EXCLUSIVE ... it's all a circus, and if you think that's EXCLUSIVE news, you must work for the lizard Oz ...

What's the most revealing thing about the relentless grinding and desperate ideological machine the lizard Oz has become?

The casual alienated reader might notice on the front page yet another assault on 18C.

This doesn't constitute news, this is the Murdochians pursuing, and so they say, setting the agenda.

But what's risible to the pond, what lightens the day, is the use of EXCLUSIVE.

Today even the most lightweight bit of filler - look, down there at the bottom right of the page - cops a burst of EXCLUSIVE red.

But, but, but billy goat, Patricia Karvelas lathered this story into a foaming frenzy on March 29th under the header Plan for over-55s to meet new dole test (behind the paywall because you have to pay for stories as aged as Miss Havisham's wedding cake).

Is the digital date stamp wrong or do the reptiles get out the EXCLUSIVE eggbeater for the weekend rag? Is it possible to put an EXCLUSIVE on endless rotation like a DJ in the 1950s in the grip of a payola scandal?

At the nub of it, the dole idea is a revival of a proposal first considered and rejected by the Rudd government in 2008.

Sad to say, the same preening desperation, the same pretence at EXCLUSIVITY litters the digital front page:

So many EXCLUSIVES, so little TIME.

Especially when it's patently absurd. For example, the story labelled EXCLUSIVE, at the top of the digital list, the Bullock, matter, was old news at least if you accept Google's timings:

(no hot links, screen cap)

You see, the story was off and running before the Oz's latest iteration of it - the Joe Bullock hare was well out of the gate and the hounds racing before the weekend print edition got to rolling ...

For starters, while  The Australian might have discovered Bullock's speech on Friday, the Christians at the "Philosophy and Culture" Dawson Society had the real scoop on Bullock's 6th November 2013 when they put it up on the full to overflowing intertubes on the 22nd January 2014.

Now that's a knockdown EXCLUSIVE for you. And anybody with an inkling of Bullock and the shop union would know that it's not that much of an EXCLUSIVE, because it's long been known the shoppies' union has been a front for conservatives who make Tony Abbott sound on occasions like a liberal.

Which is way all this EXCLUSIVE nonsense is so offensive, and nonsensical.

In older days and climes - in the times of Ming the merciless - this kind of ostentatious shrieking, posturing and boasting would have offended the conservative palate.

Why in those days, the size of the print used on the front page determined if a rag was a vulgar tabloid or a serious and conservative rag which frowned on pathetic attention-seeking.

These days it seems angry old men need stimulation.

Oh dear, the pond has trodden on a corn.

Say what?

Old white rich men having too much power = backdoor attempt at censorship?

That sounds like a remarkably stupid assertion, a truly ridiculous formula.

Would you like to know more?

Eek, is that an old rich white man trapped in the cage?

Yes, it's just as risible when you get to read the actual content of Tim Wilson's Insidious threats to free speech (inside the premium paywall because there's always a high price on free speech by government bureaucrats).

It starts with one of the pond's favourite words: insidious.

Of course INSIDIOUS features in that Orwellian tract, 1984:

'Are you guilty?’ said Winston. 
‘Of course I'm guilty!’ cried Parsons with a servile glance at the telescreen. ‘You don't think the Party would arrest an innocent man, do you?’ His frog-like face grew calmer, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression. ‘Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,’ he said sententiously. ‘It's insidious. It can get hold of you without your even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my sleep! Yes, that's a fact. There I was, working away, trying to do my bit — never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all. And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what they heard me saying?’ 
He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medical reasons to utter an obscenity. 
‘“Down with Big Brother!” Yes, I said that! Said it over and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I'm going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? “Thank you,” I'm going to say, “thank you for saving me before it was too late.”’ 
‘Who denounced you?’ said Winston. 
‘It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. ‘She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.’ 
He made a few more jerky movements up and down, several times, casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan. Then he suddenly ripped down his shorts. 
‘Excuse me, old man,’ he said. ‘I can't help it. It's the waiting.’ 
He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory pan. Winston covered his face with his hands. ‘Smith!’ yelled the voice from the telescreen. 
‘6079 Smith W! Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells.’ 
Winston uncovered his face. Parsons used the lavatory, loudly and abundantly. It then turned out that the plug was defective and the cell stank abominably for hours afterwards.

Oh dear, sorry, the pond got more interested in the toiletry affairs of Parsons than the scribbles of Tim Wilson ...

But what's the point of Wilson's exercise? Well you see the dear possum was on QandA, and evidently he felt like he got rolled, and now he wants to resume the fight, and of course, being a favourite of angry old white men, he gets the chance in the lizard Oz to roll out his arguments and attack the arguments of his fellow panellists, and none of them gets a chance to reply ... because none of them are in thick with angry old white men.

And of course Wilson just loves it, because some animals should be able to sleep in sheets and sit and dine with the farmer, and any power imbalance is self-correcting, which is of course why Chairman Rupert is just a twittering voice in the crowd ...

Now there's a knock down irony, as ironic as these lines:

Identity group-based arguments for restricting free speech are just a backdoor, sociological argument for censorship...

...Getting past the obvious hypocrisy of using race and gender-based abuse to defend a law that seeks to outlaw unjust prejudice, the intention of the argument is that “old white rich men” have both money and power to communicate their views and therefore restrictions on their speech are justified to make things fairer for those who are weaker.

And why is this so funny?

Well the pond points to the header on the front page of The Australian damning 18C: Act failing to stop black-on-black racism.

Which is to say, identity group-based arguments for attacking 18C ...

And

Getting past the obvious hypocrisy of using race-on-race and gender-based abuse to attack a law ...

As for the rest, it's just more of the usual Tim Wilson blather, which inevitably in the third last par comes to the real reason for the hysteria: the Bolt matter.

Anyone who scribbles for the Murdochians inevitably ends up down that squirrel hole.

But Wilson says one memorable thing:

We all rightly develop filters of trust, or the opposite, for those in public life based on whether we believe their views are trustworthy and have integrity.

Indeed. Now how should the pond filter the views of someone who joined an organisation having belonged to an organisation that called for the abolition of said organisation? And now pockets a large stipend for the pleasure, and routinely given a megaphone and a place in the lizard Oz's EXCLUSIVE grandstand reserved for angry men?

Would you like to know more?

Not really, but what a gosh golly gee whizz display of rocket science the Western Australian senate election re-run has turned out to be.

Why it was worth the Electoral Commission stuffing up just so the world could be regaled with the thoughts of Joe Bullock.

You have to feel sorry for Louise Pratt, forced to defend a dinosaur, and you have to feel sorry for Albo, who must have the sinking feeling of being a dinosaur amongst dinosaurs, and you even have to feel sorry for Tony Abbott, when you learn that Abbott was a close political ally in student days of a rabid right wing ratbag who persuaded Abbott, so the dinosaur claims, to join the Liberal party rather than stick with his preference for Labor ...

It turns out that Bullock's talk remains available online here, at time of writing.

What's the bet that someone in the Labor party would have loved to have been able to silence this angry old white man?

It turns out that Bullock has the same weird notion of freedom as Tim Wilson:

“The time is coming where faith needs to be protected from politics … the anti-discrimination movement is forcing religious belief into the four walls of a church. I am conscious of the movement for homosexual marriage and what that could mean for Catholic schools, where homosexuality could be required to be advocated as a moral equivalent to heterosexual marriage, I am concerned Catholic hospitals could be forced to recommend abortions … this is politics invading freedom of religion … freedom of religions is the freedom to practice your religion and that means taking your beliefs out of your church and living them in your life.”

