Unsure why the old fart was worried about the 389 (Bondi to Casino via Paddington)
Alan Jones begins new live show with rant about being silenced, before being cut off
Direct to the People reaches out to the mythical silent majority on Covid, coal – and the 389 bus route
They’re trying to silence me! You can’t swim in the ocean! They changed the 389 Bondi bus timetable! Won’t somebody think of the property developers?
Alan Jones, having lost his low-rating spot on Sky News and his regular rant in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, is back with a new show called Direct to the People.
Jones began at 8pm on Monday night, thundering about being silenced. “You’re not allowed to have an alternative viewpoint,” he bellowed on YouTube, Facebook and his own website, while spruiking his new morning podcast.
“They won’t silence you or me,” he continued.
Alas, he was silenced.
Jones’s online fans declared it a conspiracy of big tech. A post to his Facebook page said it was due to viewer demand. The YouTube ticker showed 1,778 people were tuning in.
The one-time 2GB shock jock was back two hours later, and delivered about an hour of fanciful and often fact-free ruminations.
On Covid: Only 2,000 people have died, there’s no proof lockdowns achieved anything, and you couldn’t swim in the ocean.
On climate change: They’re going to mandate electric cars.
On education: It’s “full of indoctrination”.
On the Sydney ferries: There’s no air inside.
On the 389 bus: “Out of the blue” it changed its route.
On property: Red tape is stifling progress and you need to “emancipate” people to build more homes.
Jones, freed of any obligations to civility or truth, said President Joe Biden “shouldn’t be allowed outside”, that Vice-President Kamala Harris was “unwanted by her own party”, and hinted that somehow 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton might end up in the top job.
The overarching theme was familiar. Jones is the man to give voice to the mythical silent majority. He sketched out an imagined Ye Olde Australia, a land where men are free and the 389 bus route cannot be changed without his permission.
He evoked nostalgia for this past where wealthy, high-profile Sydneysiders like him were free to say whatever they liked on the airwaves and be financially rewarded for it.
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, joined the show. He displayed a remarkable nimbleness, and managed to keep Jones cheering for him while not actually agreeing with some of his more outlandish claims.
Jones and the Queensland senator Matt Canavan, that reliable outlier, egged each other on to new heights of adoration of coal and fear-mongering about renewables.
And then it was over, for now.
At last glance, Direct to the People had racked up 5,500 YouTube views. After that stuttering start, Jones chose not to end with the song he began with.
Direct to the People reaches out to the mythical silent majority on Covid, coal – and the 389 bus route
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