The Politically Incorrect Show - 12/08/1999

Music - Die Fledermaus

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday August 12, proudly sponsored by Tuariki Tobacco 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 pall has hung over Radio Pacific this past week. Our Programme Director for the last six months, David Shirley, better known to Radio Sport fans as "Davo" or "Shirlo," took his own life in a meticulously-planned suicide. None of us has the faintest idea why he did so. All of us are quite simply heartbroken.

He made it a pleasure to come to work. He filled our hours here with good-natured banter & laughter. He had a way of "giving us the message," when he wasn't happy about something we did, that we couldn't possibly take offence at. He filled me personally with hope that the future of Radio Pacific would be flooded with brightness, infused with an on-air ethos where society's tall poppies were more often applauded than cut down, where celebration was more common than snivelling. He generated an air of expectancy, of great things ahead, of smiting our rivals who are where they are because Nanny State throws taxpayer money at them or has given them a huge head start before exposing them to the marketplace.

Then, inexplicably, this tall poppy cut himself down.

Whatever his reasons, they were his affair. However great our sense of loss, his action was his prerogative. It was his life - his to end if, when & as he chose. It hurts like hell not to have him around any more, but our hurt is not a claim on his life. If he didn't want to live it any more - and this was clearly not a thoughtless, impulsive suicide - then it was his prerogative to act accordingly. We all have our demons, our way of dealing with them, our way of concealing them - especially, perhaps, from ourselves - & our way of escaping them. I know of no exception to this (to my fellow-Objectivists I say: Ayn Rand, and you, included). Mankind in general has yet to come of age, to discover & live up to the power of his reason & apply it so that generation after generation does not continue to be crippled by the sort of wanton anti-reason so hideously evident through most of his history & in our time in particular.

I have no way of knowing what exactly weighed on Dave's mind as he savoured his last meal, his favourite music, & slowly, deliberately transported himself into permanent oblivion. I know he cannot hear my words now, but I'll say them anyway: Dave - we wish with all our hearts you hadn't done this. But if it were your only way of finding peace, so be it. Your call, your right. Just know that we loved you in life, and we won't forget you in death.

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