Yes, freedom is the freedom to indulge in gay bashing.

What's amusing is the craven way this "freedom fighter" went to water as soon as the fuss erupted:

Labor's lead Senate candidate in the rerun West Australian Senate ballot has been forced to write to all Labor members in the state on the eve of the election, apologising for suggesting many of them were "mad". 
"I am writing to apologise for the offensive remarks I made last year which have been widely reported in the media today. My comments were ill-considered, and I apologise unreservedly," he said in the emailed apology. 
"I have the utmost respect for Labor members and our supporters and share your concern for the interests of working people in this state and this country.” He also apologised to his running mate, Louise Pratt, after questioning whether she really was a lesbian since her partner had had a sex change. "I have enormous respect for Louise, she has served the party and this state magnificently for over a decade and I'm confident that with the support of us all she'll be returned to the Senate tomorrow. Both Louise and I need your support on booths tomorrow and I know we can count on you," he said.

The pond long ago lost interest in the Labor party, and the likes of Joe Bullock in the public space is as good a reason as any.

And if the pond wants to read about the farce, why right at this moment, there's no need to read an EXCLUSIVE in the Oz, and pay for the pleasure, or have the pleasure of evading the paywall.

Lenore Taylor provides a solid report for The Graudian in Labor WA Senate candidate Joe Bullock apologies for calling members 'mad', and that's where we found the link and the quotes above.

It is of course tempting for the pond to laugh at the sand gropers, caught up in this circus.

Just as it's easy to laugh at cane toaders suffering under the gauleiter Campbell Newman strutting his stuff and bunging on a war with the doctors ... an argument that has yet to play out, but which could see the Newman government look as strange as the average day of a Northern Territory politician ...

Ah yes, it's tempting to laugh and chortle and cackle with glee - what great fun it would be - but the the pond learnt at an early age that it's unwise to carry stones while living in a glass house. Let alone throw them ... (and did you know you could trace that cornball phrase back to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde here. See, the pond's circus is all Chaucerian class).

If you live in the town of the Rum rebellion, all you can do is laugh, and relish the rum and the lash, and enjoy a David Rowe cartoon, which strangely enough evokes George Orwell yet again (and as always there's more Rowe here).

Australia is a land of tosh ...

(Above: how about "Australia is a land of crazy media barons and their minions?" Clive and Gina are probably a bit too easy. More Leunig here)

Sorry, the pond simply can't recall.

No, the pond has no memory of it, none at all.

It might well be that the pond watched a rap show on Apple TV and that this led to an outbreak of potty mouth yesterday, but that was yesterday and so is yonks in the past.

And before you snigger at the memory loss, it seems there are many other examples of memory loss, on both sides of the aisle, the latest detailed by the Fairfaxians in Saw nothing, did nothing (forced video at end of link).

Try crossing the pond's palm with $200k and the memory might return - or on the other hand, it might not.

Meanwhile, what a pleasure to see Richard Ackland nail the hapless, nutty Timbo to the wall in Culture wars ignite piggy in the middle-style bigotry:

One of the nuttier contributions came from Brandis' freedoms expert, Tim Wilson, ex-Institute of Public Affairs and now a Human Rights Commissioner. 
Timbo was in The Sun-Herald complaining it was "bizarre" that members of a community can use racially loaded language to each other, while people outside that community cannot. 
Was he referring to the word "nigger", asked reporter Bianca Hall? 
At this point Wilson was not very deftly dancing on eggshells and cracking quite a few of them in the process. "I won't say it, but that's right." 
He wants poor old section18C repealed so News provocateurs will never again get into trouble. It's only fair, he argues, for there to be "equality before the law". 
Two things about this latest cack-handed contribution to the "community consultation". 
First, there is a world of difference between black people calling themselves "nigger", as we saw in The Wire, and whities or yellowies applying the same word to black people. 
It's like gay men calling each other "poofter". For a non-gay man to do the same thing can be insulting. Minority communities appropriate offensive words to use with each other as a way of making light of the way they have been stigmatised. 
Second, when you talk about "equality before the law", it's helpful if you know what you're talking about. In a formal sense the law says everyone is equal and will be treated equally. But then we also know that people come before the law from unequal positions. 
To ensure that the law has an equal impact on people affected by it is what is largely ignored in the puerile way in which the issue is discussed. 

Is it appropriate to call someone nutty and puerile and an eggshell cracker?

Well surely when someone has called others "bizarre", and then offered a nutty, puerile, eggshell cracking contribution, it's both modest and seemly ...

Meanwhile, over at the lizard Oz, Michael Sexton has come up with a canny ploy to discuss 18C, in We need more than libel laws (behind the paywall because you pay for the freedom to read)

Sexton boldly leads with this:

But section 18C is not concerned with truth or falsity. If a statement is offensive or insulting, it does not matter whether it is true or not.

And so the pond turned once more to Eatock v Bolt - so few in the debate seem to bother to read the actual matter at the heart of reptile and Bolter rage - and discovered that the learned judge, according to Google, made use of the word "truth" some forty times, and that his notion of the truth significantly affected his findings, especially insofar as the truth might provide a defence in 18D against 18C:

8. For the reasons that follow, I have determined that some of the messages (what lawyers call “the imputations”) which were conveyed by the two newspaper articles, were reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate the people in question (or some of them), and that those articles were written or published by Mr Bolt and HWT including because of the race, colour or ethnic origin of those people. I have not been satisfied that the conduct is exempted from unlawfulness by s 18D. The reasons for that conclusion have to do with the manner in which the articles were written, including that they contained erroneous facts, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language and that as a result, the conduct of Mr Bolt and HWT is not justified in the manner required by s 18D of the RDA.

Indeed the learned judge seemed obsessed with the truthfulness of witnesses and contemplated board philosophical matters involving "truth":

228. Liberal-democratic thinking identified three main pillars or foundational arguments that justify the existence of the principle of freedom of expression; firstly, the pursuit and discovery of truth (also known as the ‘argument from truth’); second, the harvest of self- fulfilment (also known as ‘the argument from autonomy’); and thirdly, the enablement of democratic governance (also known as ‘the argument from democracy’); Keegstra at 727-728; and Coleman at [333] (Heydon J); and see Carmi G, “Dignity – The Enemy from Within: Theoretical and Comparative Analysis of Human Dignity As A Free Speech Justification” (2006-2007) 9 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 957; Chesterman M, Freedom of Speech in Australian Law, Chapter 2; Barendt E, Freedom of Speech (2nd ed, Oxford University Press, 2005) at 6-23; Weinstein J “Extreme Speech, Public order, and Democracy: Lessons from The Masses” in Hare I and Weinstein J (eds), Extreme Speech and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009) pp 23-30.

And:

390. The protection of reputation through defamation law and the protection sought to be provided by s 18C are both infused with the need to protect social standing and public esteem. That feature of s 18C was emphasised by Lee J in Bropho at [138]. Just as an adherence to the value of truth protects reputation, so too will it serve to protect the values which s 18C seeks to foster. The protection of reputation and the protection of people from offensive behaviour based on race are both conducive to the public good: Scully at [239] (Hely J). Untruths are at the heart of racial prejudice and intolerance. When not misused, truth will not generally cause the kind of offence s 18C is concerned with. Untruths generally will and regularly do. The more a comment made on the basis of asserted facts is based on true facts rather than untruths, the more likely it is that any offence, insult, humiliation or intimidation arising from the comment will be minimised. A conscientious approach to freedom of expression is required by s 18D. Expressions made on the basis of untrue or distorted facts or without due care to avoid distortions of the truth are not likely to involve a conscientious approach to the task of honouring the values asserted by the RDA.

