The Politically Incorrect Show - 03/03/2000

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday March 2, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

A letter-writer to yesterday's Herald said:

"I am appalled at some of the absolute filth dragged up on talkback shows. Does this represent the average New Zealander's intelligence? If so, then it's alarming. I am often in people's homes because of the nature of my work & when their radios are on I catch pieces of what they listen to. The other day it was all sex & Wesley College. What has happened to our society that we must feed ourselves day in & day out on this garbage? What happened to the morals of yesterday? It's time the government stepped in & supported a good nostalgic programme on radio. Bring back that music."

Signed ... Daphne Bishop, Secretary, Unforgettable Music Supporters' Club.

Now obviously the idea of the government dictating the content of radio programmes is anathema to me as a freedom-lover, but I have to say as a talkback host & music buff that I have a lot of sympathy with Ms Bishop. First on the matter of the average intelligence: it has been said to me that my opening editorials are often over the top of people's heads, & that's why they are seldom picked up upon once the actual talkback component of the programme commences. I find this hard to believe. To the best of my ability I try to keep these editorials simple & related to specific, concrete occurrences in the recent news. It's true that I then abstract generalised conclusions from these occurrences, but I do believe that if people have difficulty following at that point then either I am doing a bad job of it or the average intelligence is indeed parlous. I don't wish to believe either is the case!

The case for a deterioration in the general standard of musical tastes is much easier to make. I say "general" because of course there are zillions of exceptions, but generally speaking there is no doubt that popular music has reverted to the jungle. Go back a few decades & you'll find that the stuff of the hit parades appealed to the idealistic spark in people, most notably with regard to romantic love, that most lofty of human experiences. No, it wasn't puritanical; it didn't equate true love with celibacy. Quite the contrary … it uninhibitedly celebrated the spiritual AND physical aspects of romance, which is what made so much of it so wonderful. Take for example Cole Porter's Night & Day:

Night & day you are the one,
Only you beneath the moon & under the sun,
Whether near to me or far,
It's no matter darling where you are,
I think of you;
Night & day, day & night, why is it so?
That this yearning for you follows wherever I go ...
And its torment won't be through,
Till you let me spend my life making love to you
Day & night, night & day.

Haven't we all been in love like this? Isn't that when we are most truly alive? Yet lyrics like these would be drowned in a sea of derision nowadays, to be supplanted by the likes of (& I'm tidying the actual lyrics up just a little):

Shut your effing face uncle effer
You're the one that effed your uncle, uncle effer,
You don't eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
You just eff your uncle all day long.

It's the prevalence of this sort of excrement in modern culture, I'll be bound, not the availability of guns, that leads to Colombine shootings. But ooops! Here I go starting to get abstract again. Listeners who are still following me at this point are referred to the article, Cashing In The Values Of American Education by James J. Campbell in my magazine, The Free Radical. Suffice it to say here that culture is the product of philosophy, & that if you want to fix the culture you must fix the philosophy ... not repair to government-mandated nostalgia programmes.

Politically Incorrect Show, a non-government-mandated nostalgia programme ... 309 3099.

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