There's a weird game going down in the emeritus chairman's camp these days...
Faux Noise remains as devoted as ever, positively uxorious, while the WSJ snips and snipes and King Donald yearns for a settlement ...
Per the Beast ...
FRENEMIES
The president suggested that 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch could be part of the group to take over TikTok, despite the duo’s ongoing multibillion-dollar lawsuit.
Hope springs eternal to King Donald's sociopathic heart...
“What Trump intimates have told me is, because he believes that he can ‘Pressure the old man into a settlement,’” Wolff said on Inside Trump’s Head.
“Rupert Murdoch is 94 years old, so if he can pressure him into a settlement, and then a person near Trump said to me that it could be an easy 10 million,” Wolff said.
Per the Graudian ...
And so on ...
In the ongoing absence of Lord Downer, the reptiles published a classic example of this Dr Henry (not our Henry) and Mr Hyde routine, which the pond ignored this morning, but which is fun to note in a late arvo setting...
Hadley Freeman
Hadders (no relation to Chadders) started off in good, traditional News Corp, lizard Oz hive mind reptiles down under styl,e giving the censorious left hell with an image designed to startle and shock the hive mind:
What's wrong with a little killing by way of out of control cop?
(And for that matter what's wrong with Homan pocketing a little cash in the paw - WaPo archive link - for a good example of how furriners are driving the country into chaos and lawlessness...
Meanwhile, Chatters kept going in good style ...
Political violence has long been a feature in the US and it has been ratcheting up on the right and left, with two attempts on Donald Trump’s life during the election, an arson attack in April on the home of the Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and the assassination of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman in her home in June.
No need to show the AV distraction featuring an orange-coloured blob on an aeroplane, U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated the suspension of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves and said TV broadcasters should lose their licenses over negative coverage of his administration, adding fuel to a national debate over free speech. Gabe Singer has more.
Hadders carried on, but suddenly there was a sea change ...
The VP of tattle-telling. But there was no need for anyone to tell the bosses of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel what he made of Kirk’s killing because he said it on TV on Monday. And Disney promptly yanked him off the air.
There was an illustration evoking Hadders hagiographic point, The responses to Charlie Kirk’s killing are strikingly similar to George Floyd’s five years ago. Picture; AFP.
Hadders became increasingly agitated in a very un-Faux Noise way ...
The responses to Kirk’s killing are strikingly similar to Floyd’s five years ago, although both sides would be horrified by that comparison. Progressives painted portraits of Floyd, and now people on the right – including US senator Ted Cruz – are posting mawkish AI images of Kirk embracing Jesus. President Joe Biden honoured Floyd on his birthday, and the US Senate voted to make Kirk’s birthday “a national day of remembrance”.
It’s true the left didn’t take any comedians off air post-Floyd – but it tried. In 2021 people protested outside Netflix headquarters to try to force the company to stop streaming comedian Dave Chappelle, because he made fun of gender ideology in his act. Netflix refused, so one activist attacked Chappelle on stage while he was filming his next Netflix special.
No need to show the image of King Donald fist clenched, see the archive if you must see it, Political violence has been ratcheting up on the right and left, with two attempts on Donald Trump’s life during the election. Picture: AFP
Hadders was torn ...
Last week that same journalist was sacked for, she says, her posts, including a much-retweeted one in which she claimed Kirk had said that “black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously”.
In fact he said high-profile black women who said they had benefited from affirmative action were acknowledging they didn’t have the brain power to be taken seriously. Player played, sure. But what a childish, destructive game.
At this point, Hadders might have chivvied the grieving widow for getting out of the kitchen - the only approved place for women - and playing the grifter, what with talk of US$6 million coming in to add to a US$12 million estate, really handy as a way of enhancing the kitchen where women belong, but perhaps it's too soon ...
Also no need to remind MAGA types of the unmentionable, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated in her home in June. Picture: Abbie Parr/AP
Hadders then went full hog, as if taking into account the simple-minded cavorting of Gorgeous George Brandis in another place, parroting Reaction to Charlie Kir's death highlights hypocrisy of the left (that's an archive link, the pond doesn't have the stomach for Gorgeous George's stupidity on any day of the week, but especially on a Monday)...
There isn’t a right and left divide any more. There is a liberal and illiberal divide. The liberal side accepts a plurality of views. The illiberal side cheers on censorship. The liberals make compromises to achieve change. The illiberals are focused on vindictive vengeance.
Trump gloating about the cancellation of comedians who have made jokes about him is illiberal; so are far-left populists who crow, “No debate!”, and cheer on the deplatforming of anyone who disagrees with them, however mildly. I don’t believe free speech in America is over, not yet. But I long for the day when the illiberals are no longer in charge.
The pond had only one problem - imagining toothless old Gorgeous George as ruthless. Why he'd have a hard time intellectually wrestling with a marshmallow ...
Never mind that billy goat, butt how is all this possible?
Well it's part of that strange schizophrenia that afflicts News Corp because Hadders' piece originally ran in ...
The Times
... before landing in the hive mind of the lizard Oz, part of the deeply weird divide in the News Corp world ...
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France—
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Hadley was a columnist for the Graudian for many years (leaving a couple of years ago over one of the masthead’s occasional internal ideological fracas), so I suppose it’s understandable that as yet she hasn’t been entire assimilated, Borg-like, into the hive mind. Still, she shows signs of settling in reasonably well with a nice display of both-siderism. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall any US States threatening to fine colleges unless they erected statues of Kirk.
