Sunday, July 25, 2004
FORGIVE AND FORGET
What a forgetful lot radio listeners are ,it seems as if there's always someone on the radio reminding us not to forget this, not to forget that etc - e.g. (said in a silly radio voice) "coming up after the break, the time*...don’t forget to log on to our website @...in the meantime keep your dial locked on to Time FM - the Time of Your Life, All Time All the Time…"
(Play jingle of announcer asking listener "What's your favorite radio station?" and listener answering that it is indeed this very radio station!**)
This is mainly a phenomenon on Western and or Western-style radio stations – ironically and paradoxically, one's always being told what to do in those freer societies.
Apart from those aforementioned radio stations desperately trying to improve our memories, there are signs all over the place telling you to do and, more commonly, not to do various things – don’t speed, don’t spit, don't walk, don't litter, don’t kill people etc.
Only in Australia do you get a government advertising campaign telling you "Drink.Drive.Bloody Idiot".
Note: not just any old idiot but a bloody idiot at that!
The decline of Western civilization has begun when the government resorts to calling its citizens names***.
*Commercial radio stations these days are little more than talking clocks - surely that wasn't Marconi's intention.
**In my former life as a radio presenter, I soon got out of the habit of asking that old chestnut when I asked a listener, live on-air on a Lebanese radio station, what his favorite radio station was and he answered (quite innocently) with the name of a competitor.
***It's a good way of getting a title from the government though – if you can't get a Knighthood or an OBE, just drink drive and you'll be certified a Bloody Idiot.
John Smith BI (Bloody Idiot).
The "Drink Drive Bloody Idiot" campaign could be misleading perhaps – does it mean that if you drink drive you'll get off with just being called a bloody idiot and you won't be fined or prosecuted?
Mandatory sentencing?
How about extending that mandatory sentencing to other traffic offences? – If you speed, you're a fuckwit. If you don't wear a seatbelt, you're a dickhead, etc.
1:00 pm
|
|