Truth to tell, there were so many references to truth in Bromberg's judgement, that the pond came to the conclusion that Sexton was an ass talking out of his arse, and a fine example of truthiness.

Sexton spends the rest of his piece using the Armenian genocide as an example likely to be insulting to Turks, and explaining how the pond - amongst many others - could be done over by referring to the said Armenian genocide.

It is of course hogwash, and a convenient way of avoiding the elephant in the room, which is the Holocaust and Holocaust deniers.

Sexton then descends into an absurdity of fear-mongering - upset Palestinians, agitated Israelis, disturbed Sri Lankans, defiant terrorist Tamils, all resorting to 18C to clear their names and assert their political views, and judges using 18C to make grand pronouncements on history.

It's so beyond the valley of the bizarre that the pond wept to see the debate reduced to this kind of posturing nonsense ... will someone someday explain to this SC that there's more to an argument than sounding like a feral prosecutor or a defence lawyer proposing ever more preposterous outcomes?

Finally, the pond ignored the charms of Akker Dakker doing yet another bit of boofhead thuggee union bashing for the Daily Terror with his patented brass-spike clad baseball bat, because the editorialist at the lizard Oz sent out a sweet siren song with a header Our newspapers set the agenda.

Now often in the past, the reptiles have avoided displaying any strutting, preening arrogance. They have declaimed with great modesty how people have exaggerated their influence, and how the frequently noted 70% dominance of the marketplace is a false statistic.

Only yesterday the besieged and befuddled Clive Palmer was flinging the stat around again and berating the Murdochians for their evil-agenda setting Clive-bashing ways, and the pond was most upset on behalf of the mild Murdochians  ...

Back in August 2013 Sally Jackson furiously scribbled for the lizard Oz News Corp rejects share claim (behind the paywall because data doesn't come cheap).

News Corp has again rejected the oft-repeated claim, made most recently by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, that it owns 70 per cent of Australian newspapers, releasing data that shows it owns or co-owns a third of all audited newspapers.

Oh it was modesty and coyness all the way, like a Victorian aghast at the sight of a naked table leg:

"Recent political commentary has perpetuated a long-standing myth that News Corp Australia owns 70 per cent of Australian newspapers," a News spokesperson said. 
"News Corp Australia newspapers are popular - over half the adult population of Australia chooses to read a News Corp Australia newspaper each week. 
 "This means that News Corp Australia has a 59 per cent share of newspaper circulation. 
 "All of this ignores television, radio and the myriad of online news sources which offer more diversity in opinion than at any time in history."

It led the likes of The Conversation to do a fact check on the Ruddster's remark here (how strange that sounds, how much like the feather from a plucked chook, and when did we all stop banging our heads with a Ruddster hammer?)

Well, you can't keep a good sociopath - and their grandiose ego and sense of self-esteem - in the closet for long. Her's the full vainglorious header:

Silly, strutting, preening lizards.

They've fallen for the oldest card in the pack. You see, if the ABC doesn't set the agenda, what's all the fuss about?

If it's News Corp setting the agenda, that means Australia is at the whim of a nepotic twittering despot who tweets about how a 777 was hijacked and hidden in northern Pakistan like Bin Laden ...

The reptile editorialist even mentioned the Malaysian Airline flight:

On the evening of Mr Scott’s speech, at a busy time politically and economically in Australia, the Early Edition ABC television news reflected the malaise afflicting its news gathering. The lead story, on the International Court of Justice upholding Australia’s bid to ban Japan’s Antarctic whaling program, was a day old. The second item provided no fresh insights into the fate of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

Indeed, indeed. It's shocking, it's appalling. The ABC should have led with this:

Now there's an angle, though strangely it seems to have been ignored by many of the reptiles too.

There's something even weirder and pathetic - perhaps even tragic - in the strutting of the reptiles.

Oh sure they spend a lot of time abusing Mark Scott for being a former political adviser with an academic background. showing inexperience and a lack of leadership in the matter of reporting - yes the reptiles expect a dictatorial tyrannical leadership because that's the only world they know.

Academic? Is there anything lower or more slithery than this, not even a snake?

But how's this?

There is no comparison between the number of major, exclusive stories broken by News Corp papers, especially The Australian, and the ABC. In turn, such stories set the agenda for online chatter. Tweeters, bloggers and other social media protagonists might not realise it, but their daily outpourings often follow digital and radio reports of stories broken in print or behind News Corp’s paywalls.


The dear cackling geese actually believe their claims to be EXCLUSIVE. And they believe that by some mysterious process of diffusion and osmosis, their work fills the world of tweeters, bloggers and social media protagonists, without the innocent dupes even realising that they're spreading propaganda for Chairman Rupe ...

Uh huh. So let's see the lizard Oz tighten its paywall so that it can't be evaded in a nanosecond. Let's see how they go on living like The Times which back in 2013 boasted that it had 150,000 digital subscribers (story here). 

When one wag asked why The Times no longer set the news agenda, another wag replied:

Because it has a paywall, so if the UK has a population of 60 million, its online content is invisible to 59,850,000 of them. Grauniad please note.

And that's why the Oz's paywall is so porous and pathetic. It's desperate - off its exceedingly low subscription base - to be seen as setting the agenda and leading the conversation and having power amongst the political cognoscenti ...

There's a whiff about the emperor's tatty digital clothes in the preening:

Unfortunately for his credibility, Mr Scott’s speech resurrected a lecture he gave at the same university five years ago, entitled “The Fall of Rome.’’ In it, Mr Scott misread Rupert Murdoch’s plans to introduce online paid content for his newspapers as “a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline’’ that was “wistful and perhaps wishful.’’ Tens of millions of online subscriptions around the world later, Mr Scott has been proven wrong by the growing success of News Corp’s pay walls. Not that commercial success is of interest to the ABC. It can afford to give its online content away because it is funded by taxpayers — an anomaly that should be reformed at a time of fiscal stringency. 

An anomaly? Only in Murdoch la la land could that line be written. In the old days, the line was that the ABC should stick to old media - a philosophy that if historically true, would still see Sydney listening to 2SB and 2FC on their valve radios, just as they did in 1923 (there's a brief history of ABC old time radio here).

Now the line is that the ABC should charge for its online content, because of fiscal stringency, which if there were any coherent logic to the proposal, would see them charge for access to radio and television.

But the real point of course, and the reason the reptiles are always banging on about anomalies, is that behind the cock strutting, there's naked fear that the ABC and business models like The Guardian and Huffington Post, because the reptiles believe deep down that they pose a dire threat to their own paywall model.

News is cheap and widely available. The only real point of product differentiation is if you want to read raging ring wing ratbaggery, to a declining old angry male demographic.

The reptiles want everyone hidden behind paywalls so the sheep can be shorn quietly and efficiently, as in the glory days of pay TV, and that's why they've been so threatened by the NBN.

