However one thing that has always bugged me about his character/persona/actual personality on the 2Day FM radio show is that he has always been used the as bad guy whenever they have stunts. Some of their stunts are quite disgusting in the way in which they play with people's emotions in order to create a storyline. The perfect example was the one shown on Media Watch where a girl was flown out from the US to meet her aunty for the first time and she was told if her aunty picked the wrong door they'd fly her straight back. Now she did pick the wrong door and they let them meet anyway, but not before they squeezed out a good portion of tears and begging from the two women involved.
The incident last week I think finally made Australia say "enough is enough". However, there is an incredible amount of hypocricy being laid down here. For starters, had the girl not made her revelation about being raped this would not even be newsworthy. Had she made the revelation, but Kyle had not made a comment it would have been off the front pages within hours.
Sticking with the rape for a minute, all parties concerned had the perfect opportunity to use this incident as a way of educating people on rape of all kinds. Run some informative interviews on the show with everyone from police to councillors to a victim of rape prepared to share her experience of pursuing her attacker. It could have led to a lot of discussion about rape as an issue in society. But to quote Kyle Sandilands, "I’ve certainly pissed off a lot of journos over the years but I’m sad that they’re using the rape of a 12-year-old girl to have a go at me". Many have criticised even this quote, but it does seem like the media are on a rampage, picking their scapegoat and not resting until he's been brought down.
And thats not to say Kyle isn't very in the wrong. His reaction to the girls initial revelation, which seems to be the centre of the focus, was less than ideal. In fact, it would be hard not to call it disgusting. But I have the tiniest amount of sympathy. I can imagine nothing harder than to have to somehow carry on a radio show when someone drops a bombshell like that. Many would struggle to know what to say, and he was foolish and misguided in his attempt to continue the segment as if nothing had happened. But I don't think this is where the fault lies.
The fault clearly lies with the segment itself, and this is where questions need to be asked. How have the predatory stunts that pray on peoples lowest moments been allowed to get this far. Who is it at Austereo that is authorising these stunts? If Kyle is the one behind it then he deserves to lose his job, but if he is not, then we should know who is. Because from where I sit, so much of Kyle is a character, a persona. Kyle is what the world wants Kyle to be. He is what his bosses want him to be. He is the dickhead that we are meant to hate on some level and yet for some reason still like. He is the baddie that allows the suffering to continue for all to hear. He is exactly what 2Day FM have wanted and allowed him to be, and yet there appears to be a very good chance that because he has caused the sponsors to worry, both at 2Day and at Ten, he may soon be unemployed.
To quote a tweet from Chas from The Chaser "I'll take option C - I don't like Kyle or censorship from the sponsors"!
Flame away!
Just to add further... I think the person in all of this that is most at fault is the mother. She brought her daughter to the program, not the other way around. She was the one using the program to invade into her daughter's life knowing full and well that her daughter had been raped and not done anything about it! The mother should be bearing the brunt of most of the media's attacks and yet she seems to have gotten off mostly scot free with the public.
ReplyDeleteI think we are all missing what is one of the biggest issues here.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell do they think they are doing bringing in a 14 year old to talk about her sex life?
A 14 year old! Sure, the mother was there, but someone should have put a stop to it right there .
I'm not as familiar with radio as I am with how TV works, so I'm not sure if the presenters are as much puppets, but there is more people at fault then just Kyle and Jackie O.
Surely, someone would have prepped the people about what was about to happen and the types of questions, surely if there was something that was a miss, then they should have caught it before they even thought about it being brought to air.
If anything, there should have been someone present, other than the mother who is clearly a special kind of nutjob, to give the ok to let a 14 year old go through with that kind of thing without it backfiring massively.
Anything to do with minors needs to be handled ridiculously carefully.
I think it also shows the bigger problem with society in terms of making children grow up too much too fast and all the pressure that goes with it, as well as the lack of trust that is in society.
Nineteen Eighty Four was meant to be as a warning of the type of society that would exist under total control. We know have a TV series that uses that moniker for what?
And making it so entire generation knows Big Brother as a crappy reality show instead of the omniscent power of a futurastic London.
That is another rant, but I think it's wrong to lay blame into just the presenters, but that is where it will go because they are the public face, but it's more to that.
They also did not use the ultimate in the protection of live radio in the seven-second delay.
If they had used that safety procaution, there wouldn't of been a problem and then they'd hopefully be able to help the girl in someway and knock some sense into the mother.
I don't listen to Kyle and Jackie O, I never had, I find Kyle in particular to be a massive tool and he annoys me, but that is what works for him and it has worked well.
As a viewer, there is an amount of control. Don't like it, change the channel. Boycott.
The power of the masses is a very powerful tool. Look in the history books and just see what it can do.
And it now goes into the masses where the bottomline is. Austereo lost a whole bunch of sponsers, that is what is going to hurt the most and cause a large amount of change.
I kind of went off tangent there.
It happens.
I'm just waiting for the girl to turn around and take 50k from Channel 7 for an exclusive interview even though she didn't want police to follow the incident up....I may be thinking cynically here but something seems a bit off about her confession.....
ReplyDelete