The Adventures of QueerPenguin

Jonestown Massacre

SX column for the week, followed by a few additional thoughts.

Jonestown, Chris Masters’ unauthorised biography of shock-jock Alan Jones, is nothing if not much-anticipated, in Sydney at least.

Its profile rose considerably after being dumped by the ABC, the original publisher, amid accusations of the right-wing culture warriors currently stacked on the ABC board doing ‘one of their own’ a favour. Nevertheless, it quickly found a new publisher, and now seems destined to be a big money-spinner for Allen & Unwin and a lost opportunity for the public broadcaster.

But questions are already being asked as to the quality, and indeed relevance, of the so-called ‘tell-all’ biography. Masters argues that Jones’ well-known but little-publicised homosexuality informs his bitter, aggressively right-wing radio persona, and indeed his interaction generally with politicians and other power-players – or, as journalist David Marr argues, Jones’ ‘strange character, his love of secretness (sic)’.

On the other side, however, commentators sympathetic to Jones are arguing that this is little more than a hatchet job, a left-wing conspiracy (aren’t they all?) to smear the name of a well-known right figure through innuendo, particularly with regard to his interaction with underage boys via his previous career as a teacher. Conservative Melbourne columnist Andrew Bolt has suggested that, were the same implications made about Justice Michael Kirby, for example, there would be an outcry of homophobia as there was (rightly) in 2002 following Bill Heffernan’s false allegations.

Having not yet read Jonestown, it’s difficult to judge where the truth of Masters’ agenda lies. However, one line from the Sydney Morning Herald’s exclusive extract caught my attention, in which Masters argues that Jones’ favour can be bought through little more ‘than a fawning letter…delivered by a handsome envoy’. Certainly, such writing does reek of innuendo rather than established fact. Hopefully, the rest of the book has a little more grounding in demonstrative research.

I can’t pretend I’m not keen to read this book, and maybe this is a case of schadenfreude. In some ways it does feel karmic that a man who’s made his obscenely wealthy career through accusations, misinformation and personal vendettas, often about or against targets who cannot defend themselves, may finally be getting some of his own back. And I don’t buy the defence that, for a shock-jock, Jones has a history of being surprisingly silent on the issue of queer people and issues and therefore cannot be considered a genuine hypocrite. Silence is still inexcusable, especially from a man who clearly has the ear of our Prime Minister and could have done far more to draw attention to discrimination against same-sex couples in federal law.

But I’m reserving judgment about whether or not I think it’s appropriate for Masters to have ‘outed’ Jones until I read Jonestown from cover to cover. We must remember that whether or not we – and indeed Jones himself – like it, he is a gay man, and it would be dangerous for us, in our alacrity, to cheer on yet another possible example of paedophilia being confused with homosexuality.

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Overall, I've generally considered Alan Jones to be a rather tragic figure. I wonder if he could be a better man were he genuinely comfortable with his sexuality - that perhaps the career he's carved out of espousing hatred and xenophobia is manifest of his own self-loathing?

I have no expectations that gay men should automatically be left-leaning, any more than I expect women to automatically be some form of feminist. Having said that, however, in my experience I have seldom come across a gay man who identifies as right-wing, or conservative*, who also strikes me as being a happy or contented person. Those I have met or know of are rarely, if ever, in a successful, long-term relationship with another man (and far as I know, Jones certainly isn't), which I'm not saying is necessary for true fulfilment in life, but I do think that sometimes, they can get so carried away riding the anti-gay bandwagon to impress the other gentlemen in the cigar room, that they do start to genuinely believe they don't deserve a partner/relationship, or that they should only seek meaning and reward through aspects of their lives other than the romantic.

(*As I view it - to illustrate: votes for Liberal Party but despises Howard and desperately waits for Costello to take over and Petro Georgiou to become Immigration Minister = centre or right-leaning; votes for Liberal Party and admires Howard and the effect he's had on Australia = right-wing.)

Maybe I need to meet more of these men to get a truer picture - go to Fruits in Suits or something. But I do believe Masters is not without cause to identify, at least in some context, Jones' homosexuality, as it strikes me as naive to argue this has nothing to do with the man he is today and what has fuelled his drive over the years.

What I don't support is any on-the-sly innuendo about Jones being a paedophile, as would seem to be evident in Masters' book. If he has concrete evidence that this is the case, fine, produce it; otherwise, let's not join in any whisper game. We oppose it being played around Kirby, and we should oppose it around any gay man, even the ones we don't like.

UPDATE: One final thought: Trawling through the various back-slappers on Bolt's blog site (which I won't dignify by linking), someone asks the question: Why should someone feel proud to be gay? Straight people don't feel proud to be straight. They don't march about it, wave flags about it etc.

The simple answer: A straight person has not been raised to feel ashamed about, or repulsed by, or even terrified of, their heterosexuality. With complete respect to all my straight friends and family I love: The world is their march. Of course they don't need to wave a flag - it would be lost instantaneously in the sea of straight flag-waving that goes on every day - in their legalised marriages, in their ability to be openly affectionate in public without fear of reprisal, in the children they raise who aren't bullied for who they are, and the parents who still welcome them into their family homes at Christmas time.

What seems to be forgotten in all this debate around Alan Jones is what an empowering and liberating experience it is to realise that queer is not wrong, unnatural or the end of one's life. For those of us who at some point in our lives have felt that we are freaks, convinced ourselves that we are destined for a life of misery, sickness and isolation - because that's all we deserve - to leave behind that place of horror forever and, to badly paraphrase a cheese-ball slogan, Choose Future, is completely deserving of pride and affirmation.

Maybe Jones is simply still hiding in that dark place. This is bigger than bullshit left/right political dichotomies. It's about each and every fag and dyke who's stepped out from the shadows telling the world that they can never go back.

And that is a fucking wonderful thing.

posted by Sam @ Tuesday, October 24, 2006