Call it the Grumpy Old Man business model. At a time when our busted mainstream media are axing the jobs of hundreds of hard-working journalists, the market for menopausal male misogynists in print and broadcasting remains stronger than ever. Why?
With a nod to our new ideological overlords of the IPA, it seems the market has spoken. What Australia wants from its media is not The Truth, but something that the archetypal 50-something Dad – full of three James Boags and two Pinot Noirs at the family barbecue – declares to be the reality.
How else to explain the nasal, semi-autistic obsessions of the Gerard Hendersons of the world, the mincing, mummy-never-loved-me-anyway anti-women rants of the Alan Jones and the ‘I’m no racist but look at what the boongs are doing now’ magic waterworld of the Paul Sheehans?
Old, grumpy, racist and reactionary is clearly the new pathway to media millions. So let’s sack all the working journalists – the ones who went to university, learnt a trade and then plied it in 10-hour shifts at not much above the average wage – and employ instead for six figures the bigotry peddlers. Because it’s all about grabbing an audience and flogging to to advertisers; and the market is never wrong, right?
Clearly, that’s what the public wants. The Australian public wants whitebread certainty; it wants its prejudices pandered to by the all knowing, half-cut Uncle Alan at the bar, going red in the face and sticking his RM Williams up the backsides of dole bludgers, darkies, sundry immigrants, working women and poofters (well, not all poofters).
How else to explain this nation’s reflexive forelock tugging to the omniscient menopausal male? We are in love with the opinions of the lip-curling, finger-pointing, vein-bulging grumps who hate change and want to reassure us that the world is not warming, that the consequences of globalisation do not include the mass movement of people, that a woman can’t be an effective prime minister, that homosexual people cannot love each other till death, that we can’t be a mature nation without a German dynasty looking over our shoulders and that we are forever defined by Don Bradman, Henry Lawson and Robert Menzies.
I get the sense Australia is more than that, is bigger than that, is more imaginative than that. But we’re currently in a place where people feel unnerved by change and do not want to deal with the complexity and richness of the real world. These are the people who respond reflexively to those whom Paul Keating called the punishers and straighteners. And they are defining the debate in this country.
I say it’s time other voices were heard. And I’m male, 53 and white.
See also: ‘Why Society Doesn’t Change: The System Justification Bias’ – PsyBlog
28 Comments
Tracy Sorensen · September 4, 2012 at 11:22 AM
You're right. The other voices have a lot going for them. This evening as I cooked dinner I watched SBS's global village about kids graduating from high school in India, then a quiet little Letters and Numbers game. I thought: this is the Australia I like. It was quiet, enjoyable, open to the world and intelligent.
Tracy Sorensen · September 4, 2012 at 11:22 AM
You're right. The other voices have a lot going for them. This evening as I cooked dinner I watched SBS's global village about kids graduating from high school in India, then a quiet little Letters and Numbers game. I thought: this is the Australia I like. It was quiet, enjoyable, open to the world and intelligent.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 12:19 PM
Waching paraolymppics not interestrd in opionated media
People never now listen to tak back read opinion columns
Cannot wait for the emd of news papers
Odd one out may be but. Peaceful though
What an inspiration our. Parsolympians arr
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 12:20 PM
Who says these ranting males are popular? Alan Jones appeals to a very narrow audience – aging white male taxi drivers – and that's it. Sheehan comes as part of the SMH package. Sell his columns separately and I bet you'd find they had not too many readers, let alone readers who agree with them. Sorry, Mr Denmore but your aging white male rant is well below your usual standards.,
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 12:59 PM
“magic waterworld of the Paul Sheehans” That is gold. Whenever Sheehan used to upset me which was all the time when I read a column of his I used to respond with a reference the “magic” and “water” A lot of times they would be moderated but i used a get a few through. Now I don't bother reading him although I occasionally read the responses to him and Henderson. How the man could even continue as a columnist after the magic water business just amazes me. He obviously has the hide of an elephant and a particularly forgiving employer. His editor should have said your name will never appear in this newspaper again and offered him a menial job on the subs desk and refused him any time he tried for redundancy.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 1:25 PM
I won't buy newspapers because I don't want to read ignorant opinionated right wing bigots.
I scour the internet for news and now I can't rely on the authoritive news services of the ABC it's up to me to judge the worthiness of the news I find on the internet. Who knows what loony views I absorb daily to form my world view.
billie
megpie71 · September 4, 2012 at 2:11 PM
I'd argue (as others already have) that the aging white misogynist clique don't so much appeal to the Australian public as they appeal to those members of the Australian public who habitually consume the mainstream media uncritically. I suspect this is a declining percentage of the overall population (a supposition which is probably supported by the declining profits of the mainstream media stalwarts).
