In which Polonius or his dog goes meta MAGA...

 

One of the greatest, most indefatigable, routinely relentless fact checkers in Australia is a dog, who resides at the Sydney Institute.

Some claim the dog is prattling Polonius in disguise, but heaven forfend, because the latest dog is called Ellie (female), while the previous two fact checkers went by 'Nancy' and 'Jackie', and it's difficult to imagine Polonius indulging in gender reassignment. That's a bridge too far. Canine reassignment is better. It's much easier to think of him as a furry ...

Ellie compiled a report in December, promising to return to work in the new year before Oz day... but is there any need? Do we really need any morer fact checking of routinely errant lefties, greenies and ABC cardigan wearers? (No need to fact check the reptiles or Polonius himself, famously without any error or mote in eye). Isn't fact checking just a little passé?

The pond began ruminating, chewing its cud and contemplating irony when confronted by Polonius's claim to the pond's Sunday meditation slot ...Libertarian Zuckerberg finds common cause with Trump on free expression, He supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against Donald Trump, but the tech titan seems to have shifted his support, welcoming an end to the woke censorship of different viewpoints.

Free expression? But in Polonius's world, he's always standing behind the arras waiting to rush out and stab anyone who indulges in the wrong form of free expression.

The pond has noted a tendency for Polonius to drift into the mega MAGA orbit, and this is the latest example.

Of course Polonius exhibits astonishing male energy, which is why he's likely down with Zuck the cuck suck, and Zuck's latest line, Zuckerberg says most companies need more ‘masculine energy’...

Cynics might think it's all about a grifting billionaire and oligarch wanna be intending on protecting his loot, but cuck Zuck has been gripped by revelations ...
Mark Zuckerberg lamented the rise of “culturally neutered” companies that have sought to distance themselves from “masculine energy,” adding that it’s good if a culture “celebrates the aggression a bit more.”
“Masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg said during a nearly three-hour-long conversation with podcaster Joe Rogan published on Friday. 
“It’s like you want feminine energy, you want masculine energy,” Zuckerberg said during the episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. “I think that that’s all good. But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung toward being this somewhat more neutered thing,” he added, before discussing his passions for mixed martial arts and hunting invasive pigs in Hawaii. 
Zuckerberg, who launched his career by rating the attractiveness of women at Harvard University, added that he grew up with three sisters and has three daughters, and wants women to succeed in corporations. 
“If you’re a woman going into a company, it probably feels like it’s too masculine. It’s — there isn’t enough of the energy that you may naturally have,” he told Rogan. “You want women to be able to succeed and have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people no matter what their background or gender.”

Naturally Polonius is all in favour of rating the attractiveness of women, it's the sort of things bros, nerds, geeks, dorks and droobs do in the Sydney Institute locker room, though the opening illustration for his free expression this day was very disappointing...

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has donated to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee Inc and will be in the front row at Trump’s inauguration. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

It was the only snap the reptiles offered to Polonius, so he missed out on the chance to have fun .... whether as full geeky nerd looking sublimely silly ...

... or by way of 'toon capers ...

The pond is developing a theory that Polonius's expansive, energised, electric male energy might be coming from his intense workouts, intended to make him fully cut, so his fact checking can go full cutting commentary...

Play hard ...

The conversation started when Rogan asked Zuckerberg how his newfound passion for MMA and jiu jitsu has affected his view of corporate culture. Martial arts seem to be central to how Zuckerberg is defining "masculine energy:" "a culture that celebrates aggression a bit more." He said that after a lifetime surrounded by women—his three sisters and three daughters—getting into martial arts "turned on a part of [his] brain that had been missing." 

Of course, Polonial has long had a part of his brain missing, but now he's been revitalised and will no doubt deploy choke holds to deal with the ABC ...

Emma at Fortune wasn't entirely happy ...

