In which the pond gets distracted, though our Henry does his plodding astrological best to provide a little comedy ...

The pond only recently caught up with the HBO documentary about Roy Cohn …and so did Sophie Gilbert on 18th June 2020 in The Atlantic, drawing some of the obvious conclusions here:

…in Trump, the lawyer seemed to find something close to a kindred spirit: someone who was just as willing as he was to batter opposition without being troubled by scruples. In 1973, Trump was sued by the government for violating the Fair Housing Act and illegally discriminating against black tenants. Cohn’s advice was to countersue the government for $100 million. (Trump did, although he eventually settled without admitting guilt.) Trump, one interviewee recalls, “fell in love” with Cohn’s pugnacious approach, and his refusal to admit wrongdoing or defeat on any level. When Trump Tower was being built, Cohn also introduced Trump to his Mafia connections, who helped facilitate construction during a cement workers’ strike. And from Cohn, who both the documentary and legend attest never paid for anything—laundry bills, dinners, cars he’d leased, taxes—Trump might have learned that settling accounts or compensating people who work for you is for schmucks. (The future president learned from his mentor a little too well; he gave Cohn a pair of diamond Bulgari cuff links that Fraser discovered, after Cohn’s death, were knockoffs.)

Trump also distanced himself from Cohn at the end of the latter’s life, when the lawyer was dying of AIDS but still insisting to anyone who would listen that he had liver cancer. (“Donald pisses ice water,” Cohn reportedly said at the time.) Meeropol, who includes scenes from Angels in America in the film, seems struck by the sad irony of her subject’s demise—how a man who’d forever projected his own singularity and strength became another statistic, a name on a quilt panel alongside tens of thousands of others. Before Cohn died, he was also professionally humiliated, getting disbarred for trying to give himself control over a dying client’s estate. And after his death, the IRS confiscated everything he’d left to Fraser: houses, cars, a plane, proving not even Roy Cohn could outwit the inevitability of death and taxes. If Bully. Coward. Victim. has a message, it’s this: Frailty comes for everybody in the end, and the cost of habitually disdaining loyalty and respect is seeing how quickly people disappear when they no longer fear you.

The angle that interested the pond was that of the homophobic gay male, a phenomenon produced by a lifestyle that involved living in the closet while also fornicating like an alley cat.

In the case of Cohn, it turned rabid, because it mixed with politics and corruption. It's not so virulent in showbiz, where a Rock Hudson might fear a career ruined by exposure, and eventually some might do an Elton John and admit the truth (the pond's Liberace-loving aunt wasn't the only one to think Liberace was merely flamboyant - what she would have made of Soderbergh's fine 2103 drama Behind the Candelbra must remain a mystery.)

Locally, perhaps some day someone will get around to exploring by juxtaposition the contrasting miseries of Graham Kennedy and the parrot …though once again, there's the showbiz angle, and then there's the deeply disturbing sight of a vicious Roy Cohn living a double life of hypocrisy and a vitriolic anger, no doubt the result of deep self-loathing,  dysfunctionality induced by society's hypocritical warping of the human condition ...

But why did the pond get distracted?

Well when you're dead, you're dead, and when you're boring, you lead a very dull life, and produce very dull columns and today was a bad day for reptile enthusiasts … with even our Henry finding the fixing of holes in the bucket vaguely tedious … but still, he scored the second-rate illustration of the day (where is the cult master!) and so attention eventually had to be paid ...

Does our Henry understand that when you're dead, you're dead, and only when you're gone might you discover that the Bulgari cuff links are a cheap knock off, and who cares about the debts you left behind?

The pond did gasp in admiration at how smoothly our Henry segued from astrologers and the Weimar republic to doing a billy goat butt in the manner of "to say that is not to condemn governments for running large deficits."

Oh for the days when it was a mortal sin … way beyond purgatory, a lifetime in Hayekian hell assured ...

As the Donald has been mentioned, it's worth contemplating the headlines that litter the digital edition of WaPo at the moment …

What a world of pain … how comprehensively fucked ...

Like Roy Cohn, it puts the world in a different perspective, not that our Henry thought of starting there, when astrologers and the Weimar Republic seemed like a cute angle …

It must be comforting to live in an alternative reality, when the pond unfortunately inhabits a world illustrated by the immortal Rowe …

… and locally will in September inhabit the same world as SloMo, as evoked by the infallible Pope …

Yes, it's a very slow day for the pond, though the weather in Sydney yesterday was beautiful … which perhaps explains why the reptiles kept on trying to flog that strange Roy Cohn exercise in double think…

A welcome dose of reality? If that's reality, the pond might as well head to church to pray to imaginary friends …

Nope, back into the closet so the pond can finish with our Henry in a final Weimar-inspired gobbet ...

