Credit where credit's due

Andrew Bolt (Hun/Tele/Advertiser) had a blog post pulled on Monday.  Mainly due to the fact that his post could have been interpreted as muckraking by making a big song and dance about a fraudulent Glenn Milne article in The Oz.  An interesting part is that some are suggesting that Bolt might have posted after Milne’s column was pulled.  Not only that, but News left the post online for a considerable amount of time after Milne's article was removed.

Milne, of course, is best known for attempting to blue Stephen Mayne one year on stage at the Walkley Awards.  I had absolutely no need to mention that, but I'm hedging my bets in case Bolt is correct about his post being 'fair, accurate and in the public interest'.

Today, in his column, he’s got me in stitches by squealing “censorship”.  The problem with Bolt’s brand of satire, is that it’s often lost on his audience, who see his character’s flagrant racism and bullying as being the real deal.  And this is where the problem starts.

I’m aware that Bolt’s blog is a bit of a testing ground for his wilder humour.  What goes out there gets tested amongst the comments from the fruitcakes that dominate his readership and the eventually worked on a little harder.  Eventually, Bolt creams off the stuff that’s silly enough to outrage and amuse, yet the stuff that’s too ‘out there’ gets forgotten about.  What’s left gets written up as ‘proper’ copy in his columns in News’ south eastern newspapers.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 2

 In our first part, we heavily criticised News Corp for just being a bad news organisation.  By that, I mean that as a news organisation, they are bad.  Incredibly bad.  (I didn’t mean that they just produce bad news, oh heavens to Betsy, no)

It should be pointed out, though, once again, that I was only singling out News as the worst of what appears to be a very bad bunch.  I listed a whole bunch of crimes committed by the media in part 1, some of which were also committed by other media sources as well.

A really good example of disgraceful media practice that is committed across the board, is the tendency of the financial media to regurgitate media releases from companies, without any sort of objective research.  Media Watch appears to have strangely left financial journalists alone to date, but will pursue other journalists who regurgitate press releases.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 1

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen some rather interesting stuff in the media involving the media. We’ve seen all hell break loose in the UK with what appears to be becoming known as ‘Hackgate’. We’ve seen the Herald-Sun publish a call to assassinate the Prime Minister. We’ve also seen the media circuses around the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan and Casey Anthony where the media essentially judged these folks guilty before their cases had even been heard. In Anthony’s case, they then screamed hysterically about the jury being wrong, even publishing questionable articles where jurors allegedly disclosed a preference for going home rather than finding someone guilty.

I think I'll avoid the issue about concentrated media ownership – it’s probably outside the realm of what I want to blog about here, but what I will add is the sheer, unmitigated bias that passes for journalism in anything that comes out of News Corporation.  Although, it's fair to say that 2UE are probably much worse.

Something I noticed recently

Once upon a time, it was the thing that if you wanted to describe something as "gay" meaning lame, stupid or ludicrously ridiculous, you could. Provided that you added the phrase afterwards, sotto voce, "...in the primary school meaning of the word."

If you didn't remember to do this, you were labelled an obnoxious homophobe, and pilloried for it.

I came across something on YouTube the other day (I don't have the link and I'm not looking for it) where someone - presumably not heterosexual - was complaining about people who are prone to describing things as "gay" under this definition.

It was about at this point that I noticed that the primary school definition disclaimer seems to have all but disappeared. I worked, up to last week, in an office where a couple of the team routinely described things as "gay" without the disclaimer, and no one seemed to bat an eyelid.

In fact, so entrenched was this practice that it never occurred to me to see what the reaction might have been from a particular member of the team. A member for whom, as it happens, the disclaimer was invented in order to avoid causing offence.

This got me thinking: Is the meaning of the word "gay" changing yet again? Or has it already done so?

After all, no one really bats an eyelid at someone's sexual orientation anymore. Just look at the fuss that Lindsay Lohan's coming out caused: That's right, folks. No one could give a rat's arse.

What's caused all this then? Is it the rise of Generation Y? After all, this is the generation for whom, if you believe our media stereotypes, still behave as if they were in primary school. It really goes without say that they might have brought a few words of primary school slang with them, if that was the case.

Discuss.

Where Dikkii cracks the sads with "Generation Y"

Like an infection oozing pus at the back of my already horribly diseased brain, this has been festering for quite some time. And rather than just go in to see a neuro-surgeon about having it lanced, I'm going to blow it all out the back of my head, in the vain hope that someone reads this and cleans the whole sodding mess up.

Yes, folks. It's time I handed out a flogging to all you young shits who identify with the stereotype known as Generation Y.

