The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Will Godwin’s Law finally bring down Kyle Sandilands?
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Hey ho, it’s another story about frickin’ Kyle Sandilands. Forget Steve ‘Fiskal’ Fielding’s “learning disability”. I’m beginning to think Sandilands has his own disability — a degenerative weakening of the brain-to-mouth barrier that stops most people from saying dumb and offensive things before they’ve thought them through. Perhaps we could call it “dysconsideratia”. The Kyle and Jackie O Show has only been back on air for three weeks after the pair’s last sin-binning. Now that Sandilands’ big mouth has got him into trouble yet again, it’s been irritating to see so much moral outrage expended on a guy whose job it is to make people pay attention to him. Magda Szubanski had the right idea when she told The 7PM Project:
Yes, he’s abhorrent, but in the past he’s been really good at it. The Kyle and Jackie O Show is about being “edgy”. By this, I mean that it’s calibrated to create an atmosphere of barely controlled mayhem, where just about anything might happen and social norms only exist to be challenged or violated. The very idea of a delay button goes against the spirit of the show. Still, what happens on-air is of only marginal interest to Austereo — the broadcasting network’s chief, Peter Harvie, has previously admitted he doesn’t even listen to Kyle and Jackie O. As I wrote in The Enthusiast, the commercial broadcasting industry thinks purely in economic terms of “attention” and “the deal”. Austereo hired Kyle Sandilands to cane his rivals, pull in sponsorship dollars and cross-promote the show in other media — and he’s delivered spectacularly. The Kyle and Jackie O Show won the last ratings survey, was nominated for a swag of industry-voted awards, and, hell, we’re all talking about Sandilands again. Conversely, commercial radio just isn’t interested in what the public think, unless the public are in the position to intervene in its economic logics by boycotting its programs and cross-promotions, and lobbying its sponsors. But this time, Sandilands invoked Godwin’s Law — he mentioned concentration camps. And perhaps this will be his fatal step. Internet lawyer Mike Godwin coined this maxim in 1990 to describe the way online discussions invariably degenerate once someone invokes Hitler, Nazis or their actions. In internet culture, the law applies especially to spurious references to Nazism, intended only to shock or colonise a moral high ground. It’s generally interpreted that anyone who brings up the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate they were engaged in. Sandilands’ direct quote was:
Now of course concentration camps aren’t a Nazi invention; the British popularised the term during the Boer War. But most people associate them with the Nazi death camps of WWII, and that’s how Sandilands’s comments have been widely interpreted. Many media outlets pointed out for good measure that Szubanski’s family is from Poland, where the most notorious camps were located. Now Sandilands is being pestered to visit Sydney’s Jewish Museum and even use his renewed sin-bin stint for a pilgrimage to Auschwitz. But rather than get suckered into more outrage about Kyle, Jackie O, and the broadcasting executives whose dirty work they do, we should shrug and say that anyone who resorts to a cheap Holocaust reference is getting a little lazy in their envelope-pushing. Coupled with a cheap fat joke, it shows Sandilands’s “edge” growing decidedly blunt. In The Sydney Morning Herald, Sue Javes made an interesting observation: the only thing that could kill The Kyle and Jackie O Show was Kyle’s loss of confidence. Without the audacity that was Sandilands’s trademark and his key professional skill, the show is toothless. And I think we’ve seen that now. Sorry Kyle, it’s Godwin’s Law. The minute you invoke the Nazis, your salad days as a shock jock are over. Mel Campbell is editor and publisher in chief of The Enthusiast. |
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22 Comments
Hang on… Andrew Bolt wrote a ridiculous article in about mid 2003 (if my memory serves me right) saying how the Greens Party in Australia is so like the Nazi Party of Hitler. Utter nonesense of course. But he was trying to be serious.
So how come Bolt is bigger and more vocal and more listened to than he use to be? Why didn’t Godwin’s Law take him down?
I hope you are pure in all respects Mr. Keane. Your ridicule of disabilities does you and “Crikey” little credit.
Your complaints yesterday of lack of resources is within Crikey’s control.
David, what does your response here have to do with the article?
“Salad days as a shock jock” - Kyle’s salad days were only a kind of limp lettuce.
DAVID KARPIN: Perhaps you should wait until you understand whose writing you’re on about before you land them with your vacuous opinions. Bernard Keane did not write this article. It was, in fact, written by Mel Campbell. ‘Kay?
David Karpin post in the appropriate blog, but choose your words wisely, I suspect you are barking up the wrong tree. Read the article again then read the authors comments at that blog. If you want to get up someone here, get up that lame brain Sanderlands and the station that employs and encourages him.
The ridicule of Fielding’s language disability is the point I am making. I am no fan of Fielding - but “cheap shots” ridiculing him is totally unnecessary.
David
I’ve always felt Godwin’s law has specific applicability to an online conversation made in ‘public’ -USENET news, or mailing lists, or I guess web(logs) or whatever. Its the descent to the bottom in an innately 2, or n-way dialogue.
Its hard to see it being applied to one-way acts of communication, and even factoring talkback into the frame, I think Kyle is having a conversation with himself here. Its him, the mike, and the tumbleweeds…
-G
From Wikipedia
Kyle Sandilands is many things.