Of course it needn't have been that way at all, if the western powers hadn't been so bloody-minded and insisted on such punitive reparations, and instead had realised that we're all in this together, and instead had put together a Marshall Plan, but when you forget history, the inevitable happens …

But if the main course was so unsatisfying - and so much of it - what about a tasty mint for dessert?

Should the pond go with the meretricious Merritt, so keen to redeem Dyson Heydon, as the fall came like a Roy Cohn dose of reality checking …

… while suddenly and abruptly, thanks to a wondrous capacity for gear changing, the meretricious Merritt had turned keenly 'me too' and truly woke?

But what of the tabloid Daily Terror and its shocking and shameful behaviour in this entire affair? Well for that you should head elsewhere, at least if you can get behind the paywall …

Does any of this trouble the malignant, meretricious Merritt? Does it deserve a mention? Of course not, it's all rubbing of hands, and woke, and oh, the sorrow and the pity ...

Might the meretricious Merritt at least mention that this is not the way to be woke and do me too?

 

What a wretched rag it is, and how wretched is the malign Merritt, until recently casting saucy doubts and fears about Heydon, now suddenly discovering within a strand of full wokeness ...

Actually what you need is a newspaper not intent on sensationalist headlines and sordid behaviour, but if you want that, you must abandon the wretched reptiles, or pluck out eyes and throw them away …

And so to a local treat, because the by-election is but a sleep away, and Barners has been out and about, and stirring the pot …

The reptiles are, for reasons that escape the pond, in a complete tizz about Eden-Monaro … but really if you wanted to be in a tizz about anything, why not go big?

Sorry, it's shocking to use Barners and the fate of Eden-Monaro as a cartoon coat hanger, but hey, it's Friday, and the reptile follies lack zing …

Please, reptiles, enough with the worrying and the fretting, and the anxiety attacks, it'll all be over soon, while some things will endure …

Well that cartoon orgy done and dusted, thanks to Barners and the coalition, time for one last burst of Eden-Monaro anxiety before the big sleep…

A vote for chaos and anarchy? But what of the Ramsay Centre and Western Civilisation and the price of an arts degree, and oh the NSW heritage humanity, and what about the way that the Visigoths and Huns (no racial profiling intended) now run the NSW government? Was it wrong to blame the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths and the Huns? 

Perhaps just the Vandals ...

In which the pond forgot to add a header ...

Frankly the pond thought that Scottie from marketing went a little too far in comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

If comparisons had to be made, then surely the obvious one was with Benito Mussolini, who was himself something of a bones spur and chicken hawk man …and who had to keep getting bailed out by Adolf.

Really, when it comes to the crunch, SloMo and dinkum Aussies are just the right sort to bail out the Donald, just like Adolf kept on doing with Benito ...

Say what? The pond misheard, and missed the point entirely?

Then there's only one solution, call out our most battle-hardened warrior, the man who fought them on the beaches in Camperdown and had his campus feats celebrated in Honi Soit, the man who would have joined the army to fight the Commie swine only to have the siren song of becoming a reptile see him diverge to scribble away …

Hmm, before proceeding, did anyone suggest that perhaps the best way to imitate the 1930s would be for Scottie from marketing to superintend the supply of coal and iron ore to China? 

Like Ming the Merciless sending that infamous scrap iron to Japan just before the war? At least then he could carry a good nickname to the grave, like Iron ore pig iron Scottie or Coal-faced SloMo …

Sorry, the pond's just dilly-dallying, we must plunge into war …

The circumstances we confront? Hush, please, no one mention the Murdochians or the Donald or Vlad the impaler …

Back to the battlefield, and the foundation of our security ...

The US is confused? Surely not …

Back to inept comparisons, and shoehorning history into fear-mongering of an apocalyptic kind, because, you know, there's a by-election just around the corner, and it's going to be close ...

Trust luck when you can trust the Donald?

But as usual the infallible Pope had a way of summarising the SloMo ploy …

And that reminded the pond that late yesterday the reptiles were still flogging that book ...