That said, I'm not saying that ignoring the aging white male bigot sector of the mainstream media commentariat is necessarily a good thing. Instead, I'd point to things like the #destroythejoint hashtag on Twitter, and other such responses which make it clear that the appropriate response to such nincompoops is not offense, but rather contempt. Contempt, as demonstrated through nice, polite letters to the editors of mainstream newspapers who employ such persons, or to the marketing managers of the various radio stations which broadcast them, or the sales managers for the various products which are advertised in proximity to their splenetic frenzies, pointing out that we're not impressed, we're not amused, and we're not buying it.
Bushfire Bill · September 4, 2012 at 3:22 PM
“… and that we are forever defined by Don Bradman, Henry Lawson and Robert Menzies.”
You forgot Banjo Paterson, Mr. Denmore.
Hendo cited Banjo Paterson's discussion of the perjorative use of the word “cow” in his column this morning.
A change from his usual references to the “leftist” idiosyncracies of Artie Fadden, Doc Evatt and Arthur Calwell.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 7:59 PM
Go to any building site, mechanical workshop, or petrol station, where fluorovest men congregate. They leave their ute or 4WD doors open and their car radios on full bore so we are all forced to listen to angry white men shouting. If I put my car in the carwash, I have to be careful as I drive away, because the station on my radio will have been changed, the volume turned up, and I can be blasted out of my seat by angry white male shouting. Its all over radioland all day long. You should get out a bit more
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 8:15 PM
My theory is that there has been a signficant narrowing down of talent and types in the media world. These days the bosses are all of the same type – same male gender, same age cohort, same political attitudes, same cultural backgrounds, and they even look much the same. The bosses then “clone” themselves downwards, by only employing those who conform to their own expectations and standards, so that the programmers, the reporters, and the celebrities all look and sound the same as them. So on down the line, and the entire media industry is populated by same-looking and same-thinking men. Women are only there for visual variety, and conform to strict stereotypes: satin-bloused blondes, or hatchet-faced harridans, or faffy comedians, none of them offering any real threat to the male status quo. This media world of cloned sameness replicates itself through time. Only the internet offers any relief from this right-wing male monoculture.
I am a woman. I notice these things.
Dan · September 4, 2012 at 9:18 PM
I don't think you are correct Anonymous. While some bosses may be of similar ilk to their employees, the priority is for people who rate/sell. How else do you explain the continuing employment of Vile Kyle? By the way, Henderson and Jones are essentially self-employed.
Link · September 4, 2012 at 10:46 PM
Thank you Mr Denmore. It would be difficult for a woman to make such a case for reasons I don't need to spell out.
I've always suspected we get the media we deserve not because it is, as is usually argued, 'what we want' but rather it's what white, male, 50-something, grumpy old bastards want.
Neapolitan Twist · September 4, 2012 at 10:58 PM
What actual impact did Don Bradman have on Australia? Is there something we can point to and say “yes, here's why he is remembered as a Great Australian Hero'. As opposed to some MLK-clone Indigenous rights activist or Pemulwuy or something.
Or even Monash or Blamey, I don't care. But our standard for Hero should include actual effect on Australia.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:22 PM
The fact that Germaine Greer creates such outrage and confusion every time she opens her mouth is a perfect demonstration of our same-same media world and its lack of humour, variety and imagination. She is not a straightener but a disrupter of clone thinking. More power to her old grey socks.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:23 PM
The microphoned reactionaries would really spit the dummy if there were some media voices in competition coming from the progressive side of politics.
Look how they obsess(ed) about the ABC's token leftie, Philip Adams, having a midnight-hour show. And before that, Terry Lane, whose on-air existence spawned thousands of words of outrage from right wing megaphones.
So complacent are they in their right-wing echo chamber, reinforcing each others' backward-looking prejudices, they're a media segment ripe for the injection of intelligent, exciting, humorous media voices in competition from the left. Bring it on and watch the heads explode!
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:26 PM
When I was a young man frequenting the “night-spots” along with the hoarde of similar aged male/female youths, we would “play the field…usually fail the field!”..but we just kept on trying to chase the ladies…keen as mustard! What I am getting at, is that I believe those “50 something males” are the ones who didn't even try or gave up in disgust on the “Life..: Be in it” and sooked for the next twenty “something” years and now are just too drunk, too ugly, too mouthy, too old and too, too bitter!
