Thanks, Catherine.

Three problems, however.

First, Ms Deveney is a comedian. We probably should regard her as such. Which means quite often she is joking. And black humour seems to be her forte.

Second, Jones is not being boycotted for “offensive comments about Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her father” – despite what Jones and 2GB would have you believe.

The strategic facebook page Destroying the Joint was set up six weeks ago, wasn't it? Long before the infamous Young Libs meeting.

From the various online groups it is clear there are long-held, deep-seated concerns at Jones’ activities on many levels. These include his history of fabrications, receiving secret cash payments for on-air comments, fomenting racial hatred and violence, abuse of staff, ridiculing and censoring callers who challenge his facts, unbalanced treatment of political parties, crude sexist attacks on the Prime Minister, false accusations against political opponents, calls for the death of his political enemies, public vilification of those he disagrees with, hypocritical exploitation of charities, the hypocrisy of calling for direct community action but complaining when the community acts directly against his excesses and, finally, his hollow apologies when cornered.

Third, it is not true that “they are trying to influence a platform with which they are not engaged, and which has no impact on their lives.”

Wherever misogyny, racism, prejudice, ignorance and distortion of important issues are proudly encouraged in Australia it affects us all.

<<The strategic facebook page Destroying the Joint was set up six weeks ago>>

Can you imagine anyone with more than half a brain setting up a group called "Destroy the Joint" -- how infantile!

Can you imagine anyone with more than half a brain saying that women are 'destroying the joint'? How infantile!

<<Can you imagine anyone with more than half a brain saying that women are 'destroying the joint'? How infantile!>>

Two wrongs don’t make a RIGHT.
But it appears, they excite the LEFT.

Good article Catherine.

< It is one thing to boycott offensive programs, but quite another to strong-arm third parties into boycotting them as well. >

Surely this is getting into very risky legal territory for those who are leading the push.

< …it delivers a punishment that is disproportionate to the offence… >

Yes, enormously so.

That's some Camel!

'From the various online groups it is clear there are long-held, deep-seated concerns at Jones’ activities on many levels. These include his history of fabrications, receiving secret cash payments for on-air comments, fomenting racial hatred and violence, abuse of staff, ridiculing and censoring callers who challenge his facts, unbalanced treatment of political parties, crude sexist attacks on the Prime Minister, false accusations against political opponents, calls for the death of his political enemies, public vilification of those he disagrees with, hypocritical exploitation of charities, the hypocrisy of calling for direct community action but complaining when the community acts directly against his excesses and, finally, his hollow apologies when cornered.'

And after all that not once was a similar action engaged in, certainly not on such a scale.

That camel has an amazing back!

That really shows that

a) It was one hell of a heavy straw
b) There was another force at play, with a political agenda.

Both of which backs Catherine's article.

Jones is very pragmatic.He chooses his causes to suit the agenda of the status quo.Today he was by innuendo criticising the Occupy Movement but will not say a word about the criminals who caused the GFC and continue to steal via QU3 and putting us in more debt.

Jones is right about the CO2 tax but we cannot trust the Coalition either with Turnbull wanting and ETS + tax for another derivative for his Goldman Sachs mates

I also wasn't aware, that as well as parliamentary privilege, we have left-wing comedian privilege. There seems to be a hell of a lot of these "comedian's".

Deveney is a left wing social commentator. Just because she has an acid tongue and no brain doesn't turn her into a comedian. Well, no more of a comedian than Jones, who no doubt could be as amusing as watching ACA. I have long watched ACA and texted all my friends the hyperbolic headlines.

Or maybe it's that you have to be a card carrying member of the comedian's club to be allowed to use black humor.

Houellie,

It's all part of the circus of democracy.

It's a well known fact that lefties are far more likely to wield genuine wit.

Take the example of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert who regularly sock it to Fox News. We all know humour is a much sharper sword in the battle of opinion.

In fact, I'm finding it difficult to come up with a witty right-winger - perhaps you can turn your legendary talents to giving them a leg-up in that department : )

PJ O'Rourke is pretty funny.

<Tin foil hat on> Isn't Alan Jones supporting the farmers against the Coal Seam Gas people. Maybe Alan Jones was targeted due to this stance and the moral outrage is just a front. After all the journalist who exposed him was from News limited. <Tin foil hat off>

>>In fact, I'm finding it difficult to come up with a witty right-winger<<

Jeremy Clarkson.

Cheers,

Tony

'It's a well known fact that lefties are far more likely to wield genuine wit.'

Yeah why is that? Is it because the right has won and all the lefties have left is to laugh.

'In fact, I'm finding it difficult to come up with a witty right-winger'

It's not easy. I remember Rick from the Young ones sending up the left pretty well. The people's poet!

Hippies are pretty easy targets too, I loved how Neil was so dismissed, ignored and quietly despised. Kinda like Christine Milne.

