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.