It's pitiful, defiant stuff:

The notion of “wistful and perhaps wishful thinking’’ better fits Mr Scott’s preposterous assertion the ABC is “the only sure bet to invest in quality news and current affairs,’’ self correcting and going out of its way to put its critics on air. The ABC aimed, he said, to be “the nation’s town square, where all people can come to speak and be heard.’’ Not all Australians, however, congregate on the left flank of the town square. 
If the corporation is to better fulfil its charter, Mr Scott should focus more on the basic tenets of journalism to improve the ABC’s mediocre news and current affairs coverage.

Ah well, we can all sleep better now. Chairman Rupert sets the nation's agenda, safely steering it to the right of Genghis Khan, and the ABC is just an irrelevant home for a bunch of lefties standing off in a corner of the town square ...

But if that's the way it is, why do the reptiles waste all their time and energy on a war with the allegedly vanquished losers, the Fairfaxians, the ABC et al?

What's the point? They've won, they set the agenda, they control the nation's direction, everything's hunky dory ...

Or is believing that a bit like believing a 777 is stashed in a cave in Pakistan?

(Below: so here's a maths question. Is one oldie but goodie David Pope cartoon worth 10 million agenda-setting lizard Oz editorials? Provide proof and evidence of workings. More Pope here).

The pond goes Kendrick Lamar ...

(Above: Andrew Dyson and more Dyson here)

As Kendrick Lamar might say in one of his lyrics - or his audience chant back at him as a kind of chorus - fuck that.

Anything you like or don't really, fuck that.

Like the way the ABC burst into a moaning and keening about Phillip Morris giving up manufacturing killer sticks in Australia. Oh sure there were job losses but now at least the workers can do something useful with their lives, instead of making goods designed to kill fellow Australians and international buyers.

Yet what did we hear?

ELEANOR HALL: And Peter, there's also news this morning that the cigarette company Philip Morris is pulling out of Australia. What reasons are they giving? 
PETER RYAN: Yes, it's been a big morning of bad news. Phillip Morris says it will be closing its Moorabbin factory in Melbourne's south-east by the end of the year, and it's planning to cease all manufacturing operations of cigarettes and shift all production to South Korea (here).

A big morning of bad news?

Fuck that.

If that's bad news, let the bad news keep coming.

Like Clive Palmer being noted as a megalomaniac election buying big spender who can't keep his dinosaurs clean of pigeon shit these days ... and not so long ago an innocent billionaire victim of a wicked (albeit hopelessly implemented) mining tax and a shining light in the Queensland LNP.

Fuck that.

Or Tim Wilson saying that black people are advantaged because they can use "nigga" amongst themselves (Wilson couldn't bring himself to say the actual word), whereas white people wouldn't dare use it.

Fuck that.

Knights and dames? FT.

Lindsay Maxsted, chairman of Westpac, dropping a $100m grant into an education foundation, along with this sort of pious mealy mouthed blather?

Australia is one of the great nations of the 21st century. To stay that way we need great people — people of ambition, ability and drive. The kind of men and women who dream, think and live beyond the bounds of what is thought to be possible — and who, when confronted with a challenge, see a perfect wave inste­ad of a perfect storm.

As if nobody had noticed that the vulture bank had made a record $7.1 billion profit in 2013 and so the  grant could be considered a rounding exercise. FT.

Or Moses Obeid announcing that he'd told a little white lie in the Australian Water Holdings matter, along with adopting Bill Clinton's line by saying "we did not have investor relations in that company". FT. (Moses Obeid's Bill Clinton response comes undone)

As NSW Liberals, you know it's serious when even grumpy Paul "Magic Water" Sheehan bursts into print to denounce the state party for being corrupted by lobbying and lobbyists. FT. (Arthur Sinodinos no longer the Liberal saint).

What's the world coming to when the pond can't rant at the Magic Water man on a Thursday? FT.

And what about the usually wretched Elizabeth Farrelly, who instead of rambling on about architecture and Sydney street design, gets agitated about Cardinal Pell wanting to insure priests against being sued for child sexual abuse?

That's the pond's turf. FT.

Oh sure she's right:

Let's be clear. Child abuse is no accident. It's not just something that will, now and then, happen. If you're an even half-decent person, much less a spiritual leader, you needn't insure against kiddie fiddling. You just need to abstain. 
Or is abstinence something the church no longer expects of itself? 
What part of all this does the cardinal, and the church that has just kicked him upstairs, not understand? (Cleaning up the post-George Pell parish in Sydney)

But it's just not fair. FT.

What's left? Does the pond have to head off to the Daily Terror for its daily dose of loonacy? FT.

Oh sure, it's there in abundance, the last stand of the wildly rabid, a top and tail offering in the digital whirlpool of death:

But what if the pond isn't in the mood for a zillionth bashing of journalists, the IPCC, climate scientists and the ABC?

What if the best that can be mustered is a shrug of the shoulders and a wry "Fuck that"?

The Bolter is as lazy as ever, condescending, smirking, gloating, and so on and so forth on the matter of climate change, just his usual sort of trolling, but the pond happened to be out and about and listening to Bush Telegraph yesterday, and it was genuinely interesting and informative to listen to farmers dealing with actual issues on the ground (and thanks to the wonders of Malcolm Turnbull's copper wire and sealing wax NBN, you can hear that story online here).

You see, the Bolter assumes everything is fine in the world of agriculture and productivity is on the march, so it was quaint to actually hear from real people on the ground talking about their actual experiences (and you know they were genuine, because one farmer noted the difficulty of getting a crowd of cockies to agree on what time of day it is, let alone climate change).

Of course the more the Bolter insists that climate science is a religion, the more obvious it becomes that he too is a true believer, except he likes to cast himself in the role of the clear-thinking, cynical Lucifer.

Type-casting.

Of course it's likely that the Bolter has a go at the doomsayers and the journalists and is silent on the actual science, because he's still waiting for others to pick apart the science in the report.

As for the ABC bashing, it really shows the Bolter in bizarre form. He takes a single episode of Q and A, the one last Monday night, as firm evidence of the ABC's bias: Has the Left's authoritarianism, vulgarity and hatred of the West ever been so open?

Hapless Mona Eltahawy lands in Bolter hot water for daring to deface a subway poster that equated Muslims with "savages - naturally you can read a more balanced view of the incident elsewhere by heading off to Activist Mona Eltahawy released after arrest in New York subway protest.

What's always remarkable when reading the Bolter is just how intolerant he is.

He's "get off my lawn" cranked up to eleven, or maybe even 42 ... and there's no sign he'll ever do a Clint Eastwood and soften a little by the end of the movie ...

Does the Bolter show the slightest interest, empathy or concern for the issues that drive Eltahawy (which you can find in an interview with her here).

The long absent lord knows, Egypt has its problems at the moment. They have the sort of hanging judge that would make hanging judges of the old wild west like Judge Isaac Parker and Phantly Roy Bean Jr. admit they entirely lacked ambition ...

No. All he's got is a simple-minded response. You know. FT.

Using QandA as a symbol of the entire ABC is a bit, you know:

Apologies to Jerry Lewis for the casual defamation of the dead. FT.

Now the pond rarely watches QandA. It's designed to generate heat and not much light, it's designed as a kind of trolling, and it's a very different beast to the way the rest of the ABC comports itself. Even shows like The Insiders or The Drum don't so nakedly assemble panels designed to send off sparks.

It's a measure of the Bolter that he should fixate on it as a symbol of the ABC. It would be just as silly to fixate on The Bolt Report as symbolising all that's wrong with the Ten network.

