Why I refuse to eulogise John Laws and Graham Richardson
There is an understandable tradition of saying nice things when someone carks it. To bury their sins with them. But in the cases of John Laws and Graham Richardson?
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him” – Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
When this ancient and retired broadcaster (86 not out) heard of the death of another ancient and retired broadcaster (at 90), he could not and would not add his feeble voice to the chorus of lamentations and ululations from the good and the great. Premiers and PMs included.
The John Laws I got to know almost four decades ago was no paragon of media virtue. He was, as the record shows, corrupt. As revealed by the ABC’s Media Watch at the time, Laws and his frenemy Alan Jones were involved in “cash for comment” – editorialising in praise of big companies who should have known better, like Qantas, following payments under the table. Yet the eulogies for Laws were deafening.
And there were other scandals – other breaches of standards – reported by the broadcasting authorities. Long before joining the ABC I worked at the hub of shock-jockery. The station branded itself “radio-active 2UE”, and perhaps that was the problem. We all know how dangerous radioactivity can be. And colleagues like Laws, Jones and Stan Zemanek really set the Geiger counter clicking.
Long before the “cash for comment” scandal I would implore “Lawsie” to tone down his bullying rhetoric and to become a force for good. Wasted effort. Unlike Alan, the rabid ideologue, Laws had no significant political views. As I wrote at the time, “He sticks his finger out the studio window to see which way the wind is blowing and bloviates in the same direction.” But both he and Alan had monstrous egos; they were alpha males concerned with status, salary and even office size. (Yes, they actually sent underlings to measure each other’s office dimensions).
In the era before MeToo, Laws was a worry to some female staff – and I marvelled at his brazen plagiarism. Older listeners might recall the Golden Tonsils using his famous golden microphone to condemn “feminazis” – a nasty epithet borrowed without attribution from the world champion shock-jock, America’s Rush Limbaugh. Ditto his phrase to “keep the dream alive”, whatever the eff that was meant to mean.
While still employed at 2UE I wrote a book called Emperors of the Air, an insider’s view of how talkback radio operated. In some ways I can claim prescience, but in my worst nightmares I could not imagine what a force for evil it would become.
Former political powerbroker Graham Richardson, AKA “Richo”, died the same week as Laws, aged 76. Once again, loud wails of grief and accolades from Labor heroes, including my friend Paul Keating. Good grief, Richo even gets a state funeral. Yet here was a scandal-ridden political fixer involved in widespread and well-documented criminality – reaching from Sydney to secret bank accounts in Switzerland. And did I mention his captaincy of the “Love Boat” scandal?
We await the Netflix series with Richo played by Laws’ best friend, Russell Crowe.
There is an understandable tradition of saying nice things when someone carks it. To bury their sins with them. I hope to be accorded the same civility.
But in the cases of Laws and Richardson?
More Coverage
