With a few days left before the Australian Federal election, the political group GetUp! commissioned a TV advertisement aiming to thwart Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to brazenly influence the way the electorate votes by dressing up opinion as news.
Channels 7, 9 and 10 all refused to air it.
I wrote a letter to the rabble rousing pinkos.
Dear GetUp!,
Please don’t think that the exclamation mark above signifies my enthusiasm for what I’m about to write. That’s your punctuation, not mine. I am immensely displeased with you and cannot express how embarrassing and, frankly, seditious, your most recent campaign has been.
Actually, yes I can, and I’m going to do it right now.
Recently, you’ve had your political advertisement knocked back by the commercial TV networks. And now you’re whingeing about it.
Why?
What made you think you could just waltz into our capitalism, hand over money and expect commercial enterprises to accept that money in good faith in exchange for their central revenue-raising service?
Commercial television simply cannot afford to let any Alan, Jake or Charlie come along and spout their inane drivel to the public. They have standards to uphold.
And just for upholding these standards, just for exercising their right to deny you your right to free speech, these great institutions of communication have been smeared with all manner of hurtful, hateful descriptions: “corporate cowards”, “feculent hypocrites”, “cankerous recreants”, “slime-ridden invertebrates redolent of three recently deceased camels’ anuses”, “fairweather democrats”, “the jellyfish of the media industry”, “emasculated quiche-eaters”, “cringing sociopaths”, “a sort of lopsided, blancmange-heavy trio of pavlovas, topped with glacé dugong knob” and “irredeemable poltroons”, to name just a few.
The idea that free speech is the bedrock of democracy is an outdated notion. All right-minded people now understand that News Corp is the bedrock of democracy, on top of which all smart nations are building a plinth large enough to hold a very large platinum statue of Our Lord and Saviour Rupert Murdoch, preferably in repose, draped only with the Bathtowel of Benevolence over his Staff of Wisdom.
In these uncertain times, the world needs solidity and certitude. And the best way of getting that is by silencing dissenters. And the worst kind of dissenters are those who use scatology and lavatory humour to make a point – i.e. you.
Even if your argument had been valid (and when in the history of civilisation has an argument about a single person or entity holding too much power been in any way valid?), your execution was depraved and repugnant and the TV stations were well within their rights to reject the ad on its tastelessness alone. I’m about as interested in seeing a man pick up a piece of faecal matter (probably his own – we’re never told otherwise) with a newspaper as I am of seeing women becoming embarrassed by perspiration patches around their vulval regions.
The idea that a megacorporation, directed by the ideology of one man, should not be allowed to relentlessly ridicule a government, its members and supporters (while simultaneously furiously masturbating over the alternative government) using its dominant, predatory position within the media market is illiberal, illogical and makes me feel ill. In fact I just vomited. Thankfully the puddle formed the shape of a boxing kangaroo and now I feel like eating Vegemite out of the jar by the fistful.
Put that in an ad.
Jonathan Rivett
I wonder if they’ll reply.
Read more Haught emails
…or choose one that takes your fancy from the list below:
My email to Yarra Trams
My email to Metro Trains
My email to Coles
My (unsent) email to the Victorian Department of Transport
My email to Alan Jones
My email to Kyle Sandilands
My email to Gasp Jeans
My email to Jim Beam
My email to Ben Polis
My email to Hoo haa Bar
My email to Weis ice creams
My email to some tobacco companies
My email to Margaret Court
My email to KFC
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