Let's consider Zuckerberg's definition of "masculine energy." It seems to be wrapped up in the idea of "aggression"—which is a limited view of masculinity. If you look around corporate America, masculine energy is distinctly not lacking—it's at the top of 89% of Fortune 500 companies today. It dominated the business world for centuries, before the decade or two in which women's leadership has influenced how businesses operate at scale.If anything, this entire exchange is a sign of just how far the culture has shifted. Zuckerberg felt comfortable, as a Fortune 500 CEO, having this conversation in public. It's certainly far from the days when the best known export of Facebook's corporate culture was Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In."

Nor was Philippe Escande, scribbling for Le Monde Zuckerberg's 'masculine energy' doesn't interest young people ...

In anticipation of TikTok's banning in the US, some US users are turning to the Chinese platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). Zuckerberg, who is now busy laying off 5% of Meta's staff, should reflect about that trend, writes Le Monde's economic columnist Philippe Escande.

In the American film Face-Off (1997), a policeman and a hoodlum exchange faces, sowing confusion: who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? Facebook-Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg's latest appearances and decisions are so at odds with his past positions that we wonder when he'll pull off his mask to reveal that he's actually his rival, Elon Musk.
But no, it seems we're indeed dealing with the real Zuckerberg. His latest statement in the form of a memo involved commenting on the firing of 3,600 employees in an unapologetically macho style: "I've decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster," he declared.
We can imagine that, beyond the strange change in his personal beliefs, the CEO of Meta intends to attract Donald Trump's good graces and not leave the field open to the ambitions of his opponent. Musk is rumored to be interested in buying the US portion of Chinese social media giant TikTok, which could be banned in the United States by the end of this week.
But in his quest for recognition, Zuckerberg should still wonder about what is driving a strange phenomenon. Since the weekend, some of TikTok's 170 million users have chosen to take refuge on another platform in anticipation of the upcoming ban. And it's not Facebook or Instagram they've chosen, but a Chinese platform unknown in the West. It's not based in the US, it's all in Mandarin, and its name, Xiaohongshu (RedNote in English), couldn't be more explicit. It means "Little Red Book," like the one Mao Zedong put in the hands of all citizens for over three decades. After a brief promotional campaign on TikTok, the Xiaohongshu app became, as of Monday, January 13, the most downloaded on Apple's App Store in the US.
Amused, the Chinese users of the trendy Shanghai-based platform, a sort of shopping, travel and tips guide, were quick to welcome the young Americans lost amid Mandarin characters with patience and kindness, creating tutorials and sharing pronunciation courses.
Meta's new "Mr. Muscle" might ask himself two questions. Why do Chinese apps resonate better with young Americans than his? Where does the entrepreneurial dynamism come from in such a radical communist dictatorship? He may however take satisfaction in seeing the youth of his country shrug off political divides and reactionary trends to so naturally bond with the "enemy" on the other side of the world. They show a different face of the US.

The pond apologises, this is all a long way from the extremely cut, highly cutting Polonius discovering for the nth time that it's all the fault of the ABC ...

Since the ABC is in the process of presenting its talent for 2025, it’s an appropriate time to reassess its “expert” commentators on the US as America enters the second presidency of Donald J. Trump.
As pointed out recently in this column, in late November 2024 American political analyst EJ Dionne appeared on ABC Radio National Breakfast. Shortly after, the ABC’s own Chas Licciardello declared on ABC RN’s Late Night Live that Trump “becomes a lame duck president from here”. Dionne had made this assessment earlier.
The point here, if point there was, turned on the political reality that the US constitution entails that a president can serve only two terms. And president-elect Trump’s second term starts next Monday (US time). In short, he will not be president after January 20, 2029.
It would seem that the likes of Dionne and Licciardello do not believe that four years is a long time in politics.
Not so the various visitors who have been paying court to Trump in recent times at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida. The list includes political leaders such as Justin Trudeau (Canada), Giorgia Meloni (Italy) and Javier Milei (Argentina), plus business executives such as Mark Zuckerberg (Meta and Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Masayoshi Son (Softbank), Shou Zi Chew (TikTok), Sundar Pichai (Google and Alphabet) and Sam Altman (OpenAI).

Good solid points, and an excellent assessment of the benefits of a fawning, supine oligarchy struggling for a place in the Sun King's mind ...

