Friday, November 21, 2014

In which the pond goes off with 'teh crazies' and the head flat-earther ...

The thing that the pond most admires about the coverage of George Christensen's latest bout of paranoid hysteria is the way the mainstream media persists in running photographs of him standing alongside Tony Abbott.

Sure,  gorgeous George (so named in honour of the famous wrestler) is only a small beer, parochial, xenophobic Queensland politician, of the worst, shallow, mindless, self-seeking for self-promotion and self-publicity kind, but as they say in the trade, when you step in a cow pat in the meadow, the bloody stuff sticks to the boot.

Here's the happy pair in The Age's report on proceedings:


There, you see, 'teh crazies' together ...

Yes, eccentric, baffling Tony has to wear his colleague's ordure ... here he is with George in the Illawarra Mercury:


Nine News also did the right thing, showing 'teh crazies' together in their coverage:


It wasn't universal - some just went with shots of Freddo frogs or jars of Vegemite - but the pond hails the efforts of the journalists who automatically reached for a reminder that 'teh crazy' was a colleague of 'teh chief crazy'.

The story itself was mendacious, a shameless beat-up, in which Christensen asked a series of rhetorical questions, full of sly innuendo and paranoia.

No doubt he wanted people to troop off to his website to read Terror in the Tuckbox?

See how it's a question?

It's an easy style to mock and imitate?

Is George Christensen a fuckwit?

Does George Christen have half a clue?

Is the real terror in the box gorgeous George?

Never mind, the pond is too cunning and canny to give up a link to a prize ass.

If people want to find the musings of prize asses, they must seek them out by themselves:


Uh huh.

Now how long before gorgeous George - isn't that just a darling caricature at the top of the page - gets stuck into 'teh Jews'?


(click to enlarge, or get your Kosher certification here. Bring money).

Of course Christensen is such a goose and doesn't have a clue in such a gigantic way that it's easy to make fun of him, and so people did.

Craig Harvey provided the go-to tweet for the occasion:


Yes, of course, of course the federal government provides direct funding to Islamics via the school chaplain program - anyone at all in preference to secularists, atheists, humanists, social workers and the rest - and the federal government directly funds Islamic schools (and Scientology schools and fundamentalist Christian schools and creationist-teaching schools and ...)

But this is the pond, and we're never looking for sensible debate or coherent arguments, we're just loon hunting.

The problem with these loons - Christensen is just a light-weight - or if you will heavyweight - version of Cory Bernardi - is that they're predictable in their self-seeking promotional ways ... and that makes them boring.

But their routine association with 'teh chief crazy' Abbott makes them invaluable.

It adds to the notion that Abbott is himself something of a flat earther. And the direct evidence for that continues to accumulate.

You won't see this story running in the Murdoch media, but there it is on the right in The Age:


The story's here, but this captures the flavour in a nutshell:

The attitude of Prime Minister Tony Abbott to the global challenges of climate change is "eccentric", "baffling" and "flat earther", according to a group of senior British Conservatives.

And there's Abbott's current image problem in a nutshell. Surrounded by minor league crazies, but showing all the signs of being a major league crazy himself ...

Now in recent times, Abbott has been attempting an epic back flip to try to separate himself from all 'teh crazies', the parrot, the Bolter, and all the rest of the climate denialists.

It started with Abbott announcing to the bemused French that Paris must succeed (Abbott decides that climate change thing needs a dust after all).

No wonder the Bolter is alert and truly alarmed.

And then came the capper to the pond's day - the answer to that eternal question.

What happens to the world's leading climate scientists when they take an interest in worldly affairs?

Why they end up like screaming Lord Monckton campaigning for "Rise Up" in the Victorian state election.

Lord Monckton stands beside Rise Up Australia.

Like as not, you won't read about that in any of those who once stood alongside the screaming Lord. The list was long and dishonourable ... Paul Sheehan, Andrew Bolt, Miranda the Devine, the parrot, why it was even alleged that Monckton once broke bread with Maurice Newman (here).

So there's Abbott and the rest of the barking mad denialists off with a creationist-supporting rabid fundamentalist loon ...

Truly the result is a golden age for cartoonists.

