Kyle Sandilands is vile towards women but this shock jock keeps scoring chances
As Aussies band together to call out the scourge of violence against women, radio personality Kyle Sandilands has been given an influential platform to continue sharing his crude and threatening views.
Opinion
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On Monday morning after a disastrous appearance at a Canberra rally protesting violence against women, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared on a Melbourne FM radio show.
Co-host of that show Kyle Sandilands was celebrating his one-year wedding anniversary — an event attended by the PM a year earlier. Albo was tossed a few soft questions about the wedding and how he enjoyed sitting next to Kyle’s mum. All lovely stuff, mainly celebrating the debut of the Kyle and Jackie O radio show being beamed into Melbourne live from Sydney.
He was asked about the morning’s rally, with Kyle wondering why the crowd was “hissing and booing” the PM (we discovered later in the week the awkward exchange between an event organiser and the Prime Minister over whether he could speak). And of course by Wednesday the state leaders, premiers and chief ministers joined Albanese for a remote and urgent meeting about domestic violence.
It seems the PM is a fan of Kyle Sandilands, making regular appearances on the radio show when it was Sydney based and socialising at his wedding. In this climate of a national debate around the prevalence of physical and mental abuse of women and the tragic explosion in the number of deaths, this is where it gets very sticky for our national leader.
There can be no place for double standards in this debate.
You can’t stand up and passionately voice your honest held views around the scourge of violence towards women and hang out with Kyle. You can’t lecture the wider Australian male population about their actions — their language in particular — and their attitudes to women and hang out with Kyle.
Kyle Sandilands is a repeat offender when it comes to using crude and threatening language towards women. The sycophants who support the richest media star in Australia and the media companies who employ him will not want to be reminded of his history of vile abuse, but they can’t deny it happened.
Let me take you back.
In November 2011 Sandilands was working at Sydney radio station 2DayFM (not his current employers) with his current on-air partner Jackie O.
They were also presenting a TV show called A Night with The Stars. The then-entertainment editor of the online news site news.com.au (owned by the same company as the Herald Sun) was Alison Stephenson. Alison had published a negative review of the TV show that was struggling in the ratings.
OK, this was 12 years ago and drew an apology from Kyle, but what he said about her was vile. As reported at the time and never disputed — because it all went to air live — this should have been the end of this bloke’s career, no arguments, no debate, out the door you go and don’t come back.
Now I apologise in advance if you are offended by this language, but here’s what he said:
“Some fat slag on news.com.au has already branded (the TV show) a disaster. What a fat, bitter thing you are. You’re deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of s —t.”
He went on:
“This low thing, Alison Stephenson, you are supposed to be impartial, you little troll. You’re a bulls —t artist girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair’s very 90s. And your blouse — you haven’t got much titty to be having that low cut a blouse.”
This was live on free to air radio, a top-rating breakfast show with a male host calling a critic, a female critic, fat, a slag, a troll, a woman with small breasts and bad hair who wasn’t very good at her job.
If possible and bearing in mind the national debate we are having about threatening behaviour his closing remarks made it worse:
“Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down.”
What followed was a weak ACMA investigation, an online backlash, calls for advertisers to boycott the show and an apology of sorts by Kyle himself. It was wishy-washy, as he said, typically: “If you took personal offence to it, Ali I’m sorry, but maybe you should think again before you start going against different people.”
Incredibly Kyle ran the freedom of speech defence – spare me!
That tirade was vile and threatening. It wasn’t a first — another Sydney journalist Fiona Connolly, who reported that Kyle’s radio show put to air faked talkback phone calls, was called a “fat toad”, “fat lying mole” and “a little cretin”.
He has also suggested Australian showbiz legend Magda Szubanski – of Polish heritage – would lose more weight in a concentration camp.
These historical examples it will be argued are in the past, but as the debut of his show in Melbourne this week proved, a leopard never changes its spots.
I lasted sixteen minutes as his sycophantic support staff sat there while he threw around foul abuse, calling them homos, a newsreader was asked about his sexual habits and if he ever had AIDS, another was called a piece of s —t and a female staff member’s vagina was talked about.
Look, I was never going to be a fan, and my exchanges with Kyle — including this week when I said he had the intellect of a cumquat — over many years have been widely reported.
However, two points here. We are in the middle of a national conversation about the reasons behind toxic male violence towards women and the influences behind it.
We toss out social media as the main offender with easy access to pornography and the use of things like Tik Tok. The comments I have highlighted were broadcast on free to air radio by a performer who is now being paid $10 million a year.
And, given the national debate, I wonder whether our Prime Minister should be so willing to go on this show given its content. Has he ever even listened to what is on air either side of his warm chats with Kyle or is it just about, as I suspect, the youth vote.
Australia’s top rating non-sport TV show is MAFS. Sydney’s top rating breakfast radio show is Kyle and Jackie O.
I just hope and pray the people of Melbourne have better taste and send this toxic soft porn back to Sydney.
DISLIKES
– Anti-Israeli protests shutting down the Port of Melbourne yet again – start arresting and fining them heavily.
– Victorian and Melbourne house prices falling behind Brisbane, thanks Labor!
– Another budget airline – Bonza – bites the dust leaving passengers stranded.
– Alleged attack on a Perth grandmother and her husband by an immigration detainee set free by the Federal Government.
LIKES
– LIV golf in Adelaide last weekend bigger even than last year with 96,000 people attending over three days.
– Comic legend Jerry Seinfeld calling out the politically correct Left for ruining TV sketch comedy.
– State parliament select committee on the Commonwealth Games cancellation decision taking aim at Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan.
– Home grown whisky distiller Starward from Port Melbourne cleaning up on the world stage.
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