What he is not is a “jock”, least of all one with the ability to “shock”.
The meeja would be screaming for his head if he had said the self-confessed nutritionally-challenged Ms Szubanksi should go to Boot Camp.
The feigned indignation and mock horror shown by the shrieking illiterati on this grows more hilarious by the minute.
Wingod’s Law is invoked when those who trangress the thin line of acceptable Nazi humour are told to “go to the camps and experience it for yourself”. Pffft.
Let’s all move on shall we.
What a beat up. We all know Sandilands is provocative but he’s just not smart enough to know when something is going to blow up in his face. Anything about the holocaust is verboten even though the younger generation (and not so young) Aussies are tiring of hearing about what happened in WW2, it’s ancient history. Alex
DAVID KARPIN: As an elected (albeit owing to a stupid blunder/deal by the Labor Party, and on a tiny, tiny percentage of the vote) parliamentarian it is at least desirable that said representative should be conversant with the English language.
Instead of criticizing the people who complain about Fieldings manifold and risible manglings* of the English language and his intolerable stupidity, people rush into print to stick up for this sorry excuse for a politician.
There is no excuse for Senator Fielding, or his simple/single-mindedness. The man is a national joke. Of course people laugh at him.
Everyone has their own personal battles, without them we would never grow up. Who is to say one form of torment is worse than another?
*manglings: a made-up word for a make-believe member of Parliament.
How come I’m being attacked here?
Oh hng on, that’s twice people have attacked me over Fielding in the wrong article - is that like a subtle joke about dyslexia or something?
True Jim, a Hitler comparison only destroys a person’s credibility when their audience has an jot of common sense. Since Bolt’s and Kyle’s audience don’t have half a collective brain between them, they are unaffected by Godwin’s law.
Bernard, your Fielding article broke the conservative hive mind, and now the individual drones are crying out from all corners!
As with his previous transgression, it’s highly unlikely that his audience give a rat’s, it’s only we bien pissants, who learn of his latest idiocy (and then wish we hadn’t) third/fourth hand who jump up & down. His listeners/fans are society’s transgressors.
One: Mel, your take on Godwin’s Law had me scratching my head. It’s not an interpretation I’ve seen before. Is that a peculiarly Aussie take?
Two: Kyle is here to stay, be famous, and keep the ratings booming for a while to come. I mean, look at the furore his stupid comment has made. There’s gold in them thar hills.
No one is attacking the correct person. Kyle Sandilands is, as with so many theatricals, entirely self-centered. He doesn’t even know what is wrong. His entire life is spent wondering if other people are looking better/smarted/more photogenic than him.
The people to blame are his devoted fans. If, right at the beginning of his career (is that too strong a word?) people had written to the management complaining about his tastelessness, management may have listened. Now they can only see ever-rising graphs showing how popular he is. He is a money-spinner for his company.
We have far too many midget minds in this country making John Laws (ret) Alan Jones, Neil Mitchell and Kyle Sandilands the runaway success that they have been.
It’s our fault. Not theirs.
I think Kyle whats his face is a pathetic excuse for a man. I don’t give any excuses for his behaviour, and nor should there be. He thinks he is above any sensitivity or sense of decency, whether it’s relating to a child being exploited, or his gross ‘joke’ about a woman who’s serious about her healthy future. He’s a waste of space and should be taken off air for good. I don’t think he’ll ever ‘get it’? The man is worse than a fool! He’s a legend in his own mind. It’s time he was told - it’s over!
GEFO5 - PS. He won’t be “here to stay” if the sponsors are nervous about promoting an excuse for a human being coupled with their products. Let’s hope they don’t want to risk him again! There’s enough people unemployed and more talented, and hopefully with a better sense of responsibility and decency! Oooopss! He doesn’t have a sense of responsibility and he certainly lacks any decency!
Sandilands is like herpes, once you’ve got it (give him a job) it never goes away. Sure you can treat the symptoms (suspend him) but the virus never leaves your system. We can still live fruitful lives by dealing with the unpleasant fact of his existence and put up with the occasional nasty outbreak.
What I find most disturbing is Kyle’s complete lack of empathy for anyone else; he genuinely does not seem to understand - or care - that there are some issues that we as a society do not and should not take lightly (the rape of a child, the death by starvation of millions of innocents, etc).
The concentration camp comment was just the last of many, many, many, insensitive, insulting and plain not funny comments from this person.
Austereo has demonstrated that it either cannot or will not manage Kyle; if they don’t take him off air, they deserve to lose their radio licence.
I find Kyle a vile and offensive man but I also feel a little sorry for him. I don’t think he understands that his behaviour is so unacceptable that sooner or later (hopefully the former) he will lose his career, his assets and his hangers-on. And he will have absolutely no solace, no true friends, nothing, when he is forced to face the consequences of his actions.
MARGARET BOZIK: All very true but many theatricals have this appallingly self-centred outlook on life; I know, my mother was one. For some strange reason they are quite able to blame everyone else for their own shortcomings. They don’t have to face consequences because they don’t see the errors in the first place.
What else can one say about an occupation where one is paid to fake sincerity?