A new religion? Talk of alarmists? Well it's a desperate way to sell a book, but damned if a fervent atheist is going to bother with that sort of talk, the sort of childish crap that's emanated from reptile climate denialists for aeons … and now deployed just to keep on selling books …

What else? Well, as we've started to speak of science, albeit in the usual reptile theological way, one of the craven Cravens was out and about, and scoring the illustration of the day ...

Criticism of Andrews has been muted, and wisely so, because just like climate science, the virus doesn't much care for politics or religion, it just goes on doing what it does, and fools who think otherwise might end up sounding like that clown, Governor DeSantis, who recently featured in a viral video ...

That was in the NY Post of all places - warning, it's a Murdoch rag and you might catch a climate denialist virus, or a religion, so please excuse the pond as it must get back to the battlefield with another reptile favourite ...

Actually we're sliding towards a by-election, so the verbiage must flow, but if it's war, perhaps a pre-emptive strike on Samoa or Fiji or Vanuatu? The Donald, brave warrior that he is, will surely have our backs …

Sheesh, another great pond idea shot down in flames, but luckily we haven't had to worry about anything since the Battle of Midway, which was a much more significant battle than the Battle of the Coral Sea … unless of course it was millions of Commie Chinese swine pouring down south to join forces with the wretched Commie Vietnamese, and send dominoes tumbling down everywhere, and next thing you know it, we'd be eating sushi with chopsticks and waving in the air a little red book written by the Dirty Digger …and the only way to limit the conflict was to bomb Cambodia, and didn't that work out well?

Oh well, it's true that the pond has a Molesworth sense of history, do go on ...

Stupidly, the pond went away and read up on the Japanese Army's Pacific war plans and copped a load of wiki-itis:

In early 1942 elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) proposed an invasion of Australia. This proposal was opposed by the Imperial Japanese Army and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who regarded it as being unfeasible given Australia's geography and the strength of the Allied defences. Instead, the Japanese military adopted a strategy of isolating Australia from the United States by advancing through the South Pacific. This offensive was abandoned following the Battle of the Coral Sea and Battle of Midway in May and June 1942, and all subsequent Japanese operations in the vicinity of Australia were undertaken to slow the advance of Allied forces.
Former Australian War Memorial principal historian Dr Peter Stanley states the Japanese "army dismissed the idea as 'gibberish', knowing that troops sent further south would weaken Japan in China and in Manchuria against a Soviet threat. Not only did the Japanese army condemn the plan, but the navy general staff also deprecated it, unable to spare the million tonnes of shipping the invasion would have consumed."[2]
In Australia, the government, the military and the people were deeply alarmed after the fall of Singapore in February 1942 about the possibility of a Japanese invasion. Although Japan never actually planned to invade Australia, widespread fear led to an expansion of Australia's military and war economy, as well as closer links with the United States.

Yep, it must be by-election time.

How about a couple of reassuring cartoons celebrating our closer links?

And so, only because it's a matter of Thursday habit, to the savvy Savva, and those local issues, and the reptiles in a dire state of panic and alarm, such that the Savva was elevated to the top of the page, to counteract the dreadful, baleful Barilaro ...

Actually the way that the reptiles were carrying on, it looked like them and SloMo had the most to fear from an Eden-Monario fail, as a lot of pundits seemed to think that, what with the scare mongering and the comparisons to Adolf's times and the virus and comrade Dan's misfortunes, the seat should be low-hanging fruit easily plucked from Labor's grasp, as was done the last time a seat was up for grabs during a pandemic ...

… but what would the pond know, which is why it always calls on the reptiles for help ...

Ah, the pond gets it. The reptiles constructed an entirely artificial headline and stuck it on the top of the savvy Savva's piece, entirely misrepresenting the warp and weave of its contents. A standard reptile manoeuvre …

Please go on, savvy Savva, seize the apocalyptic moment and explain why it will be an epic fail, with seismic, shattering implications for anyone caught nearby ...

With the greatest respect, it has always been thus, with reptiles using their golden egg-beaters to batter up by-election results as being crucial … when right at the moment, there's a pandemic doing the rounds, and people tend to be more worried about jobs and death and the whole damn thing, and likely enough the way that, come September, SloMo will use a by-election victory to punish people for being unable to get a job ...

Luckily the pond fears nothing, not the virus, not the Chinese, not the war footing, not Adolf, because we have the Donald, and as the immortal Rowe has noted, he's a fearsome golfer, adept at mulligans and other tricks … (and more golfing with Rowe here).

In which the pond studies the way reptiles develop an immune response to current pathologies ...

