The background to today’s post are my following tenets:
1. Apart perhaps from the USA, nowadays there’s little separation between right wing and left wing politics. And the gap’s narrowing.
2. To the extent that there is separation in Australia, I’m more aligned to the left.
3. Yet I’m ambivalent because the right’s more pro-Israel.
4. As our population increases, especially in cities, so does the need for social inclusion and tolerance.
5. This is more likely to be provided by left wing ideology. And vice versa.
6. And it’s more likely if women were in power. And vice versa.
7. So it’s no coincidence that most – if not all – so-called radio shock jocks are right wing, and male.
Next Monday in Victoria, an easy listening music radio station, 3MP [1], will reincarnate as MTR 1377 – Melbourne Talk Radio [2]. Its on-air voices will be almost 100% male. And they’re shock-jocks. No doubt about it. Of course its aim’s to sell advertising and thus make a profit – the bigger the better. But the inevitable, and to the MTR management presumably collateral, social ramifications are likely to be entirely negative and harmful. Catherine Deveny [3] (pictured), one of my journalist heroes, wrote – incisively as usual – of all this in yesterday’s Age [4]. Will her article make any difference? No. Do I care? Yes. Ho hum.
