The Melbourne Age also published this piece of rubbish journalism.
First Magda and Julia. The little comedic rant is insidious because it fulfills all of the normal patterns for vilification of a minority group.
- Firstly, pick a group with easily identifiable differences. The colour of their skin, an accent, head scarves or in this case lycra and cleated shoes.
- Then repeat commonly held generalisations about the members of the group as though they apply to all members of the group. If we were talking Australian Aborigines, racists would say they are all drunks, unemployed, criminals and have no value for work or property. In this instance, cyclists all break the road laws and ride in lycra on Beach Road on a Saturday morning.
- Next dehumanise them. They're not like us. They are outside of our normative patterns. Speak a different language/wear different clothes/have different standards of behaviour.
- Finally, because they are so different, this group are not worthy of the protection of our societal standards of law, fairness and human rights. Their lives are therefore worth less than ours, and they can be harmed or killed in summary fashion.
This is exactly the way this rant went down. Imagine the uproar if the target had been
Aborigines, Jews, disabled people or homosexuals. Most of the non-cyclist responses on forums and so on have been, "come on, it's a comedy show, they were sending up those ideas". Again, a common defence of vilification.
The problem is that this rant is really how a significant proportion of motorists think about cyclists. I know from almost daily experience, and these people are hurtling around in a two tonne steel weapon. It's important that people in the media don't reinforce these societal patterns of abuse and vilification against minorities. It leads to people making bad decisions in the heat of the moment. When they are angry, scared or confused. Instead of using logic, they can resort to these bad patterns of discrimination and reaction.
Now the Age article... It is simply a case of a journalist taking what is really a bike safety message campaign from the police and turning it into a story about law and order crackdown against those lawless cyclists. Listen to the message from the police, then read the editorial wording and the headline. There is no connection. Just unmitigated crap!
All this at the start of what should be a great month for cyclists. Bike Week, Around the Bay, Ride to Work Day, the start of Daylight Saving, Herald-Sun Tour and on and on.
I'm left sitting here at my computer wondering what to do. Teetering between useless rage and throwing empty words at my keyboard...
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1 comments:
Hopefully, most ppl watched the video on The Age article, which (although somewhat flawed as the police should be targeting the car drivers, based on the 95%/80% thing) was quite good.
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