Oh okay, the pond does that, but only in jest. The Ten network is comprehensively fucked, and the Bolter is just one of the symptoms, even if he's a notable sign that the network doesn't have an understanding of its demographic or its intended audience.

How long ago were they making out like bandits with a young demographic? And now they wear as a badge of honour an angry man ranting at his aging, very small audience on a Sunday? FT. You'd be better off spending time with Elmer Gantry ...

The pond has never watched an episode of the Bolter in full for the same reason as QandA is better avoided - it's designed to troll and to inflame, and not to inform or enlighten, seeing as how it's conducted by a rabid ideologue of the fanatical kind ...

FT.

Here's an example of the sort of elision that irritates the heck out of the pond, as performed by the artful Bolter. So according to the Bolter Lucy Siegle says:

Said Siegle: “If you take a contrarian, shock jock point of view, you’re going to get a lot of attention and a lot of money. I don’t think we should change laws to protect their freedom of speech.” 

So the Bolter says:

But if shock jocks should be banned, what of Eltahawy, who four times dropped the F word?

But that's the entire fucking point.

You see, according to the very words deployed by the Bolter, Siegle didn't say shock jocks should be banned. She said that the laws allegedly keeping them in check should stay, though there's not much sign the laws have taken the wind out of the likes of Alan Jones' sails.

The bit about banning them is the Bolter leaping to that conclusion. He's the one making that point, not Siegle.

And then a free speech advocate goes all limp wristed and jelly fished and coy and can't even get beyond primly noting that Siegle says the "F word" - four times! - making him sound ever so much like a nanny in Victorian England. Or a John Wayne hero in a 1950s movie who doesn't cuss while there be ladies in the room.

"Ma'am", tilting the black Stetson ...

Fuck that.

At the end of it all, with the Bolter conflating guests on a panel show, with the ABC and with Mark Scott making a comment on balance, and a single program with the ABC's 24/7 output across many radio stations and television networks, the Bolter grandly concludes:

Scott may say the ABC isn’t as biased as I think, but after QandA I ask: is it as balanced as Scott believes?

One thing's certain. The Bolter is both unbalanced and routinely inclined to be unhinged ... how it must stick in the craw that The Insiders is thrashing his show, showing that the great unwashed public out there has more of a taste for the ABC than for the Bolter, or the Ten network. Time for another bout of Barrie Cassidy bashing.

And yes the pond didn't link to the Bolter's rants ... Point people in his direction? FT.

Meanwhile, both David Rowe and David Pope today focus on the wayward billionaire.

Pope verges on heresy. If the PUP monster is a kind of bloated Friar Tuck of the regressive kind, why that implies that Tony Abbott must be Robin Hood, or even Errol Flynn playing RH. With the greatest respect, Mr. Pope, FT, unless you mean to imply that Robin Hood really only stole from the rich to give to the rich.

Now Tony Abbott could play that role - and more Pope here:

You see Mr Pope, there is pleasure to be found in Clive Palmer's weirdness, though it's profoundly, immensely perverse, as David Rowe explains, with the beached bleached whale turning up yet again to haunt the dreams of the ones that once pandered to him (and more Rowe here - see the earlier panel to cop the flouncing whale):

In which the pond looks to the Governator ...

(Above: Francis Barlow's 1687 illustration for Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf. Greg Hunt it here).


It struck the pond with some force -  as the pond mistakenly filled in time watching the ABC to get to the double bill of Air Crash Investigations on Seven's multichannel - just how much the IPCC has lost the media war.

Yesterday was the official report of its launch, yet through leaks and a general lack of interest and talk of children shouting wolf, even the cardigan wearers showed a distinct lack of interest.

No doubt all the stories on 7.30 were worthy in their own way - collapsing decks, paranoia about Japan and whaling without anyone having meaningful to say about Japan might actually do, and footballers and spinal injury - but if you took the IPCC and what it was saying - that the entire whale habitat around the world was in peril, for example - you might wonder about the editorial priorities on view.

It was the same later in the evening on Lateline - yes the tricky buggers at Seven run the new episodes of Air Crash Investigations second, this one about human error in Venezuela on Flight 518, thereby keeping the pond up way beyond what's a sensible time for an early riser.

The pond has no idea why it doesn't defeat Seven by recording the shows on the PVR, skipping nauseating ads often featuring Shane Warne - by golly it's low rent slim pickings for FTA when it comes to multichannel advertising - but when you're in so deep, hanging around for Lateline is no worse than eating another stick of reality fairy floss or aircraft crash porn.

There was a story about Palmer trying to buy votes - fancy that, a billionaire trying to influence an election by spending big on advertising - and Troy Buswell being charged, and no further news about flight 370 for the nth day, which led the pond to think that it was about time for a co-ordinator to be appointed to co-ordinate the work of the co-ordinator - and another piece about gang tackles, and a story on Ukraine and NATO, and apparently, after the pond had tottered off to bed, talk of a trade deal with China and a South African politician copying Mugabe.

Again, all very useful and important stories no doubt, but nary a sighting, not even a ritual tugging of the forelock to the IPCC.

And then over at that other alleged haven of greenies and environmental nutters, the Fairfaxians, the tone was set by Peter Hartcher in No need for extra fear in climate change report (forced video at end of link).

Hartcher followed the standard Oz Murdochian reptile line, by opening in the best scientific fashion with a treatise about the great white shark:

In the lobby of the Sydney aquarium where the Australian launch of the UN’s latest climate change report was released on Monday is a terrifying great white shark. 
The beast measures 7.5 metres long with a razor-toothed mouth so big it could easily swallow a human whole. It looks at least as big as the fibreglass monster used in the movie Jaws. 
Thankfully, the aquarium shark is only a model. In real life, the biggest great white ever reliably measured was 6.4 metres. That’s still a whopper; the average mature specimen is four to five metres. Why make a ridiculously outsized model for an aquarium? For effect, of course, to get the paying public in. Give ‘em a good scare. 

So there you go, there's the IPCC, just dancing about and doing a Chicken Little and crying wolf and getting agitated about a whopper great white - why it's as big as the fibreglass monster in Jaws - and resolute brave little Hartcher isn't going to get agitated. No, he's going to stick his finger in the dike:

Some of the authors of part of the latest climate report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have done something similar: 
“In short, human-driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale, to well-being, health and perhaps even to human survival.” 
They might be able to argue the threat to well-being and health, but human survival? A temperature rise, even at the extreme end of projections, of four to five degrees Celsius, does not plausibly threaten homo sapiens with extinction.

Now Hartcher offers no plausible reason for suggesting things might get tricky in the future. Who knows what might happen if food runs short.

He just baldly offers his opinion and seeks comfort from a couple of scientists who helpfully label the speculation as extreme, and as a form of hysteria. No doubt there were humans going around in the time of Noah saying just the same thing ...

But who knows what might happen in the future? The scientists throw in a "perhaps" to indicate it's a speculation on their part, but this cuts no mustard with Hartcher. He's determined that the wretches have exaggerated the danger, ruined the report, undercut the work of the 309 lead authors and the other 433 contributors, given politicians an easy out, and just generally behaved like a a bloody big fake shark in an aquarium.

Which gives Hartcher himself a splendid closer, worthy of an episode of Happy Days:

The world’s people need to know the science, so they can demand action from the world’s politicians. For scientists to scaremonger just gives recalcitrant politicians an easy way to laugh them off. 
There’s no good reason to jump the shark.

