Wash your pink jocks

What is it in the GLBTI community re the constant nuisance that are “pink shock-jocks?” This World Wrestling Entertainment style of media i.e. pre-fabricated non-genuine emotion and shock value always seems to rear its ugly head. It’s well known in the wider community, e.g. Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Steve Price and Derryn Hinch. In the GLBTI community it usually takes the form of anyone who doesn’t fit gay male stereotypes. And interestingly, all the community media examples I can think of ultimately self-identify as gay male.

In the past we’ve seen Lance Spurr (real name Adam Carr) and Kaye Sera (Daren Pope), the latter noted for the infamous 2004 “heel turn” (to keep the WWE analogy going) which was justified by “well, it won me a Rainbow Award.” Interestingly, both these occurred under the editorship of Bill Calder. More recently it’s been JOY’s Tim Newton and Tim Wilson, the latter a well-known Liberal party hack and employee of the Institute of Public Affairs, the well-known right-wing think tank. (Hang on, right-wing think-tank is an oxymoron, but I digress…)

One could possibly rationalize this approach for commercial media. Commercial media need to make profits, if this style brings in the masses that lead to ratings that lead to advertising dollars, so it’s justifiable…possibly. But can GLBTI community media, with its more qualitative aims follow such a line? Respected pink media types, particularly Doug Pollard, think so. But there’s a difference.

The GLBTI and allied community are overall better educated than others – in 2 ways. Sure, there is more formal education re tertiary degrees etc. More importantly, our life experience enables us to see through many falsehoods and cover-ups more often than your average punter. So we are not going to be sucker-punched by pink jocks. More likely, we’ll switch channels because we don’t want to have our intelligence insulted. So this style of media is clearly detrimental re achieving aims, financial or qualitative.

Columnist Cheeky Biscuit wrote a few years back that all the shock-jocks, pink or otherwise were all right wing. Would a left-wing shocker work? I don’t think it’s any different…it’s still lowest common denominator stuff.

So my take is if you can’t present community media without genuine passion, then don’t do it at all. There are enough issues in this community that can move the heart and sway the emotions- positively – without having to resort to cheap and lazy approaches. Unless you’re happy to be known as cheap, lazy...and fake.