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The name Charles Hughes Cousens is not one that has been canvassed during the lamentable and often tawdry debate about the Alan Jones affair, but perhaps it should have been. Cousens' ordeal as the target of a treason-baying press lies in the distant but pointed background to Jones' assault on Julia Gillard.
The voices shouting down Jones are almost certainly not those of his listeners; the people most offended by his actions, it seems, are those who have never tuned in to his show. This debacle is steeped unashamedly in politics, with the outcry reinforced by various Labor politicians and dripping with as much contempt for Abbott and his party as Jones' diatribes do for the left.
Social media has outsmarted 2GB's Macquarie Radio Network management and forced them to cancel advertising on Alan Jones' program. But it is unlikely that the collective rage against Jones' behaviour will be sustained, respectable, and ultimately effective, unless the passion is accompanied by reasoned argument.
Free speech is fundamental to democracy because it protects public discourse and freedom of religion. But while the right to free speech must to be respected even if it causes offence, we need to question what purpose is served by Alan Jones' attack on Julia Gillard, and the French cartoons.
This week it was reported that the canonisation of Mary MacKillop boosted enquiries at Australia's Catholic Enquiry Centre by 63 per cent in the past year. The saturation media coverage of the event suggests the Church may not be as much 'on the nose' as is popularly thought.
X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we accept its false premise.
Allan Gordon writes in with some thoughts on Morag Fraser's piece on Alan Jones.
Jones' reflexes on air are assertive and territorial. A 'power of one' he may be, but he also makes a powerful appeal to the tribal in all of us. When we retreat into the tribe we lose the chance to experience of the kindness of strangers.
Jenny Zimmer looks at Patrick McCaughey’s The Bright Shapes and the True Names.
The following is an edited text of an address given by Frank Brennan SJ as part of the Jesuit Lenten Seminar Series 2004.
‘Let us be absolutely clear about this: Australia treats asylum seekers abominably—we imprison them indefinitely, we torment them, we are willing to return them to torture or death’
25-36 out of 37 results.