Radio 2GB, The Chris Smith Afternoon Show, 14th February, 2011
by Kahunapule Michael Johnson via flickr
(With thanks to ABC Media Watch, February 21)
On the day before the funerals of the asylum seekers drowned at Christmas Island in December, radio 2GB afternoon host Chris Smith ran a little quiz, with prizes, for his listeners. They had to tell him…
Chris Smith: How many asylum seekers killed in the December tragedy will be buried in Sydney this week? Jason, good afternoon.
Jason: G’day mate, was it nine? Chris Smith: It was not. Geoff. Geoff: 30 Chris Smith: No….David?David: 16?
Chris Smith: No. Valerie?
Valerie: 12
Chris Smith: TWELVE IS SPOT ON, VALERIE!! You’ve got Rick Stein’s DVD, you’ve got movie passes to True Grit and the book from Kim Scott. Well done to you!
Valerie: Fantastic, thank you very much. (Applause soundtrack)
I don’t know what more proof is required that some mainstream media and their personalities are incapable of seeing asylum seekers as human beings. This puts them in the broad category of sociopaths, sub category: those who can feel empathy for people who are like them, but are terminally incapable of seeing anyone different from themselves as human.
As opposed to psychopaths, who don’t feel much of anything for anybody.
Politicians such as Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and many others on all sides, fill in the blanks for yourself, also inhabit the category of sociopath in their attitudes to asylum seekers.
This “competition” has neo Nazi echoes. Guess how many sub humans and their babies are dead, and you’ll get free movie passes.
Onya! Valerie. You’re a shining example of Australian womanhood.
—
No Place For Sheep 
Thank god for the ABC, but the running downof broadsheet means that flaws we need to know about are becoming less commonplace and the more disappointing for the reiteration. MW on Monday was such a trip down memory lane. For how long now have the Sydney shockjocks and their employers been under the heaviest scrutiny, for not even a cosmetic resulting change in the approach and trajectory of such rubbish. The real damage was done nearly a decade ago when Flint’s regulatory body perversely refused to move on Jones and Laws over cash for comments.
The damage done was inadvertantly demonstrated on the following QANDA, where not one person had the wit to challenge Anna Bligh on issues like privatisation and the death of Mulrunji and were unable to see the Bligh Media offensive involving the floods as basically a giant photo op for politicians.
Joyce and the One Nation character, Nielson (?) were even worse and they certainly weren’t going to criticise Bligh, given their own indebtedness to pork barrelling, involving their own subset of backers. The crassness of Joyce’s attack on Flannery over his qualification to comment on matters ecological was only matched by the complete and discomfitted incapacity to engage with and express an adult response to, the refugees and their plight, from Joyce and Nielsen.
As I write this, SBS late evening news is doing a story of the consequences for coalition unity of the asylum seeker hard line, including a three percent dip in the polls. As I watch the news has slipped to another segment, this time dealing with oafish behaviour aboard an Australian navy ship, something Air Marshall Houston belatedly states needs dealing with (again)..
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