Friday, December 7, 2012

Australian shock jock radio prank unforgivable


 
Several observations from my perspective about the unfortunate prank call from Australian shock jocks that apparently led to the suicide of a British nurse.  (See news story at URL above.)

(1) Characterize me as "dour" or humorless, but I never found any practical joke to be remotely amusing.

(2) Shock jock radio programs in which DJ's make prank calls representing others should be against the law in any society.

(3) Only in Great Britain would a loyal subject of the Crown be so mortified for being the unwitting victim of this dumb, stupid, and not at all amusing practical joke as to have taken her life in the aftermath. I don't think any American would have been that upset. Perhaps the nurse's ethnicity caused her to feel greater humiliation than would have an Anglo nurse in Great Britain. Bless her heart. She had done nothing wrong and certainly nothing warranting suicide. The British are too much in awe (a "favourite" expression of theirs) of their Royal Family. Members of that family put their pants on one leg at a time too.

(4) The guilty parties in this matter are the two young Australian radio personalities involved and the managers of their station that established an atmosphere condoning such a prank as entertaining or amusing.  It was neither.
 
D. Grant Haynes