South Park can be pretty funny and a lot of their targets are left wing.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/south-park-makes-fun-of-occupy-wall-street-michael-moore-and-the-99/

I find humor in both the left and the right. I can laugh at bogans, battlers and yuppies and the comfortable middle class equally too. I love class warfare. I don't understand what's so wrong with the politics of envy it's so much fun.

I often ponder what percentage of ACA viewers are watching it for amusement like me. It's the funniest show on TV.

I think lefties are easier to bait than conservatives for some reason. I suppose because they are appealing to fairness and the best in people and it's a double blow for that to be rejected and mocked as well. They take it to heart, where if you knock the powerful they can just laugh back and say well look at all my money!

Yes, it seems the righties can make us laugh, but certainly not in the same measure as lefties.

I remember John Mortimer employed his Rumpole character so well to impart a message and expose the dearth of humour in the establishment (which makes Houellie's final point pertinent)

Houellie,

You really have to understand that the way you view programs like ACA "is not" how its regular viewers see it. My mother, for example, oft quotes to me items she's seen of Seven's equivalent, Today Tonight. She quotes them as if the opinions therein have been passed down from on high. It's (for her) apparently the last word in social and political opinion, and often it takes her a while to gather her wits if anyone in the immediate family decides to deconstruct the issue.

You're right about The Young Ones - but are you telling me that it wasn't the lefties who were laughing the loudest?

Poirot,

I have yet to see any genuine wit from the left. It mostly comprises insulting the opposition and thinking it's funny. Then the idiots from the left feel vindicated that they are the only ones smart enough to understand the joke.

We see here two old-hat strategies for dodging issues.

One is parroting “Two wrongs don’t make a right”. No they don’t, but this mantra can be and is used to gloss over the question of whether acting to counter a wrong (including thoughtless funding of the wrong) is necessarily just another wrong. This is so whether the wrong being countered is the amplified mouthings of a shock jock via “media” or the amplified mouthings of an Islamic hate merchant like Imam Hilaly via a mosque or a madrassa. The silly “two wrongs” mantra glosses over the issue of whether particular countermeasures are really another wrong. It invents moral equivalence between the arsonist and the firefighter.

The other issue-dodging strategy is to invoke pterodactyl politics - wings and scales, left wing, right wing, scales for locating propositions between them. This strategy works through conflation - instead of confronting the rightness or wrongness of a statement or action, using dog whistle words like "lefty" and "righty" to conflate the statement or action with positions on peripheral or totally unrelated issues such as soft or hard on crime, for or against “big government” etc. The aim is to divert the reader away from considering the issue at hand.

As for “you don’t have to listen to the hate propaganda if you don’t like it”, that oft-repeated mantra has been thoroughly invalidated in these comments by Alan Austin’s third point.

Agree with Alan Austin: Alan has nailed it!
I believe the day of being outrageous and over the top, for rank commercial or political purpose has had its day?
Even more so as the community finds its voice and or loses the usual apathy; and or, starts to think for itself?
Even where it has to tolerate the smell of burning emanating from previously unused cerebral circuits?
If there is any hate as an element existing in this discussion, then surely it is flowing freely and exclusively, out of the venomous mouths, of the so-called shock jocks?
If they then then reap the whirlwind of civil outrage and or public censure, or preyed on public personalities, who have had an absolute gutfull, of turning the other cheek?
Then that may be no bad thing?
If Joe public responds with a commercial boycott of advertised products, then that's a good thing, particularly if it then removes the ritualistic rubbish and tribalism, we have been increasingly subjected to, by Jones or Sandilands etc/etc?
[Wall street movement move over, people power is moving in to replace mindless censure or entirely ineffectual protest, with commercial advocacy or boycotts?]
Throughout history we have seen the emergence of power hungry people, [the so-called anti-Christ,] who've patently understood and used mob psychology, and how to whip it up for extremely unedifying purposes, hateful racial vilification or ethnic cleansing; or worse, mere political advantage?
And really, when all is said and done, one can only respond to such villainous arrogant pugilistic commentary as that, which seems to endorse and deepen the cultural divide, born of ignorance or archaic medieval belief or both, with a click of the heels and a stiff arm salute?
Rhrosty.

Dear Poirot,

The English have had a number of right wing wits. Hillaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh are prominent examples. Perhaps in Australia the right wing is less well educated than in England.

Education for women and rightwingers will serve to sustain both population and wit.

" deep seated concern" about something a shockjock said? If I read correctly he wasn't even on air. Please, it is time for Bex and a good liedown.

'I believe the day of being outrageous and over the top, for rank commercial or political purpose has had its day?'

You better break that to Deveney. Even Ms Greer will be trembling in her boots.

I reckon there is a hell of a lot of mileage left, ACA is a long enduring case study to the contrary.