Now the best part about media stereotypes, is that we all get a good laugh. They're relatively harmless. Remember "Metrosexuals"? They were, if you can't remember them, a trumped up generalisation of blokes who were supposedly so into themselves that they masturbated in front of mirrors.

Nothing was too outrageous for this bunch. Hair product? Check. Manicures? Check. More sensitivity than your average emo? You got that right.

This lot were so low that they masqueraded as your stereotypical mincing inner-suburban queen just so that chicks saw that they were "comfortable with their sexuality" and slept with them.

And pretentious? My fucking FSM, were they? If I was born in a different era, I would have called them a bunch of poofs who were repressing, and I wouldn't be far wrong.

And in case you're reading this and thinking, Dikkii, you've really gone and lost it now... Actually, I've probably lost a good portion of my normal readership. They're currently looking up for the "Flag" button that Blogger conveniently provides for this sort of objectionably homophobic copy to get noticed by some killjoy whose job is to come down on me like a tonne of bricks.

Who knows? They'll probably suspend me, or worse, kick me off?

Anyway, the joke's on you, o politically correct thought police.

Metrosexuals never existed. Never did. Never will.

Some newspaper columnist thought up this term as a joke, and the best part of ten years (and countless millions of dollars) were spent by marketers trying to sell stuff to this "demographic".

And so too on to Generation Y.

Originally, this term chose itself, after the loathsome blanket generalisation of my generation which became known as Generation X after Douglas Coupland's novel. But where Coupland applied this term to Americans born between 1960 and 1965, I was born in 1972 and am not American.

Generation Y has become an umbrella term for whatever epithet you can throw at the under 30 crowd, and this blogger for one, is getting sick and tired of it.

Supposedly, these are hallmarks of your average Generation Y'er:

• A combination of SMS-speak, "1337" or leetspeak, spell-checkers on computers and school teachers who consider spelling and punctuation to be the realm of English teachers only has allegedly rendered Gen Y'ers as illiterate as your average doughnut.
• Innumeracy has been blamed on the use of calculators from an early age, combined with a "what, me worry?" attitude to even basic arithmetic. Critically, this has led many to the conclusion that the credit crunch we are now seeing across the US requires Gen Y as the logical scapegoats.
• Gen Y'ers apparently want your job. Hire one, and they'll (supposedly) straightaway tell you that their aim is to be in your position in six months time. They're ambitious.
• But not only that, they're lazy too. By all accounts. They want your job, but will not lift a finger in the process.
• Lastly, in the process of moving from being a hiree to moving up the corporate ladder, your average Gen Y'er is supposed to be the kind of wonderful human being who would knife his or her own mother in the back to get there. Treacherous souls, aren't they?
  

Now forgive me if all of this sounds just a little too far-fetched, but just like metrosexuals, this is the picture that we are being sold. I didn't buy it at first, and I thought that if ignored it, it might just go away. Unfortunately, however, just like Myers-Briggs tests, "emotional intelligence" and what I hope to God is not NLP ("Neuro-Linguistic Programming"), the willingness to embrace this unctious stereotype has pervaded my workplace to an even greater extent than the stream of management consulting bullshit that is so fashionable at the moment.

"Succinct" as a verb, anyone?

Back to the job at hand, though. The first time that I noticed that this was an issue was when someone reviewing one of my communications asked me if I could tailor my language to be more "Gen Y". After telling them to get stuffed, I was treated to a half hour lecture on why we needed to pander to a workforce that was illiterate, innumerate and had the attention span of a diseased carp.

And you know, I think that this is the reason why service standards have slipped. When I joined the workforce, all those years ago, we were expected to lift our standards to those of our employer, and those around us.

Now, employers - in the interest of supposedly being flexible - dumb stuff down and pander to what must surely be the lowest common denominator. And our staff think that this is what the employer expects from them.

Witness what this half-wit wrote in response to a routine query from a customer.

But that is not the end of it. By lowering standards to a perceived level that we deem appropriate for our audience, we have suggested that even mediocrity is too high a standard for the new young workforce. We give them stuff that is so bereft of intelligence that they must feel that it an employer's duty to be as condescending as hell.

No one benefits from this.

But to make matters worse, go back and look at my bullet points again. Notice anything?

Yep. You guessed right. These are the exact same prejudices that were foisted upon us previous generations by the ones who came before us. Except in this case, we're treating this kind of behaviour as though it's a good thing.

Is this a power thing? A numbers thing? Are we seeing the start of the dumbing down of society just so that we can satisfy a bunch of lazy, belligerent, ambitious young hooligans that may not even exist? Is our market research so subject to confirmation bias that we can't even smell the coffee on this?

I've had enough. You can all go and get stuffed.