Not the pathetic kool-aid swilling likes of Bill Leak - a figure moving slowly from the pathetic to the tragic - but the likes of David Rowe, who know how to skewer, and does it on an almost daily basis. Below Rowe's at it again, and as always, more Rowe here.




10 comments:

  1. I love that George uses a cartoon of himself on his letterhead. I think it immediately suggests he is not to be taken seriously ....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Let's get onto lighter matters .

    Q. Which famous and brilliant jazz singer is responsible for hundreds of deaths?

    A. Billie Holiday.

    Here's the reason -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUCyjDOlnPU



    ReplyDelete
  3. The Queensland Nationals.
    When I lived in Nth Queensland in the early seventies the word on the street was the quickest way to earn/obtain a million dollars was a ministry in Joh's government.
    I remember a story doing the rounds where the roads minister had bought a pub a couples of K's from the main highway, he naturally had the main highway diverted in a big dogs leg to run past the front door. Nobody even blinked.
    Joh was premier for a long, long, long time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They didn't blink because they were motivated to think that Joh was a good bloke and would do the best thing for people who behaved themselves properly. My parents were convinced that all politicians and other 'rich' folk were dishonest but Labor politicians were not only dishonest, they would not use the money they stole from honest folk like us well.

      It was amazing to me back then that they wouldn't listen to any 'arguments' about democracy and such thngs. The evidence they trusted, it came down to, was that 2 Labor politicians had not paid their bill for some election printing that they had done but all the Liberals had paid.

      My parents were/are small business people who did a lot of the sort of fast printing that is so cheap and easily available now so I met quite a few state and local pollies back in the '60's. I wasn't impressed.

      My parents and the family members who have taken over are only just now, just occasionally entertaining the idea that they may have been manipulated and fooled into resenting and hating the wrong group of people. They have been encouraged to hate and envy their neighbour who has more or worse even less than they do and to judge others by their appearance not the content of their soul.

      But whatever....they did do okay but hardly enough to be worth all their hard work and really really long hours that business owners have to do to make a profit, unlike the better people who were able to convince Joh and his great men that they had a good idea about how to make this state a great place for us to live in.

      But hey Flo could sure bake a pumpkin scone - like that was some sort of incredible achievement? WTF anyone can cook pumpkin scones.


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    2. People are constantly encouraged to feel envious of, or hate, those close to them. Thus the large child will bully the smaller child, who in turn bullies the cat. they are encouraged not to look the other way, ie. to fight back against their bullies.

      So it is for the electorate and politicians. They encourage the aspirationals to hate the poor, and the working poor to hate the unemployed. The unemployed in turn hate the disabled. Meanwhile they all get screwed by the big end of town.

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    3. 2nd Anon: Beatty let 'em off. WTF?

      3rd Anon: Sounds like Mareeba, but there as elsewhere it's blacks at the bottom.

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    4. Thanks for the addition Anon. Of course, blacks are always at the butt end of the bullying.

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  4. Kenny thinks Abbott has shifted ground on climate? I'm not sure how he reached that conclusion - since before the election Abbott has been willing to say he wants action on climate whilst doing everything possible to impede action on climate. What Abbott demonstrated clearly was that he will tell outright lies to ensure his efforts to impede action on climate are not ... impeded.

    No, Kenny has not revealed a shift in Abbott's direction on climate, he has just revealed that he, Kenny, is a full and willing participant in Abbott's strategy of keeping a pretense of taking climate action seriously as he seeks to take it down (because it's easier that way) and is willing to step up and lie himself to keep that useful deception alive. And at it core is that deep conviction that climate science is wrong that is driving Conservative politics - so sure of its rightness that they are betting everything, including the future of the world as we know it on it.

    I think Abbott thinks himself very clever, in practicing the Sun Tsu maxim that supreme excellence in war is in deception. Still, I'm fairly sure deceiving youself and your team was not what Sun Tsu had in mind.

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    Replies
    1. That Kenny article is the funniest I've read in a long time. Abbott is now embracing climate change? No, he's only embracing Hollande. He's a guy who will do and say anything, remember?

      So Abbott says we need to do something about climate change. And all Kenny can conclude is "why didn't he say that before?"

      Talk about credulous.

      Delete
    2. I wonder what Abbott will be thinking about the call today by BHP's Jac Nasser, for a carbon tax.

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