With the news out of the riven United States increasingly desperate and alarming on a daily basis, the pond thought it might be interesting to see how local reptiles are attempting to boost their immune systems and deal with imported pathologies …

The pond doesn't pretend this is a scientific study, but it does suggest a way forward for students of the reptile way …

First up is nattering "Ned", and he offers a classic example for those in their dotage …

"Ned" has unfortunately been given an illustration, raising yet again the question of what's happened to the cult master, still out and about on Twitter …

But more important is the way that "Ned" responds to the world as it currently it is. Avert the eyes, wander back down nostalgia lane, tell young 'uns about the way things were … ah, in my day, young 'uns …

Forget Brexit, forget the desire to live in Boris's shadow, forget the spiffing new trade deal, waggle the cane in the air to corral the pups, point the gnarly ancient mariner finger and stoppeth at least one of three hundred ...

The excuse is that it's the 70th anniversary of the Korean war, and never no mind that it actually started on 25th June 1950 when the Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel …or so the wiki says here …

So Ned's out by a few days, but that's not important. What is important is to avert the eyes from current horrors, neuroses and pathologies …

… and retreat into the past, and perhaps go all the way with LBJ, because didn't that work out well ...

It's best when retreating into the past not to reflect on ironies embedded in the text … like that talk of being repaid a hundred fold in the time of the Donald …

In fact it's best not to dwell at all on thoughts about the worms at hand …

… spineless creatures in thrall to Moscow and Xi as bounties are placed and Hong Kong goes down and the United States collapses in on itself in chaotic fashion ...

Ah yes, the ANZUS treaty, now in the hands of the Donald … but when wandering in the past, it's possible to get confused by dates and the significance of events for future times ...

And so to the bromancer's response to the pathologies of current times, and his immune system is completely different to what's on view in "Ned's" natter …

The bromancer's first instinct is to go on a war footing. The pond's understanding of the bromancer was changed forever when a reader advised that he was a long haired hippie Arts degree drop out, but that seminal interview in a pdf Honi Soit also showed how the lad was always up for a fight of the most vicious and physical kind …

“I greatly enjoyed Sydney University, had enormous fun…The fizz and buzz of the university was great,” he says with balanced nostalgia. It was not in the sandstone halls that Sheridan received his most profound lessons however. He speaks disparagingly about the quality of the university itself and says the intellectual environment in the classroom was “very poor” and dominated by “mediocre teachers”. He never completed his actual degree. 
The battlefield of student politics was where the young journalist found his niche. Sheridan was part of a small but committed band that resisted the dominant left-wing politics of the decade, the politics we now almost exclusively associate with the time and place. “We were definitely a small minority within that little subculture” he tells me, “but that little subculture itself was so isolated from mainstream Australia”.
He maintains that the “florid, bizarre, baroque” environment of student politics did not even represent most students. Through this group Sheridan first met Tony Abbott, who fast became his “best friend”. His praise for the young Abbott is overwhelming and he lauds him as “generous, spontaneous, full of laughter”, and a “big thinker”. Sheridan is obviously proud of his association with the current Leader of the Opposition. “It’s a great tribute [to Abbott that] he would become fast friends with an irredeemable dork like me,” he says in a jumble of humility and pride.
It is clear that, like Abbott, Sheridan revelled in his role as a political outsider. He was once banned from addressing a student protest when it became clear he wanted to denounce the strike it aimed to promote. Pretending to renege and promising to speak in solidarity with the strikers, he was eventually given the stand. In front of an audience of a few thousand he then performed an imitation of Gough Whitlam - slow, booming voice and all - and mocked the strikers by sarcastically declaring that their study hiatus would “bring Australia to its knees”. As the crowd started to chant “off, off, off”, his small band of supporters coalesced their cry, distorting it into one of “Gough, Gough, Gough”, cheering on his ironic performance. Conservative university students chanting the name of a deposed, lefty legend, Labor Prime Minister, surrounded by an angry mob of striking students. It makes contemporary campus politics seem almost sensible.

You see? The battlefield … so let us begin the battle ...

It's important in developing this immune response to current pathologies to feel in control, with a sufficient number of antibodies in tactical train, and a set of strategic objectives, none of which happen to involve the elephant in the room, or the whale in the ocean …

See how satisfying it is to draw up plans and spend money on it, though to misquote Lenin, against whom is what to be done? Seeing as how Hong Kong just got handed over to Xi with nary a bleat from the US apart from a few minor window-dressing trade adjustments ...