'Even more so as the community finds its voice and or loses the usual apathy; and or, starts to think for itself?'

Hahahahahahaha!

.

Hahahahahah!
..

Stop it! I'm dying here!

'If Joe public responds with a commercial boycott of advertised products'

That's the silliest part of the whole episode. Joe public has done no such thing. Joe has simply threatened to do that. He's clicked on a link to exercise his moral indignation muscle, the latest outrage fad, following the sheeple. I guarantee no more than 5% will follow up this action in any way whatsoever.

Even with people thinking for themselves and without the apathy, if consumers are to make every purchase an exercise in morality and ethics they'll never get anything done. It's only the true pedants and those with no life or a particular axe to grind who could possibly keep up the pace.

For every purchase you could do an entire thesis on environmental sustainability for example, energy consumption used, research the different companies ethical behavior on aspects as diverse as gender equality policies, that company's investment choices. I mean how many degrees of separation are we going for, when the Jones-Haters are already scrutinizing

the company that advertises
on the station that employs
the man who made a joke in bad taste
in his his private life...

What it really, honestly boils down to is a vindictive exercise of power to silence people you don't like and never listened to in the first place.

' ritualistic rubbish and tribalism'

That's a great description of the.. erm 'movement' we have here from the Jones-hating, and by proxy, bogan-hating left wing elitists.

Perhaps Jones is the real people's poet.

No matter how much you support or dislike Jones, he's never said anything that's caused as much damage as our last two Prime Ministers have caused.
How many needy families could have benefitted from the efforts & expenditure wasted on this crap. Get real People !

well said Individual!

I agree that Andrew Bolt is "provocative". however, I am pretty sure that I have not seen him " publish vulgar comments about politicians."

Mark Stein, Jeremy Clarkson and James Dellingpole are good for a chuckle and Rumpole always pulled the rug from under the self inflate 'twitterati'.

Deveney? boorish and crass yes, funny..?.. no.

Despite whatever Deveney may have said, she simply not have the same media exposure as Jones, Bolt, Hadley, Oldfield, Mitchell and all those other lying partisan screamers.

As for Jones, he's managed to get Police Commissioners replaced in the past and flexed his political muscle on many occasions at the State level but I think he is becoming a parody of himself and a potential political liability, especially if he makes further gaffes.

He may influence the vote in many Western Sydney electorates by a few percent but to most others he is just a joke.

If you decided to avoid products advertised on Alan Jones show over his comments on the PM’s father, srick to you resolve despite them returning to advertise on his station. Long term punishment works.

As we expected, advertisers are coming back to Alan Jones. too large an audience to lose...

As we expected, the Adolph Hitlers and the Hermann Goerrings are coming back to planet Earth through the portal of the once Free Australia but now oestro-toxified Country of Australeeeah.

And Alan Jones? Wasn't he the great rugby General who put the Welsh to the sword in 1986 at Cardiff Arms. Julia's dad would have thought he was a hero just like every other Welshman on that day I can tell you!

You see the problem of women running a country, as Britain found out during the Margaret Thatcher experiment was that it cannot last.

Why? Because the ultimate power comes from wealthy men who use women in politics like rugby coaches use great players. At the end of the day there is no glass ceiling for women to smash through, only an expiry date.

Whilst the ALP has deferred their expiry date by highlighting Abbott the rabbit's PRIVATISATION idiocy, women in canberra are increasingly on the nose.

The ultimate determinator of Federal power will be to stop pretending offshoring Jobs is not destroying the soul of this Nation. How to stop pretending PRIVATISATION is anything other than selling out your fellow country men and women for a few pieces of silver. And how to invest in the ONLY true global currency of ENERGY rather than worthless printed $US funny money.

I KNOW what's happening here and so do all other Australian's with half a brain.

Continued,

Continuing,

GLOBALISATION has failed and has become a serious future-eating threat. A new hybrid system of tariffs and free trade to suit Austalia , NOT the rest of the war mongering world is needed. Canberra's 'too-precious' free trade agreements are nothing but taking the knife out of Rudd and sticking it in the back of every Australian citizen.

Hands up all those who are worried sick right now their jobs may soon be going to China with no other employment even remotely on the horizon!

Hands up who want Gillard and ABBOTT to emigrate to Washington DC and let Alan Jones be PM!

Success in the world does NOT come from emulating a bunch of back-stabbing oestrous women. It comes from being fit and smart enough to win a rugby world cup. It comes from being fit and smart enough to know all your wealth in fresh printed $US are worthless as is your current Job.

So tune into AJ. Don't be looking the wrong way when the axe falls.

I wonder if you namby-pambies can imagine the Welsh pack chasing the Aussies in for their last Try, snorting and steam out of nostril like packs of horses as the ground trembled under your feet across from the goal posts.

Its the unchanging essence of our genetic evolution. You'll never crush that spirit. This thread and this nation has lost its way.