her holding a coffee mug that read, “I told you so.” After coming under criticism for the post, the author wrote on X: “When HandmaidsTale came out in 85, there was disbelief. I thought a religious-right takeover was possible in the U.S., and was Crazy Margaret. Premature, but unfortunately too close. That doesn’t make me happy.”

There are some alarming signs of women speaking out ...

Ah, the suffering Riddster and the righteousness of transphobic tranny bashers, but shouldn't Moira be off having children in a caring family environment? Why is she seeking to undermine the role of men in the world? Is she - gasp - a covert subversive, always spouting off when really that's best left to men ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in a flag video and the pond automatically saluted ...

For some reason, the pond always thinks of Toby jugs when it hears the name "Toby", so here's a 'toon for Toby ...

Then there was just a gobbet to go ...

What joy to be able to speak like a blithering idiot, bashing darkies, bashing TG folk, bashing climate scientists, bashing vaccines and masks (horse pills excluded, enthusiastically supporting climate science denialism and and enthusiastically supporting Vlad the sociopath and the genocide in Gaza.

Freedumb isn't just a word, it's a way of Speccie life... but wait, it seems there are a couple more women in that list at the end. Only a few, but enough to set off alarums. Why, there's Dara Macdonald of the IPA and Sara Gon ... off to a nunnery with them ...

And so to the pond's treat for the day, and some might accuse the pond of hypocrisy, because the pond refused to climb the hagiographic "Ned" Everest celebrating the spawn of the Chairman Emeritus. The pond refused the bit, on the feeble excuse of nausea.

Why then show the dog botherer doing exactly the same, featuring the dog botherer writing up the dog botherer and his reptile eerie, presumably on the basis that they couldn't find anyone else in News Corp to do the job, even if armed with tongs and a nuke plant radiation suit ...

There is a reason, there is an excuse. The pond found it hard to get past all the images that littered the Lachy piece, suppurating with brown nosing* (*under license from a pond correspondent) ...

Just look at the line up of snaps you had to wade past to wade through "Ned's" seemingly endless verbal bootlicking, bowing, ingratiating, scraping and snivelling kowtowing from a prostrate position ...

Then there was the handing on between the generations and the legacy ...

What need of "Ned's" brown nosing words when you have so many brown nosing images assembled in the one hagiographic outburst ...

There were similar snaps with the dog botherer's piece, but they had a comical edge. Sure you had to get past the dog botherer pumping up the dog botherer, but the supporting images were classics of their kind, starting with the lad hanging out with Lord Downer, albeit with the Lord sans high heels and stockings ...

By golly, he looked like a young boofhead thug and head kicker back in the day, just a step away from Utegate and other follies...

There's a fine line between this and "Ned's" deep suck on the Lachy sauce bottle (he must be getting paid a motza to crawl on his supine belly) and the dog botherer blathering about himself, but the pictures are the redeeming feature, at least for those wanting a picture of a boofhead in his head kicking hey day ... a ratfink Sammy on the run ...

There was another, featuring a shadowy, threatening figure, surly and with incipient fuzz, again in company with Lord Downer ...

Way better than shots of Lachy sheltering amongst gum trees and pretending to be dinki di Australian while running an American company ...

As for the rest, it was all dog botherer celebrating dog botherer ...

There will be many who think this is TMFI, and how could the pond argue.

But that talk of public broadcasters reminded the pond of one of the more shameful deeds of the dog botherer ...

It's written up in full at the Graudian, and ironically featured a Leak effort (not a tap, a man who leaked bile in 'toon form) ... Chris Kenny: ‘I’ll be remembered as the journalist called a dog f**ker who stood up for his rights’.

Dog and rat fucker he was, par excellence ...

..The dog joke has form. After an Indonesian paper depicted Howard and the foreign minister Alexander Downer in 2006 as humping dingoes – their crime was to give 42 West Papuan independence campaigners temporary protection visas – the Australian retaliated with a cartoon of President Yudhoyono as a dog having sex with an unhappy Papuan.

John Howard was unfazed by the Indonesian effort: “I've been in this game a long time. If I got offended by cartoons – golly heavens above, give us a break.” President Yudhoyono shrugged off Bill Leak’s reply. “It's in poor taste,” said his spokesman. “Sometimes the media . . . both in Indonesia and other countries, resort to poor taste, which actually demonstrates the level of their quality.”

Guardian Australia asked the Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, if he ever apologised for the Leak and what he saw as the difference between that cartoon and the image of Kenny and the dog. He replied: “Bill’s cartoon was in response to one published about Alex Downer on page one of the tabloids in Indonesia.”

The furore over those 2006 cartoons quickly faded. But they featured the prime minister of Australia and the president of Indonesia. The Chaser had mocked Chris Kenny.

For a few days Licciardello’s assessment of Kenny seemed justified. He responded the morning after the broadcast as a hardboiled journalist might after being roughed up by a bunch of comedians: he joked back. “Betrayed by @ChasLicc,” he tweeted. “Heartbroken. Chas, I’ve left your dog suit on the porch.”