Ah, there it is again, that similarity to "Ned's" blather about ANZUS … how vital the US alliance is and the benefits it can deliver, because who wouldn't want to be associated with a country in such fine form?

As a result, we will have a strong strike capability, which means we will no longer have to spy on the East Timorese. We can simply send a gun boat to make them hand over their precious … and why not a strike on New Zealand … and if ever Tasmania gets too uppity, why the dog botherer will have ample strike power… (well, would we want to take it up to China and start world war III? Maybe, because really the world is just a large version of a Sydney Unit quad).

Mention of those submarines sent the pond into high alert and its own bit of nostalgia and a trip down memory lane with the bromancer …and what do you know, at last there's a chance for the cult master to return …

Ah yes, those submarines … and a bit of "Ned"-style history ...

And so on, and it was left to the immortal Rowe to summarise the result of the bromancer's strategic thinking, with more tactical Rowe here ...

And so to the third reptile response to current pathologies, and here the pond faced a difficult choice ...

You see, the reptiles had dug up a hardened climate activist turned hardened climate denialist to explain how he'd changed his mind about everything. It's a bit like those stories that pop up from time to time, featuring hardened Jesuits who turn hardened atheist, or vice versa, steely atheists who turn into incense-flavoured theological devotees of wafer-munching …

But it turned out he was just flogging a book, and would turn up on telly with the dog botherer on Sky to do a little more book flogging (natch, who else but the dog botherer?), and the pond wondered why it should help a self-promotional narcissist bore promote his latest bloviations?

Not least because Dame Slap was to hand, and what joy, she started off with talk of "executive virtue signallers".

The pond has been made extremely anxious in recent times at the thought that idle talk of the "cancel culture" might eradicate use of that reptile perennial favourite, "virtue signalling."

Luckily the Dame came along to remind us that traditional reptile values need never go out of fashion, with the best immune system of all an ability to forget everything except good old-fashioned greed ...

However it should be noted that of late reptiles have become truly desperate when it comes to illustrations.

The most obvious movie to reference was to hand …

… and yet the reptiles didn't do it. Is this because talk of greed being the most excellent adventure of all would have too nakedly revealed the point of Dame Slap's bitching and gloating?

Dame Slap's way to develop immunity to the current gloom - and her donning of the MAGA cap - is to forget all that, and adopt the guise of an old testament prophet who hurls talk of an financial apocalypse at her enemies …

Immediately when Dame Slap gets in this sort of mood, the pond is reminded of the Ramsay Centre and the foundational aspects of Judeo-Christian white Western Civilisation (with a touch of Celt as well as Nordic and Anglo-Saxon), and the impudent cheek of that swarthy, interloping, middle eastern, socialistic do-gooder, blathering about questions of wealth …

Say what, give up all his great possessions and follow a socialist virtue signalling tree hugger, when we all know that coal and the dog botherer are the way to a better planet?

That's Matthew 19,  KJV, and we'll have none of that nonsense here, thank you very much … because Dame Slap doesn't give a fig or a toss for salvation, she likes her cash in the paw, or even better, in a Swiss bank account ...

Dear sweet long absent Jesus, what a wretched virtue signaller he was. Give away everything and follow him? What an idle tosser, what rank hypocrisy, what humbug, when all we need to do is remember it's a jungle out there, and sharpen the claws … 

Let just not conjure up dreams, let us talk of greed being good, and bonuses the best reward of all for having screwed everybody the best … and remember anyone who carries on like a Xian can be shamed …

Of the three approaches, the pond thinks Dame Slap's is the best way to deal with the current situation. If some virtue signaller starts talking about masks, tear them off and breathe deeply into their face. Or perhaps throw all your goods out of the trolley onto the supermarket floor.

Forget a nostalgic roam through history, forget delusions of grandeur and the desire to keep fighting campus battles with a better class of submarine toy, encourage real selfishness and a total lack of responsibility and soon enough you'll be ready to don the MAGA cap and join the Donald in his narcissist snake-oil selling ways ...

Yes, a tidy scribble from Dame Slap's tidily paid life above the faraway tree on Planet Janet, and all she missed out on was a little finger-pointing of a different kind, but luckily the pond has an infallible Pope on hand to help with that …

And so endeth this study of reptile immune systems and their ability to cope with assorted pathologies and the world around them … and now for the next treatment, years in development, much like the biggest and hugest vaccines …