The greatest test is trying to get a word past Alan Jones
The Strewth column in The Australian, yesterday:
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg’s weekly encounter with 2GB’s Alan Jones (is) a radio slugfest of consensual abuse — bondage without bruising, if you will — that is threatening to attain cult status. Yesterday’s outing — its tone is neatly encapsulated by Jones’s cry of “Josh, Josh, Josh, it’s absolute rubbish” — showed both men are finding their groove, the art they’ve created not so quietly approaching its zenith.
Radio ratios. Words spoken respectively by Josh Frydenberg and Alan Jones during their chat yesterday:
Frydenberg: 1037, or 38 per cent.
Jones: 1657, or 62 per cent.
And on May 3:
Frydenberg: 1087, or 40 per cent.
Jones: 1602, or 60 per cent.
And on April 26:
Frydenberg: 1049, or 38 per cent.
Jones: 1710, or 62 per cent.
It seems Jones is getting a bit soft. Strewth, December 10, 2014:
2GB listeners got to be earwitness to what proved a profoundly sombre experience for environment minister Greg Hunt. Jones kicked off hostilities with a 6½-minute overture in the key of rage major, finally luring him in with a gentle “Greg Hunt, good morning” — then administering a pineappling so thorough, we winced. So poor Joe Hockey must have sighed deep in his soul yesterday morning as he listened to Jones intone, “Joe Hockey is on the line. Treasurer, good morning.” This afforded Hockey the chance to get in some of the few words he was allowed … “Good morning, Alan,” he offered, which shielded him against what followed as much as a duckling’s raised wing staves off a road train. Hockey managed 89 words (give or take) in the entire interview, comprehensively outgunned by Jones’s 537 words (give or take), some of which were: “shameful”, “weeping”, “sobbing”, “waste of time” and — granted an edge of menace by the context — “piddling in the ocean”.
An old favourite. Malcolm Turnbull v Alan Jones on 2GB, June 5, 2014:
Jones: Can I begin by asking you if you could say after me this? As a senior member of the Abbott government, I want to say here I am totally supportive of the Abbott-Hockey strategy for budget repair.
Turnbull: Alan, I am not going to take dictation from you. I am a cabinet minister.
And a bit later:
Jones: You’re happy to throw a few bombs around that might blow up Abbott a bit. That’s what they’re saying.
Turnbull: Well, that’s what you’re saying. And that is what Andrew Bolt is saying … I think it is just very sad that you and Bolt are doing the work of the Labor Party in undermining the Abbott government.
Jones: So we’re the bomb throwers.
Turnbull: You are, Alan. Yes, you are.
Reaching its logical conclusion:
Jones: I’m not abusing you.
Turnbull: Oh really? I don’t think any of your listeners would be under that misapprehension.
Jones: I know, but you’ve got a few sensitive nerves there, Malcolm.
Turnbull: Alan, the problem with you is you like dishing it out but you don’t like taking it.
Bill Shorten in Fremantle, yesterday:
No, no one should abuse anyone. It doesn’t matter if it’s Malcolm Turnbull or someone’s grandmother, you shouldn’t abuse people. Listen, I think politicians, like other people, should be able to go about their business without getting abuse.
Fair call, Mr Shorten. News.com.au, August 3, 2012:
Shorten apologises to pie shop owner over Gillard “slur” — Bill Shorten has apologised after getting into a comical fight with a Melbourne pie shop owner he mistakenly thought was sledging the PM.