Social Justice Warriors win in battle against Australia Day
The taxpayer-funded “youth” broadcaster’s decision to strip the Hottest 100 from January 26 is part of a much wider left-wing campaign against Australia Day
Opinion
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TRIPLE J, the taxpayer-funded “youth” radio broadcaster, has been captured by the SJWs. But you probably knew that already.
For those not familiar with the term, SJWs stands for “social justice warriors”. And, yes, they are just as fun as they sound.
Young, often private school educated, left-wing as all get-out, SJWs are obsessed with finding new ways to inflate their moral currency by finding things to be offended about, often on other peoples’ behalf.
Bonus points if they can make the rest of us feel bad about, too.
Of course, not for our local SJWs the sort of sustained anti-statuary campaign that recently saw more marble topple in the American South then fell after the Coalition took Baghdad.
No, our local SJWs think a bit smaller, preferring instead to knock off things like the Triple J’s Hottest 100 Australia Day Countdown.
And now as a result, the Australia Day Triple J Hottest 100 is no more, having succumbed to the assault of these po-faced and guilt-ridden activists of the enlightened left who are determined to cleanse the culture of anything that smacks of tradition — even if it’s only been going on since as long as Keating was in office.
After a drawn-out consultation process, Triple J management (a loose term, to be sure) decided that counting down the Hottest 100 on Australia Day once more would be about as inappropriate as hanging a One Nation banner from the deck of one of those fetid Enmore share houses where the Tibetan prayer flags should be.
The move is of course part of the broader anti-Australia Day campaign which has seen the whole day declared “problematic” by these culture warriors who think that anyone wearing an Australian flag singlet on 26 January may as well be heading off to a torch light rally at Nuremberg.
We have already seen Greens-dominated councils around the country stop celebrating Australia Day and attempt to refuse to hold citizenship ceremonies on the 26th, on the grounds that it is insensitive to indigenous Australians.
Going after the Hottest 100 was a natural next step, being that Triple J — like so many rogue local governments for whom grandstanding is more important than picking up the garbage — is a similarly left-dominated, state-funded organisation, which means that any concerns about the supposed apolitical neutrality of the public broadcaster (stop laughing) take a back seat to being seen to be right-on about Australia Day.
In any case, it’s not like moving the countdown to some other day will make a difference (though it would be interesting to see if Triple J workers who do have to work on the 26th of January forgo their penalty rates in solidarity, but that’s another story) to most Australians. The beauty of the free market is someone else with provide barbecues with their soundtracks on the day, even if the NBN falls over under the weight of everyone’s Spotify playlists.
Nor has there lately been much Australian about the Hottest 100, which is composed mostly of imports from the US.
Pumping the airwaves full of a bunch of American numbers with lyrics like those from 2016’s #5 entry, Childish Gambino’s song “Redbone” (sample: “If you want it, yeah/You can have it, oh, oh, oh/If you need it, ooh/We can make it, oh/If you want it/You can have it”) doesn’t seem particularly Australian, even if it does make “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” look as lyrically witty as the combined works of Cole Porter.
But none of this really matters, because it was never about the music for the protesters — or, really, even the meaning of Australia Day.
Because while they would surely deny it, the SJWs are just the reincarnated edition of the old Puritans, scolds, wowsers, bluenoses of ages past, terrified that someone, somewhere might be having a good time.
James Morrow is the Daily Telegraph’s opinion editor.