An Open Letter to Miranda Devine

Dear Miranda,

Your article in today's Sydney Morning Herald (11.2.10) is a new low, even for you.  In it you remark, with regard to Gen Y:  "But while their teachers were trying to brainwash them, they were getting a more realistic education from satirical TV cartoons such as South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, American Dad and The Simpsons." 

I don't know whether you have school age children, but to say that their teachers are "brainwashing" them, and that they are being "more realistically educated" (whatever that means) by animated American TV shows, is the deep and profound insult to dedicated professional Australian teachers that you no doubt intend it to be. I take it that you do not consider cynical nihilistic American cartoons to be "brainwashing", nor the hordes of advertisements for American fast foods and the like the networks pack in with them. I don't know whether you have school age children, but if you do I presume you will be taking them out of school so that they will no longer be brainwashed, and left in front of the TV for their "realistic education" with the Simpsons and South Park.

Regarding the "anti-green" Audi advertisment at Superbowl - and how apt, you extolling the virtues of an advertisement - you neglect to mention that Superbowl is the largest single redneck gathering on the face of the earth, watched by similar in their many millions, and of course Audi's Mad Men would have know how the good ole boys would've hooted and hollered at taking the piss out of those awful carping green types who keep on suggesting that humanity may need to change its ways to keep living on the earth sustainable.

In your ongoing campaign against the vast majority of the world's climate scientists, you also conveniently neglect to put your own position. Do you advocate V8s for all, Hummers? Are you so certain of your anti-science that you truly believe there is no chance that the scientists are right and you and Christopher Monckton (who, like you, is not a climate scientist) are wrong? Many of the good ole boys at the Superbowl would also be smokers, the deaths of one in two of them courtesy the all too successful programme of disinformation run by the tobacco companies for decades against, yes, dedicated science. The campaign by climate change "sceptics" would appear to be an increasingly successful re-run of that smear and discredit campaign. So you are in fine company there.

As for teenagers stirring the PM when given a chance - now that's a very big news story. Worthy of your by-line.

This is pap Miranda, shock jock in print. It does not qualify as journalism nor even as informed comment, but as pathetic attention-seeking. 

Yours sincerely,

-Larry Buttrose




Devine's original article is at: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/trust-savvy-gen-y-to-smell-a-rat-20100210-ns82.html