On Sky next night, Kenny was hurt but still managed to laugh: “They have had their fun with me,” he said. “I take their point: I will never criticise the ABC again. They have now silenced me. I am only joking of course. I’ll keep criticising the ABC and it will be fun to see what they do next. What can they do next? They have defamed me. They have shown me up a dog. What will they do next, next time I criticise the ABC? We’ll see. Keep watching.”

His son Liam swiftly contradicted his claim that the Kenny children would be hurt to find the skit on the net. “Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo,” the son wrote on the Junkee website. “He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal party. He was one of Alexander Downer's senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War … and it's a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?”

Kenny senior tweeted: “I am proud of my children, love them deeply, and encourage them to think for themselves.”

But the News Limited journalist’s mood darkened. He wanted someone from the ABC to ring. “I was astonished that there was no response from the ABC to reach out and say they had gone too far,” he told Guardian Australia. He had watched the show with his young, pregnant wife. “It’s not just about you but whoever you’re sharing your bed with. I saw it as a horrible slur on her as well as me.”

Kenny had allies. The shock jocks were marshalling behind him. Complaints began arriving at the ABC in bulk: 188 in all. Andrew Bolt wrote a column not intended to be funny that began: “I am nervous. I saw what the ABC did last week to a friend who called for balance…”

Though Bolt has campaigned hard for his right to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate light-skinned Aboriginal people, he now weighed in on Kenny’s behalf: “Yes, the graphic was clearly fake. But the issue is that it was obscene, humiliating and viciously abusive…”

When Media Watch condemned the skit, the Chaser Team offered a picture of Paul Barry mounting a pig. Same legs and backyard. Different animal. “Of course I am not going to sue,” said the Media Watch host as he put the picture to air. “But what would happen if Chris Kenny decided to do so?”

The lawyers’ letter came three days later. Whatever has since been said about Kenny wanting no more than an apology, let this be clear: he was asking for money on day one – for an apology, removal of the picture from the ABC website and payment of “an amount in compensation for the damage caused”. The figure he would put on his hurt and pain was $95,000.

News Limited was hammering Mark Scott and the ABC. The themes were familiar: an organisation out of control, politically biased and wasteful. Scott’s critics were provoked rather than mollified by his admission that he personally found the Chaser skit tasteless and undergraduate. But Scott continued to defend its broadcast. “It was over the top,” he told the Age. “However, our editorial policy is to give very broad licence around comedy and satire, and properly so.”

A few weeks after the broadcast, the ABC’s audience and consumer affairs division dismissed the complaints against the show. Though “likely to offend” the skit was deemed legitimate satire with “a clear editorial purpose and was ultimately considered to be justified in the context”. That decision was then appealed to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA.

By this time, three teams of lawyers were investigating the old intractable question: how do jokes work? Why we laugh is a mystery that’s never likely to be solved. But why jokes offend is much easier to decide: in life and at law jokes most often come unstuck when they can be taken literally.

From start to finish, Kenny’s solicitor, the leading Sydney defamation specialist Patrick George, claimed the Chaser boys were suggesting Kenny actually had sex with animals and was the sort of lowlife who engaged in bestiality of a most perverted kind.

The ABC’s lawyers were absolutely confident no jury would believe that. The image was obviously fake, a clumsy digital mock-up that could not to be taken literally, especially in the context of a satirical show. They saw the skit being, at worst, on the margins of defamation. Though they believed a judge would let it through to a jury, they saw a number of strong defences available to the ABC: comment, contextual truth and qualified privilege.

When the broadcaster refused to retract, apologise or pay, Kenny decided, “Bugger them, I am going to fight this.” He does not deny he had News Limited’s financial backing to take the ABC to court. “I don’t want to go into that,” he said. “I could not have asked my employers – both at News and Sky – to be more supportive of me.”

There's a lot more, but the pond must get back to the entitled, precious dog botherer talking about the dog botherer ...

Yes, the lizard Oz lives for robust debate and fucking climate science and the ABC... and that blather about Bill Leak is the rich ironical cherry on top of the dog botherer's delusional cupcake ...

He couldn't handle the truth, or at least a jolly jape amongst chums.

That level of delusion is rich ... up there with what can be seen in 'toons ...

That brings the pond to the final gobbet, and that's another reason the pond ran with it. 

The dog botherer might be tedious, but he's not prolix in the "Ned" manner ... he manages to produce a profound suck in a shorter number of richly comic words, and with "Ned's" ability to blather on without a shred of self-reflection or insight...

Indeed, indeed, just imagine the climate science denialism, the TG bashing, the outsider and minority bashing yet to unfold over the next year, let alone the next 60...

No mention of the days when Adrian Deamer ran a real newspaper, just mindless hagiography about the dear leader worthy of North Korea's Rodong Sinmun or Joson Immingun ...

And thanks to the dear leader what a splendid future will unfold in the climate denialist rag, what debates and achievements ...