And in the end..just not “normal”.
jaycee.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:44 PM
I'm a 55 year old white male hetro and I say …. bloody brilliant, best thing I have read for ages. I couldn't agree more and I am sick to death of having these pig ignorant jumped up self important know-it-alls telling me what to think. All power to ya Mr Denmore.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:44 PM
I'm a 55 year old white male hetro and I say …. bloody brilliant, best thing I have read for ages. I couldn't agree more and I am sick to death of having these pig ignorant jumped up self important know-it-alls telling me what to think. All power to ya Mr Denmore.
Anonymous · September 4, 2012 at 11:44 PM
In 2005 Mark Latham made this hilarious comment about the National Press Gallery in his book “The Latham Diaries” (MUP, p 89):
“..Some of these characters have been here too long. The likes of Michelle Grattan and Laurie Oakes have been institutionalised into Canberra culture – they can never leave the place and survive. Reminds me of the old guy looking after the library in The Shawshank Redemption. He left goal and hanged himself”.
It is now 2012, seven long years later, and these two highly uninteresting and unattractive personalities are still considered the “doyens” of the press gallery.
(And yes, Dan, I do know Michelle is a woman, but did you know she uses the same shade of hair dye as Tony Abbott?)
Ackers · September 5, 2012 at 12:33 AM
Paul Sheehan pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with the SMH. How any self respecting editor allows him to peddle his tedious blather twice a week is a serious indictment on the standards tolerated by Australia's supposedly high quality broadsheets. Throw in Gerard and the plethora of ex liberal Party politicians, Vanstone, Costello, Ross Cameron plus assorted IPA hacks who have taken over the ABC both online and in the studio and you really do have to laugh in astonished bewiderment when the right bang on about 'left bias' in the Australian media.
Anonymous · September 5, 2012 at 1:21 AM
51 White Male – Which socio-politic group has been pushing for a Bill of Rights for years? Change is not bad nor is it good and is best served when required. Mate in all honesty most of got this out of system in our 20's. It can only be the early onset of death paranoia.
Anonymous · September 5, 2012 at 1:40 AM
Does Murdoch already control all of our media?…
….if you flick through all TV/Radio news and morning evening talk shows, over a week or two you'll notice a regular daily pattern.
1.) some form of Gillard/Labor put down or humiliation, this task is usually performed by Tony Abbott or shock jock.
2.) A “what does Tony Abbott say” doorstop moment, where he answers only pre arranged dixers and then he will run from the rare unscripted questions.
3.) Selling the Royal family every show or bulletin, if Prince Harry's naked romp was performed by a footballer or an Olympian MSM would demand their sacking, but if it was a Labor politician they would be demanding PM Gillard's resignation and an immediate election.
One thing can be absolutely garranteed, unfortunately: on any commercial TV/Radio you will not see or hear a published peer reviewed Climatologist reporting on the latest important AGW global warming climate change information to inform the public current updated facts.
The only information, if any, is only from non peer-reviewed and unqualified commentators using opinions and never facts.
Quipper · September 5, 2012 at 9:23 AM
Thank God for this 50+, white, male. And I loved your alliteration, Mr D.
Quipper
Anonymous · September 5, 2012 at 9:32 AM
A petition to 2GB advertisers to make Alan Jones apologise.
http://www.change.org/petitions/all-companies-which-advertise-on-2gb-get-alan-jones-to-apologise-make-a-contribution-to-gender-equality
madgranny · September 5, 2012 at 10:34 AM
And on their ABC, as if on a loop we are constantly bombarded by the “speech” of the most self-interested citizen of this country, who continues to lecture the populace on their slovenly approach to work and tells us all that 2 bucks a day is a fair wage.
Not one flunky of the ABC has actually even tried to interview this truly appalling abomination as she continues to undermine the elected goverment in a campaign that makes self interest look like a public good.
Anonymous · September 5, 2012 at 12:34 PM
Surely it's simply because radio (especially) is chasing the boomer bulge in the demographic as it gets older, angrier and closer to the grave.
730rep0rtLand · September 5, 2012 at 7:27 PM
Great rant Mr-D. The audience demographic you refer to is probably the same demographic of product/service advertised, and advertising CEOs and Execs that pay these megaphones. I wonder if bank CEOs that hit certain desks with a bag of cash for comment also fit this demographic.
730rep0rtLand · September 5, 2012 at 7:37 PM
I am a man. I notice these things too.
http://730reportland.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/hirst-on-editorial-reach/