The ABC of gay-baiting Alan Jones

In a recent piece for Menzies House ("Are Atheists Gay-Baiting Alan Jones?") I critically examined loud attacks made by prominent left-wing atheists. They were quite disturbing. For example, Fairfax's Derryn Hinch attacked the Sydney broadcaster under the compassionate headline, "Alan Jones, what a vicious nasty old queen."

This was personal. As a critical thinker, it was hard to ignore the many ways in which prominent atheists were adopting the language of religious rightness in order to showcase their new morality. Jones had been secretly recorded attacking the prime minister, so therefore he must be silenced?

Take Phillip Adams. He took to Twitter, painting the 2GB broadcaster as a hypocritical figure of ill-repute. Smuggling sexuality into the picture, Adams reminded his followers that (among other things), "After arrest in loo…Jones came to my home – 'not guilty' My advice? learn a lesson. Show more compassion. He didn't. He hasn't."

This looks like gay-baiting - but at best, Adams' tweets are cheap. After all, why raise an incident, without context, that was dropped by police decades ago in a foreign country? The broadcaster, preacher-teacher, and presenter of "our" ABC RN's Late Night Live program probably couldn't help himself, my guess.

Columnist Andrew Bolt has also highlighted Catherine Deveney's attacks. Filled with mock outrage, the publicity-hungry ABC contributor tweeted, "I wonder how Alan Jones' wife feels about all this" (hint, hint, wink, wink). Or as Bolt explained, a "frequent ABC guest can even appeal to the inner homophobe and feel she's just doing the moral thing."

Gay-baiting appears to be an ABC-approved art form. Just last night, I was directed to triple j's feral attack on the 71-year-old. For under their provocative headline, "The Closet Recordings of Alan Jones," (hint, hint, wink, wink) there's a carefully selected image of the broadcaster in front of the word "Count". Alas, the letter "o" isn't visible.

This is not all. Take the ABC's celebrity book reviewer Marieke Hardy (who directed her followers to the said website above). In her ABC Shop-blessed book, You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead, she singles out "sordid little cockstains like Alan Jones" in an alarmingly homophobic manner (see page 48).

Examined with cold reason, then, it's hard for critical thinkers to ignore the taxpayer-funded media's history of gay-baiting. Remember, there's also the ABC Shop's classic sex-obsessed tabloid book, "Jonestown – Power and Myth of Alan Jones" by the ABC's Chris Masters.

As the conservative John Heard wrote in The Australian: "Masters repeatedly suggests … that Jones is possibly a pedophile, thinking nothing of the damage caused to Jones or the lies that he perpetuates by linking such a high-profile discussion of homosexuality, once again, with that old canard, the predatory homosexual intent on kiddy fiddling."

Psychologically speaking, what motivates prominent ABC faces to gay-bait conservative figures? It can't be that they miss Gillard's late father as they have been gay-baiting Alan Jones for years. It can't be a desire to protect their female pm either, because, after all, Bob Ellis (Bob Carr's former speechwriter) attacked their "girly man" leader too.

All we are left with is double standards. We're left with the feeling that even after his apology, Jones is attacked because he refuses to bow before the ABC's Labor-first culture. This is how their "love media" tolerance works, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and, yes, decade after decade.