Friday, November 10, 2017

In which the pond starts by munching onions, then gets a taste for even more popcorn of the dickhead Spectator kind ...


Rowe's extra special movie buff cartoon this day - more Rowe here - reminded the pond that in recent times it's headed off to the Speccie for a Friday lunch ...

Where's the harm?

After all the planet of the dickheads deserves a magazine by and for the dickheads, and besides, the pond's circulation always drops on a Friday, as public servants and academics down tools early and scurry off for the break ...

Only the most foolhardy hang around for undiluted essence of loonery ... and yet it's the same impeccable line-up week after week ...



Look at who they've got at the top of the editor's choice ...


Not content with appearing on radio and turning up almost daily in the lizard Oz, the down under narcissist now seems to be turning up on a monthly basis in the Speccie ...

Fittingly, the snap shows him in company with a declining corporate criminal and an old fogie war criminal so ancient not many will recall his many epic war crimes ... though it has to be said that being reminded in the documentary series The Vietnam War of Kissinger's cynical conversations and criminal actions with Nixon was chilling ...


The thought of the onion muncher harassing children was almost too much to bear, and the pond immediately reached for a cartoon ...



But the thought of one narcissist contemplating another narcissist impelled the pond forward ...


Uh huh, apparently the upside is that the Donald's fucking the planet even more than the onion muncher could imagine or have managed, because everyone knows global warming is going to be good for everything ...

And he's doing tax cuts ...



Why didn't the pond think of this before?

Have the onion muncher as an excuse for a cartoon festival?


Oh indeed, indeed ...


And so to the last plaintive cri de coeur from the onion muncher ...


There it was, there it goes ...

As prime minister ...

He'll never get over it, will he?

The loss of the precious, the stealing of the blanket ...

As if being taken seriously by the Trump administration is a serious sign of serious intelligence ...


But speaking of climate science as we must when in company of the onion muncher, if only to please the teachers, the pond was shocked to the core to come across this headline ...


Say what? How had this heresy come about?

The pond rushed to read the story, and sure enough it concluded this way ...


The pond realised it had made a basic amateur mistake. 

This had been written for the UK branch, of the rag, whereas the pond should have stuck to the Australian team, where this sort of scribbling is more the go ...


Who do you suppose wrote this?

Was it Hugh Thomson in the UK Spectator?

We keed, we keed, carry on regardless Mr Akehurst ...


Splendid stuff. There's nothing like a full blown loon in full cry, and this is the first time that Christopher Akehurst has appeared on the pond, though he's known in other circles, as in this note in Crikey here ...


Because that's a screen cap, it's worth noting that posting had disappeared, and even more sad, Akehurst's blog had shut down back in August, but perhaps that's because Akehurst is now routinely featured at Quadrant and the Spectator ...

Now anyone who follows that Quadrant link will appreciate that Akehurst has some difficulties with religion, and anyone doubting that will have their doubts removed by the next gobbet starting with a reference to "this Athanasian Creed" ...

The Athanasian Creed, also known as Pseudo-Athanasian Creed or Quicunque Vult (also Quicumque Vult), is a Christian statement of belief focused on Trinitarian doctrine and Christology. The Latin name of the creed, Quicunque vult, is taken from the opening words, "Whosoever wishes". The creed has been used by Christian churches since the sixth century. It is the first creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated. It differs from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and Apostles' Creeds in the inclusion of anathemas, or condemnations of those who disagree with the creed (like the original Nicene Creed). (Greg Hunt more here, and at the Catholic Encyclopedia here).

Of course it's silly, arcane and irrelevant, designed to set Greg Hunters off, but it's also a sure sign of someone howling at the moon, because whenever talking about climate science, a reference to the Athanasian Creed is a sure fire, knock down winning argument ...



Now it's impossible to argue with this sort of stuff, since it's just Clint Eastwood telling young 'uns to get off his lawn, but it does provide an excuse for a cartoon ...