Or even nuke the fridge.

Now Hartcher says he's right on side with the IPCC and the dangers, but in reality, his entire piece is dedicated to the notion that we'll muddle through and things will be alright ...

He doesn't seem to realise that recalcitrant politicians have already laughed off the IPCC, and that his own piece provides them with every comfort to keep doing so ... because the takeaway message is that it's a bit like a fibreglass shark in the aquarium.

Never mind, the pond will be long dead by whatever time any truly serious shit hits the fan. Sorry future, nothing do with the pond ... waiter, bring a rather large bowl of water.

So what else?

Well today we have the splendid sight of the Caterists whipping up paranoia about deviant New Zealanders and their tricky trade ways with Asia, leaving the ANZAC alliance in tatters and bronzed Aussies flat-footed and fuming.

It's shocking stuff, but you'll have to evade the paywall to get the good oil and butter in Milk the dairy market like the Kiwis do (behind the paywall because someone has to pay for the high labour costs of the reptiles).

It turns out that it's just another Caterist chance to bash labour costs - what about the labour costs of reptiles writing silly pieces for the lizard Oz? - and regulation.

Yet when the pond talked to an offensively rich dairy farmer with a lovely two story beach shack the size of ten elephants at Xmas, he laughed at the notion of excessive labour costs, except when it came to the servicing and maintenance of his largely robotic farm. Yep, the cows amble in, hook themselves up to the machines, get milked, and amble out.

Labor costs? Go talk to the robots about that ...

Talk of generalised labour costs in this context is so much blather, but you can always rely on the Caterists for ill-informed blather. The New Zealanders sensibly targeted Asians - with a sudden desire for dairy (in the past it was said to make you smell like a gaijin) - with their image of a green and pure land with snow-capped mountains and a clean environment.

Your average reptile would laugh at that as so much greenie nonsense, but when you look at the mayhem that coal has produced in once pristine diary areas like the Hunter and Gippsland, you have to wonder what the Caterists take for their highs ...

Finally, speaking of the lizards, today they've wheeled in yet another international name to maintain the pressure on the Abbott government, this time Alan Dershowitz, with Bans on bigotry backfire (behind the paywall, because while speech should be free, it should also be expensive).

It's unexceptional stuff - the usual routines about how Jews and feminists and blacks were their own worst enemies by attempting to shut down rabid bigotry, sexism and racism, aka free speech, before ending on a standard triumphal note:

Freedom of speech isn’t free. It’s expensive, but it’s well worth the cost. Without freedom of expression, democracy is weakened. Democracy can endure the coarsening and painful effects of bigoted speech. 
It cannot survive a regime of governmental censorship.

Uh huh, but should the world, or the law stand idly by when a journalist wilfully and maliciously gets his facts wrong, and could have been done for defamation?

Yep, Dershowitz doesn't have the first clue about the matter of the Bolter, and so wisely sticks to the usual first amendment blather you can always expect from the United States, which incidentally in polite company is one of the most self-censoring countries in the world - try having a glass of wine for lunch in California, and you and your career will be written off because of your rampant alcoholism ...

But we digress, because the pond began to wonder just how generous and forgiving Dershowitz - a notorious self-seeking self-publicist, bully and blowhard - might be when matters of free speech came a little closer to home, or closer to the bone.

Cue Dershowitz v. Finkelstein, one of the wonders of the new millennium.

Now you can find plenty of general discussions of the feud - you can do a Greg Hunt and discover a wiki devoted to the Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair (which in turn links to their individual wikis)

Now the pond has no dog in that fight, but on any objective reading, Dershowitz behaved disgracefully, and in the end, Finkelstein was denied tenure at his university and eventually resigned his academic position. And Dershowitz was front and centre:

In September 2006, Alan Dershowitz sent members of DePaul University's law and political science faculties what he described as "a dossier of Norman Finkelstein's most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions that... are not incidental to Finkelstein's purported scholarship; they are Finkelstein's purported scholarship," and he lobbied professors, alumni and administrators to deny Finkelstein tenure.

Yep, they play freedom of speech hard in the United States.

Say what I don't like and I'll campaign to get you sacked. Then you can suck on your freedom of speech rights ...

It becomes particularly poignant if some of the things that Finkelstein allege about the fuss over his book are true, as outlined here in The Dershowtiz Treatment, (you can find his footnotes there):

When this writer first began to expose Dershowitz’s gross scholarly misconduct, Dershowitz piously declared that he wouldn’t respond with a libel action because he believed "so strongly in the First Amendment and full freedom of speech."
Nonetheless, in seeking to block publication of Beyond Chutzpah, he first fired off a barrage of minatory letters at the publisher, subsequently boasting that he told it "I will own your company," and recruited reputedly the most powerful law firm in the country, Cravath, Swaine and Moore, to escalate the pressure. Dershowitz then implored California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to intercede with the publisher, but Schwarzenegger refused "because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents." Dershowitz initially denied writing Schwarzenegger, declaring that "My letter to the Governor doesn’t exist," but when pressed on the issue he explained that "It was not a letter. It was a polite note." He now maintains that he didn’t attempt suppression of the book and has "released the letters" to prove it. Those seeking to retrieve these "released" letters have had to bear Dershowitz’s crude evasions and tantrums instead. 
Ironically, just as he was threatening University of California Press with expensive and time-consuming lawsuits to prevent publication of Beyond Chutzpah, Dershowitz denounced Holocaust denier David Irving, who had sued author Deborah Lipstadt for libel, in these words: "Before Irving lost his case [against Lipstadt], several publishers had refused to issue books critical of Irving, out of fear of his bringing expensive and time-consuming lawsuits. That was a chilling of free speech."

Indeed.

Well you could spend hours frolicking through the fields of the dispute, which are long and arcane, and yet the bottom line is that Dershowitz campaigned for the destruction of his enemy, and succeeded in the campaign to deny Finkelstein tenure, though naturally the university denied any influence ...

It's a shabby story, but it's worthwhile keeping in mind when reading Dershowitz's work on freedom of speech for the reptiles.

As usual in all this, nobody much pauses to contemplate the power imbalance in all this.

Everybody these days is aware of the impropriety of adults misusing their power and abusing minors - it takes on a particular cogency in the case of teachers and priests, placed in positions of trust - but nobody cares much to consider the position of an individual up against a large organisation which provides shelter to bigots, who then have access to lawyers and money to protect their bigotry and dress their work up as "free speech".

Lives might be harmed, lives might be ruined, but you need deep pockets to mount a defamation action ... and the victims are often people without deep pockets.

Now the pond doesn't mind those in the public eye being taken down - the tragedy of the Obeid saga (or the Thomson matter) is that it took so long to play out, because the law grinds slowly, though in the end it does grind, and the irony is that in both cases, the threat of a defamation action was used to delay inquiries ...

Contrast that with the fate of an individual trying to get an apology and a prominent correction from a Murdoch newspaper ... when there was an acknowledged failure to garner and correctly present the facts of the matter ...

Why just getting the behemoth to acknowledge they censored a letter from Monarto might involve a trek to Media Watch.

And now the reptiles have the cheek to wheel out Alan Dershowitz to tell the citizenry down under how to behave in matters of free speech, so that their minions can roam wild and free ...

Sheesh, where's that note to the Governator ...

(Below: Mark Knight in 2009, here. Everything changes so it can stay the same, and the man who invented the intertubes down under is just as irrelevant as ever).