Then Polonius goes on a mega MAGA roll ...

What does this lot have in common, readers may wonder. Not much, it would seem. Except that none takes notice of the “expert” comment on US politics carried on the Australian taxpayer-funded public broadcaster by the likes of Dionne and Licciardello.
Certainly Zuckerberg does not regard Trump as a lame-duck president. He dined with the president-elect and members of his team in Palm Beach on November 27.
Moreover, Zuckerberg has donated to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee Inc and he will be in the front row at the inauguration – along with Bezos, Pichai, Cook and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk (who has been hanging out at Mar-a-Lago for quite some time).
Not long after his return from Florida, Zuckerberg took to Facebook to express his concern about freedom of expression in the US.
He had this to say: “It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram.”
Zuckerberg continued: “After Trump got first elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried, in good faith, to address those concerns without becoming the arbiter of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”
Zuckerberg added “over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community note system”.
This is the system in operation on Musk’s platform, X. It enables readers to submit comments that will be carried under the post being contested if deemed to be reasonable.

Well yes, excellent assessment of the mugwump swamp of Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, racists, conspiracy theorists and fundamentalists which, together with a ketamine addiction, has sent Uncle Leon into the land of the pixies.

Make it so for meta MAGA...

Polonius is evolving in tandem with Zuck the cuck suck ...

It is widely known that Zuckerberg supported Hillary Clinton (against Trump) and Joe Biden (against Trump) in 2016 and 2020 respectively. His move towards Trump probably contains a degree of business self-interest.
After all, Trump led his Republican Party to victories in the presidential and Senate elections in November 2024. Moreover, the Republicans retained a majority in the House of Representatives.
Yet Zuckerberg is not a product of the American left.
In a perceptive article in The New York Times on January 7, Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac quoted tech executive Katie Harbath as saying Zuckerberg “is feeling that society is more accepting of those libertarian and right-leaning viewpoints that he’s always had”.
Harbath says she sees the Meta chief executive’s position as “an evolved return to his political origins”.
There was a time when the political left opposed censorship and advocated free speech (even if it did not always practise what it preached). Moreover, it tended to be the right that advocated a degree of censorship, especially with respect to moral and social issues.
Not any more. As Zuckerberg and others well know, it is the left that is weaponising concepts such as misinformation and disinformation as a means of closing down debate.

Indeed, indeed, let the misinformation and disinformation burn like an LA wildfire ...

Did Polonius mention the ABC? Possibly, but where's the harm in more mentions?

There must always be more than one chance to slag off the cardigan wearers ... and at the same time produce an almost endless litany of grievances, done in the style of the tangerine tyrant deep into anger and persecution complex...

At the ABC, for example, the terms are invoked as a means of justifying lack of viewpoint diversity and rationalising its existence as a conservative-free zone.
Across the past decade in Australia, free speech has been constrained by the existence of section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act.
Writing in these pages on November 19 last year, lawyer Michael Sexton commented that the section “makes unlawful statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate an individual or group in the community because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the individual or the group”. Sexton wrote that “the problem here is that the provision almost invariably targets the expression of political opinion”.
In the recent Federal Court case of Faruqi v Hanson, Justice Angus Stewart found against senator Pauline Hanson and for senator Mehreen Faruqi after Hanson issued a post saying that Faruqi should “piss off back to Pakistan”. The Pakistan-born Faruqi is a Muslim who was educated at a private Catholic school in Lahore. However offensive, the comment was not criminal nor was action taken by means of defamation.
A similar result was evident in the 2012 case of Eatock v Bolt. There, Justice Mordy Bromberg found not only that journalist Andrew Bolt had made inaccurate and offensive comments concerning “fair-skinned Aboriginal people” but objected to the “tone” of his comments. The judge even stated, on occasion, that Bolt’s comments should be read “between the lines”.
As we know, nothing is printed between the lines.

Strange that Polonius didn't urge on the chance to join King Donald I in freeing TikTok...

Never mind, there's just a few lines left ...