And so, hopefully now with extra dry sherry in hand, it's back to the rant ...



Has ever such an epic example of hysteria, fear and loathing, riven with hatred and hostility, ended with such a poignant plea for the Judaeo- or even Judeo-Christian heritage to spread love and peace in the world?




Sadly, as a result of all that, the pond hasn't the time to note the full wonder of this week's exercise in Flintiness, and must restrict itself to a couple of tasty chunks  ...



Indeed, indeed ...


Now this will leave punters wondering at how Flinty managed to work in a slur on that Wong, down there with Arthur Calwell's two wongs routine ...


And there you go, slur complete in the inimitable Flint style.

What a pompous ass he is ... what a treasure trove of ratbags and loons the Spectator down under provides ...



And thank the long absent lord, there are actual scientists at work elsewhere in the real world ... even if you will find three fifths of fuck all of their deeds in the Spectator down under, where navel gazing and fluff gathering and howling at the moon is all the go ... oh and talk of  "this Athanasian Creed" ...

And so to the Pope summing it all up, in his inimitable papish way, with more essential popery here ...



6 comments:

  1. " ... what a treasure trove of ratbags and loons the Spectator down under provides"

    You said it, DP; you surely said it. A collection of those carrying much too much psychopathic neoteny to be acceptable even to the least and worst of the herpetarium. Nonetheless, the Aussie Spectator supposedly had, according to Wikipedia, about 74,000 paid up subscribers in 2016 (ie about 0.3% of the total Australian population).

    Still, that gold standard of successful print journalism, The Australian, claimed a "Total masthead audience" of 3.4 million off a paid up subscribership of 170,000 (including the Wall Street Journal at no extra cost) or roughly 0.7% of the Australian population. No wonder The Oz manages such a high level of contributor quality, is there. Just compare Ned Kelly with Flinty for instance.

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  2. As DP is wont to point out - "no sense of self awareness or irony" - mocking others for having unreasoned beliefs or pointing out the silliness of ritual & dogma. I suppose it makes sense that folk who simply accept the beliefs inherited from parents or other authority figure have trouble understanding that large numbers of people can come to a certain conclusion based on data & reasoned argument. It's probably quite distressing to see reason trumping faith.

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    Replies
    1. I don't think that reason trumps faith all that very often, Bef. In fact I think that all of us have many, many beliefs in which we have very great unreasoned faith.

      So for some light relief, I thought I might just throw in some of the reasonings of Bertrand Russell:
      I am firm, You are obstinate, He is a pig-headed fool.
      I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.
      I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word
      .
      [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation ]

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    2. Akehurst's criticisms of 'pagan' environmentalism are similar to those published by Cardinal Pell some years ago in a review in the Sunday Telegraph of the film Avatar. (Akehurst, News Limited, Pell . . . improbability quotient complete.)

      Pell used the piece to not only condemn the nature-worship implicit in the film, but to also attack those with an irrational belief in climate change. This piece, like Akehurst's, seems to have disappeared from the internet.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, greghunting didn't find it for me, either, but I do kinda vaguely remember it..

      But I fancy that Pell and Akehurst have gone way past the 'pagan' state of being right for the wrong reasons and into the well mapped territory of being wrong for what they erroneously consider to be the "right reasons" - they being any reasons that Pell or Akehurst make up for their own emotional gratification.

      It's really just way too hard for so many people to even consider the idea that it might be possible to be right for the genuinely right reasons. After all, even Sokrates didn't quite manage that.

      Delete
  3. Did I miss it, or did the onion muncher fail to mention his favourite adversary? No mention of the topless horseman, not even the great leader's flirtations with Hillary and the 30 million pieces of silver she allegedly received in a uranium deal. If ever he had an opportunity to redeem himself after his miserably feeble attempt at a shirtfront, this was it. But Tony tossed in the towel .. again. It's no-one's fault but his own that the scoreline reads: Vlad The Impaler 2 Tony The Tanker 0.

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