Bigots finding it hard to rate, okay?

(Above: more Moir here)

It's unseemly to gloat or crow. You never know when you'll meet up with the humble pie lurking around the corner.

But right now, it's the Ten network that's eating humble pie, and it's a double win for the pond, what with Lachlan Murdoch about to transport his Ten skills across to News Corp, and the Bolter as the single most obvious reason why the entire nation has turned away from Ten.

Oh of course that's silly, but it's just the pond trying to sound like an hysterical Bolter.

No matter how you cut it, the weekend was a bad time for Ten:

The worst since OzTAM started!

Beaten by the ABC ... again!

You can find that story in full at TV tonight here,  and you can find the site's full report on Sunday's ratings here.

Over at Crikey, Glenn Dyer was telling the same sorry story in A new low for Ten (behind the paywall), with this delicious bonus:

In the morning, Insiders at 9am was the most watched morning chat show in the metros with 314,000 viewers on ABC1 and News24, and 490,000 nationally. That might be enough to get the Murdoch papers baying for Barrie Cassidy’s blood, again. Landline from noon on ABC1 continued to improve with 467,000 viewers nationally. The Bolt Report averaged 116,000 at 10am. And Bolt’s hour long program has ended Meet The Press, with the Oz’s Media section this morning telling us what we all have known for months, that it understands the program won’t be coming back. That’s another good TV idea ruined by the ‘experts’ at News. Bolt’s repeat averaged 129,000 at 4pm on Ten.

Is there a cry throughout the land to bring back Video Hits?

Is there a capper to that story?

Take it away TV tonight:

Hey, that's not such a bad idea. That might just work. After all, the Bolter is such a convivial chap, a dose of the Bolter in the morning would have remotes clicking on Ten in the same way they click on to the Bolter report:

The surprise move is designed to make the show more ‘watercooler’ and help lift TEN’s primetime ratings share, and follows Bolt’s Sunday morning show being quietly extended from 30 to 60 minutes this year. 
Charlie Pickering announced his departure earlier this month but while no permanent replacement was announced, TV Tonight understands testing has been underway at TEN’s Como building in South Yarra. 
A TEN insider said, “Love him or loathe him, Andrew Bolt gets people talking and right now TEN realises that’s just what they need. Steve Price has worked well for the show so Bolter is the next logical step. It will all make sense after the Murdoch camp buys the network for a song.” 
Roving Productions is understood to have agreed to more coverage of the Abbott government policies and less talk on climate change, while asylum seeker issues are off the table unless the story can elicit some tears from Carrie Bickmore - considered by producers to be ‘ratings gold.’

You can read the rest of the "exclusive" here, and don't you go worry about what day it is ...

The pond just loves the smell of laughter and Ten and Bolter napalm in the morning ...

Pondering the wisdom of Murdochian crowds, or perhaps just another case of anally obsessed fluff gathering ...

It almost goes without saying that it's a comedy beyond caricature...

The number of times the Caterists in particular and the Murdochians in general work "elites" into a header or into a story ...

Has anybody done a body count? The pond's betting there'd be no need to produce an exaggerated number of kills of the kind done for General Westmoreland in the Vietnam war ...

There's actually no need to read - or more to the point spend precious minutes of life evading the paywall - to get to the Caterist effort, Elites wilfully blind to decency.

Elites, schmulites ...

It's more of the same, which is bashing the Human Rights Commission, and public servants bunging on a cocktail do in a harbour side setting, and Gillian Trigg talking of a shabby village hall in Koo Wee Rupp.

Now of course this is shocking discrimination, and the pond is suitably appalled at the high handed manner of outrageous legal academics - the pond never makes jokes about Woy Woy, the one time home of Spike Milligan's mum, or Taperoo - what a funny name - or just about any town in Queensland likely to be full of cane toads ...

No, it was this Caterist outburst about the citizens of Koo Wee Rupp that caught the eye:

The town’s 3080 residents do not have a law degree between them. Three quarters of them did not complete Year 12. 
 It is a town where people come home from work with dirt under their fingernails, a town of motor mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, cleaners, concreters, packers, truck drivers and earth movers. It is a place where the commissioner and commentator classes rarely venture. The Census data tells the story. Number of journalists: Nil. Media professionals: Nil. Number of university lecturers: zero.

Say what? Journalists? Media professionals?

Eek, these rogues and rapscallions are dangerous elitists, by definition wilfully blind to decency ...

You'd think Cater had enough intelligence to limit his abuse to lawyers and such like, but the man's got so little dirt under his fingernails and so little grey matter that he had to indulge in a perverse display of Onanism in public, berating Koo Wee Rupp for not harbouring a single elitist journalist ...

Does it matter? Not really, except that down the track in the piece, Cater goes on to celebrate the wonderful tolerance of the world of whitebread Australians, while deploring nasty types like Waleed Aly and Tim Soutphommasane getting a little anxious about the dark edge to the fluffy white clouds floating happily in the Caterist sky ...

It turns out that Australia is a veritable prejudice-free paradise, oh bliss oh poop,

Race commissioner Tim Soutphommasane frets about a “darker, even violent, side of our humanity” that might surface if parliament tinkers with the act. 
Yet there is nothing, apart from prejudice, to back this slur on the character of his fellow Australians.

Nothing, nothing at all? Not even the Cronulla riots, Alan Jones, the Bolter, the Murdochians, the slurs on Aboriginal people, outbursts on buses, and so on and so forth?

No, no, no.

But what about the gulags, devised to stop all those filthy brown queue jumpers jumping the queue? What about locking them up and flinging away the key and bashing one of them to death?

Isn't there at least a little fear at work? A sort of reflex Pauline Hansonism?

Or was Hansonism just a passing dream, washed away by a good television dance show? Seems so:

Time after time, Australians have confounded their sophisticated critics with their ­capacity to embrace plurality. 
In so far as attitudes to immigration reflect broader sentiments on race, Australians are remarkably broad-minded, according to the latest findings from the rolling Australian Election Study released in February. 
Fewer than one in six Australians think immigration is bad for the economy and 75 per cent say it opens the country to other ideas and cultures. 
In 1996, more than six out of 10 Australians wanted immigration quotas to be cut. In 2013 a clear majority — 59 per cent — believed immigration levels were about right or should be increased. There are signs that attitudes are softening even towards asylum-seekers. At the 2001 election 63 per cent wanted to turn back the boats. Last year 49 per cent advocated the turn-back. 
There is no evidence to suggest anything has changed since Gough Whitlam declared Australians “an exceptionally generous and understanding people” in a speech proclaiming Australia’s first human rights legislation.
“When we look at the history of our immigration program and compare our record with that of any other multiracial society, it is remarkable how smooth and harmonious this great experiment has been,” he said. “We can fairly claim that Australian people are among the most tolerant and decent in the world.”

No evidence to suggest anything has changed since Gough Whitlam?

Not a shred or a skerrick or a scrap?

We're an exceptionally generous and understanding people, all kindness and loving and giving, to the point of a kind of goo-gooing sentimentality that's nauseous, rather like over-dosing on fairy floss or toffee apples?

Well here's a go then. The pond looks forward to the Caterist campaign to shut down the gulags immediately and forthwith, and for any within them to be held within Australia while their claims are processed ...

You know, seeing how tolerant we are, and seeing how it's only a minority in favour of turn back and seeing how we think immigration levels might even be increased a little. How hard would it be to put an end to the local version of Guantanamo Bay.