The previous Coalition government attempted to abolish section 18C but failed to get its legislation through the Senate. Section 18C will be with us for a long time.
Public figures, such as the applicants in the above cited cases, have opportunities to take legal action if they are offended – without setting precedents that adversely affect the rights of others.
As Zuckerberg now recognises, freedom of expression is a fundamental right that is under challenge. The fact Trump is no lame duck should advance the cause.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Well yes, there are many ways to advance the cause of freedumb ...

As for the other reptiles, the pond became tired from all the exercise, and decided as a bonus, it would visit the lizard Oz editorialist, furiously scribbling Politicians benefit from real jobs, In economic hard times it is difficult to beat the experience that comes from having to make decisions with big consequences in the commercial world.

It's just a two minute read, but the pond wondered why the reptiles stopped at King Donald I driving a garbage truck and working the fries in MacDonalds ...

Surely today's politicians need to be oligarchs who can implement a new world order ...

It is a longstanding lament that many of today’s politicians have followed a career path through political party networks and, as a result, lack experience in the commercial or broader world. There is no doubting that community contact is the best education a prospective minister can get. But in economic hard times it is difficult to beat the experience that comes from having to make decisions with big consequences in the commercial world.
With the federal election race starting to form, Peter Dutton has put a spotlight on his working experience, which includes small business and time in the police force. 

Indeed, indeed, give the man a big government business to run. His attention to costings and his ability to run a spreadsheet are marvels to behold ...

It is difficult not to contrast this with the working background of Anthony Albanese, who spent one year working outside the ALP family as a bank officer when aged 17 to 18. The difference in business experience is not confined to the party leaders.

All very well, but does it go far enough? Surely we need more guidance ...

In short, what's needed for these feeble-brained, addled political chooks and keyboard-pounding reptiles is a billionaire by their side ...

Government by billionaires is is needed in this land, and that's why the rest of the reptile pitch is a tad underdone...

The Prime Minister’s cabinet team is stacked with former union, party and political apparatchiks. Jim Chalmers was an Australian National University tutor in politics and public policy for one year in 2001. Analysis by political editor Geoff Chambers shows that of the Albanese government’s 23-person cabinet, 10 ministers worked for unions, 16 worked as political staff for state and federal Labor ministers, and three worked as party officials. Prominent Labor ministers list brief stints in jobs as teenagers before being drafted into union, party and political careers. On the Coalition side, shadow cabinet members have a wide range of experience outside politics.
Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley worked as an air traffic controller and commercial pilot. Angus Taylor was a partner with McKinsey and Co and has experience in business. Jane Hume was a Rothschild Australia senior manager and Deutsche Bank vice-president. Dan Tehan was a farmhand and diplomat. Andrew Hastie was in the Special Air Service.

Yes, yes, a farmhand, and a partner in a firm with skills rorting government, but without an oligarchy of billionaires, how can anything be accomplished?

The reptiles kept missing the point. The mutton Dutton is likely to lose emeritus chairman Rupert in the coming years. Who will be his new guide? Lachie, or even worse, the reptiles' bouffant Dennis?

Surely we can rustle up our own bunch of oligarchs. The IPA is here to help:

Voters are entitled to know as much as possible about those who seek to make decisions on their behalf and decide how and where taxpayers money is spent. As national editor Dennis Shanahan writes in Inquirer on Saturday, all eyes are suddenly on Mr Dutton and Labor may have miscalculated in putting him on the same footing as the Prime Minister in a presidential-style campaign. Shanahan says Labor is assuming people accept taxpayer-funded projects, subsidies and rebates are preferable to better economic management and that voters will adopt Labor’s personal portrayal of Mr Dutton’s leadership.
The danger for Labor is voters may not adopt the same view as Labor HQ. If so, it could be a miscalculation made by not having the depth of experience in the real world and relying too much on the echo chamber of party insiders.

All very well, but the echo chamber of reptile insiders has missed the most important ingredient. 

We need more squillionaires, billionaires and multi-millionaires to run the show. A squillionaire like the mutton Dutton can't do it on his own. He must turn to King Donald I, Uncle Leon and Zuck the suck as examples of the way forward.