ReplyDeleteTruly admirable both siderism, and perhaps she was thinking of this ...
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/20/oklahoma-republicans-charlie-kirk
Oklahoma Republicans propose all state colleges must have Charlie Kirk statue
Schools would be required to build memorial plaza and describe slain activist as civil rights leader or face fines
Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma introduced legislation this week that would require every public university in the state to construct “a Charlie Kirk Memorial Plaza”, with a statue of the assassinated Republican activist and a sign calling him a “modern civil rights leader”, or pay monthly fines.
The proposed legislation comes as conservatives pay tribute to the murdered activist and podcaster, whose life will be commemorated by the president at a service in Arizona on Sunday, by comparing him to martyred political and spiritual leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr and Saint Paul.
The Oklahoma bill, sponsored by state senators Shane Jett and Dana Prieto, specifies that the memorial site must be in “a prominent area” on the main campus of every institution of higher education in the state system, and must include “a statue of Charlie Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk and his wife holding their children. Designs for the statue must be approved by the legislature.
Each plaza must also include “permanent signage commemorating Charlie Kirk’s courage and faith and explaining the significance of Charlie Kirk as a voice of a generation, modern civil rights leader, vocal Christian, martyr for truth and faith, and free speech advocate”.
The state-dictated reference to Kirk as a civil rights leader echoes the widespread effort on the right to cast the founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA as a figure equivalent to Martin Luther King Jr, a man Kirk once called “awful”.
After everyone from a Georgia representative to a deputy chief of the New York police department made the comparison with MLK, the slain civil rights leader’s son, Martin Luther King III, took time this week to reject it, noting that Kirk had accused prominent Black women of lacking “the brain processing power to be taken seriously”, while his father “was about bringing people together”...
“When you’re doing that, it’s a disservice to unification,” King told a reporter in Virginia. Kirk, he said, “certainly was a force in this society and a significant force, but I just disagree with the position that his force was about inclusiveness. When you denigrate Black women and say that somebody is in a position just because of the color of their skin, that’s gravely false.”
Last week, another of King’s children, Bernice King, responded to a meme of Kirk alongside her father, as well as Jesus, John F Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, writing: “There are so many things wrong with this. So many. I get tired, y’all.” The meme had been posted on social media by Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican representative who got her start in politics as an aide to Kirk.
At least Ty Cobb says it with a straight delivery...
ReplyDelete"“It’s evocative of what we’ve seen throughout history,” Cobb told NBC News’ Kristen Welker. “In 1939, Dr. Goebbels, at Hitler’s instruction, removed five comedians, or witticists as they were called at the time, from the airways in Germany and for criticizing or making fun of the government in a satire way.”
“Trump is waging war on people who offend him,” said Cobb. “He’s all about vengeance. And sadly, his subordinates, like one of the Project 2025 authors, Brendan Carr of the FCC, are following in line.”
"Trump and his allies knew Kirk but they are exploiting his death to censor only the left."
ReplyDeleteFools wade in where angels fear to tread.
"Deplatforming a dispersed community using a series of court orders against individual service providers appears unlikely to be very effective if the censor cannot incapacitate the key maintainers, whether by arresting them, enjoining them or otherwise deterring them."
No Easy Way Out: the Effectiveness of Deplatforming an Extremist Forum [Kiwi Farms] to Suppress Hate and Harassment
https://arxiv.org/html/2304.07037v7
Gosh darn it - seems I missed the memo about (the Oz imitation) CPAC being just down the road, in Brisbane, this weekend. Missed opportunity to see some of the outstanding figures of history, such as Liz Truss (whose particular tenure as a British PM is unlikely to be beaten, although she was in the State that provided Frank Forde to be Prime Minister of our land of Girtby for an entire week, so never say never). Anyway, missed out on hearing our very own Killer Creighton, or Amanda Stoker (the proverbial young person with bright future behind her), the Chuckleheads from Sky Noise on Sunday. Well, actually, Rowan Dean and 'You know' Morrow - Rita had to zip off to Arizona for the funeral of a close personal friend, and, oh - Nick Goiran. Hands up anybody who can identify Nick Goiran? Anyone? Up the back there? No? - that Nick is a member of the legislative council of Western Australia. And a household name. In the Goiran household, if nowhere else.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, opportunity missed, so I guess it will be something like another 7-8 years before it comes back to Brisbane. No doubt every other city of any size bids for the CPAC business, so we may not see it again in, gasp - Olympics year!!!
Dammit, Chadders, you had a contractual duty to report your findings to the pond's readership.
DeleteThe only suitable fine the pond can think of is a missive a day on the misery of being a reader of reptiles!
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteAs a rule I’m not a fan of AI slop and its blatant plagiarism.
Also I went off Christopher Hitchens when he became a full throated supporter of the disastrous Iraq invasion.
However I must admit this skewering of Trump is very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOHWYUymW6I
Yes, DW, the pond's logarithms also picked up on that one, suggesting there's a mysterious affinity in our logarithms ...
DeleteAnd yes, the pond was tempted by AI slop, as you were, and why not, where's the harm? At least they added a disclaimer ... and only a few major climate events were triggered by the unexpected use of electricity.