Uh huh. Thought not. Eek, the noble whitebread Judaeo-Christian culture handed down from the mighty Vikings, or some such thing, is under attack.

So much mealy mouthed tosh. But then that's what you get when you listen to the blather of dangerous, offensive elites who don't have the slightest shred of decency, or the barest grasp of reality ...

Speaking of which, the pond was pleased to see the Bolter fire a warning shot across all those jumped up primitive scientists this morning.

No doubt in due course the Bolter will single-handedly produce an epic bout of research which will prove all the scientists wrong - but for the moment he was content with mocking a headline, which as a bonus mocked the ABC:

Quite right, you could do a search of the lizard Oz's front digital page for the word "climate" and come up with a zero. As it should be. All this alarmist nonsense. It was zero for the Terror too. Whales yes, climate no.

And the HUN came up with this one from Terry McCrann:

Yes it's a scientific poll on attitudes to science.

McCrann is so enormously silly and such a long term drinker of the kool aid, the pond rarely bothers with him, but the pond is now looking forward to his treatise on the wisdom of (Yankee) crowds, which sees angels favoured over the theory of evolution. (Yep, a Pew poll in 2007 found that 68% of Americans believed angels and demons were active in the world, 20% said they had an encounter with an angel or a devil, while in Pew's latest report on human evolution, only 60% thought humans had evolved over time).

Of all the humbuggery the world is capable of, blather about scientific polls and the wisdom of the crowds shows the infinite capacity of journalists to be asinine ...

And that's it for News Corp on a major report on climate science.

Hang on,  booga booga? Did the Bolter mention booga booga?

Yes it's a variant on that old favourite, ooga booga.

Now you might, if you come from Tamworth, think a booger has something to do with snot, but note the spelling.

Ooga booga and booga booga are something else again, but the pond must leave you to discover the words as used on The Simpsons and as defined in the Urban Dictionary - really there are some things the pond can't link to.

But the boogie woogie mumbo jumbo of the satirical Bolter reminded the pond of a court case which revolved around the word/s:

You can find the original story at The Age, here, where inter alia, you can also read this:

At the appeal hearing in the Federal Magistrates Court, the woman argued, among other things, that the word, while not appearing in any dictionary, was in fact "an insulting onomatopoeia … denoting some form of derisory or insulting comment". 
Opposing counsel argued that the word was not onomatopoeiac or racist and noted that it had been adopted as a brand name by a clothing company. 
 But Magistrate Grant Riethmuller rejected this argument, suggesting clothing names were "not altogether helpful given other recent names such as FCUK and CNUT appear in the marketplace". 
He then embarked on a thorough treatise on the word's usage. It included a lengthy quote from James Cook's 1777 work A Voyage Towards the South Pole Around the World, in which a young man named Wha-a-gou had no knowledge of goats, dogs or cats, "calling them all hogs (booga or boogas)". He also quoted a US film critic's review of Peter Jackson's King Kong remake that said: "Jackson's cavalcade of oogabooga savages makes Memoirs of a Geisha seem like a monument to ethnic sensitivity." 
He referred to reports of a successful racism suit in the US where an employee complained of enduring taunts of "oogabooga" from a fellow worker. In finding that a case of bias had been established, Mr Riethmuller remarked: "The issues are potentially those of life and death for the applicant."

Indeed, indeed.

Now if the pond happened to be a Freudian, it would suspect a deep seated childhood fright had something to do with the Bolter's psychological problems and his fear of the ooga booga booga boogas. It might have come from anything ... from too much reading of The Phantom comics to being frightened by a golliwog ...

Lordy, lordy, what do you know. A piece by Shane Kneipp from 1989, part of a Phantom series, titled Ooga Booga:

What else?

Well last night's Media Watch was a doozy. Poor old Genevieve Jacobs, so far out of her depth it was like she was in Das Boat and the rivets had begun to pop - just watch the film dearie, watch the film or forget it and line up to be Pilgered with grace - haven't you ever heard of Pilgering? - while the Phil Jacobs affair was just bizarre and makes the pond wonder what life must be like deep in the Murdochian bunkers.

It reminded the pond that News Corp hacks are obsessed with Paul Barry and Media Watch, or more to the point they're obsessed with the notion that Paul Barry is obsessed with them.

To movie buffs, this is commonly known as Glenn Close syndrome, though more lax players of the game will allow Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.

The drums have been throbbing and pulsing in the jungle of late, with poor old Sharri Markson given the kool aid spear carrier duties in Paul Barry slammed by editors for obsession with News Corp (behind the paywall, but you could write the copy in your paranoid sleep).

Poor thing, the story even carried this little note:

An earlier version of this article was published in error due to production issues. This is the correct version.

Oh dear, the poor sweet possums. They couldn't even get their paranoia into proper shape ...

Then it was Terry McCrann's obsessive turn to obsessively note Paul Barry's obsession, as you can read in Media Watch hobbled by host's Murdoch obsession, behind the paywall, but you could write the paranoid copy in your paranoid sleep.

Ah McCrann, McCrann, you've done it again, just like McCain ...

In other news, the Murdochians boast of their huge circulation and massive readership, making the company the dominant player in print journalism in the land. The pond simply can't understand why a program titled Media Watch would pay the slightest attention to the lizards going about the diligent business of knob polishing and hagiography ...

But it can be done, and here's how it's done, and lordy, long absent lordy, does McCrann produce a cracker:

To not point out that the worst thing the News of the World was purported to have done it had not in fact done betrayed his obsession and anti-Murdoch animus. 
Indeed Barry made this explicit when asked by O’Loghlin if he’d got sick of the Murdochs after spending two years immersed in them. 
He replied he was certainly not “sick of them”. He found them endlessly fascinating and it had been worth spending 18 months, two years, of his life on them. 
Crucially, he explained that he had started out “positive” on them, but the more it went on, the “less I found his (Murdoch’s) behaviour defensible and I moved away from my great admiration”. Coming from the often understated Barry, that was tantamount to saying he now despised him.

Never mind the absolute torture of that first sentence. What a grinding of gears!

What about McCrann cannily putting words in Barry's mouth, such that moving from great admiration is tantamount to saying Barry despised the Murdochs, or for all the pond knows, felt disgust, fear, loathing, nausea, and retching bile, culminating with a fit of the vomits if anyone said the name Murdoch within his earshot ...

Sadly, as usual, the reptiles reveal more about their own obsessions and psychological traumas and scars than they do about Barry.

It's impossible to despise them, in their captive Stockholm Syndrome state. Pity them? Yes, of course, it must be hell working for the man ...

Myriam Robin made the obvious point in Crikey, 'Obsession' cuts both ways in The Australian's war on Media Watch. (behind the paywall)

Apart from noting Sharri Markson's obsessive compulsive behaviour, Robin pointed out that the lizards became so obsessed with Barry that they stalked him and shot him paparazzi style:

Lordy, the reptiles have their very own Princess Dianna.

And a Twitter war raged here.

Once again the pond feels like it's stepped into bizarro land.

Quick, it's time for a cleansing Pope, and never mind that the reptiles are actively helping Sir Knight fuck the world, and remember more cleansing Popes here:

Sadly the reptiles have provided an answer to Pope. Why use that climate wisdom as toilet paper, so you can save the Murdoch rags from the fate, and instead use them to ponder the wisdom of journalists pondering the wisdom of the crowd. Let's see, how did that work out during the French revolution ...