Getting it on in Jonestown!

Here at The Murwillumbah Institute, our library budget doesn't stretch to cover brand new hardbacks. If it did, I would have read Jonestown by now. I'll have to wait until it's available at Mur-bah's library, or I find a second-hand paperback years from now. Whichever comes first.

I just can't ignore all the publicity, and I can't help think Chris Masters, the author, is laughing his head off right now, even if he's asleep, about the fantastic publicity this book has generated.

Obviously, I haven't read the book. However, I'm a self-important tosser who doesn't need to read a book to tell the world about it. If Andrew Bolt can, after reading an extract in the Sydney Morning Herald, arrive at the conclusion-

"So slime him, boys. Slime him again and again and again, until you yourselves are so covered in that stinking stuff that we can't make out a single human feature on your faces",

then why should worry if I'm ignorant and ill-informed? Again and again and again?

In short, what Chris Masters has managed to do, in his unauthorised biography of Alan Jones, is lead the right-wing muck-raking press club to come out and advocate for gay rights! Well, if you consider staying in the closet a right...

I can't remember the last time I've seen the right-wing press so bitter and twisted! They don't like it that, in their own words, Masters has "outed" Alan Jones, one of Australia's foremost conservative attack dogs. But this is just plain ridiculous. We all know Jones is gay. John Laws, a fellow-traveller in right-wing attack-dog circles, has been calling him a "pillow-biter" for years. So any concept of Jones being "outed" is obvious dishonesty.

The problem is that Masters and Marr (who selected the extract for the Herald that has lit this dynamite) have shattered the fragile fantasy-land that the followers of Jones have built around their guru. In this fantasy-land, people who don't vote for the Liberal Party are disciples of Pol Pott, George W. Bush is the smartest American to have ever lived, and Alan Jones has no sexuality.

What's obvious from this well-coordinated tirade from all quarters of the right-wing press gallery is that there's a role for gay people amongst them, as long they can pretend they're not gay. So long as you've coached a rugby team, don't say a word about equality for gay folk, and use your position to discriminate against minorities, there's a place for "pillow-biters" amongst conservatives.

Now Jones is no ordinary conservative. Masters makes a great case showing that Jones is up there with Packer and Murdoch as one of the most influential conservatives in the country. Now, his followers can no longer pretend to ignore the obvious. While these folk are never honest enough to state their opinions up-front, their sub-text is obvious - gay people should stay in the closet. That's what their seething about, and they aren't hiding it well at all.

Here's some recent comments from those who are trying to paint themselves as the gay rights' movement's best friend:

Andrew Bolt: gay marriage will lead to polygamy and hooliganism.

Piers Ackerman: in the 80s homosexuals with HIV were responsible for the deaths of 600 people by insisting the Red Cross accept their blood.

John Heard: the Pope is right to condemn gay sex, gay culture, gay priests and gay marriage.

Miranda Devine: children suffer without a father and a mother

Unfortunately, one of Australia's funniest comedians, Gerard Henderson of The Sydney Institute, my Arch-nemesis, has made a complete idiot of himself over the Jonestown issue. He accused Mike Carlton of virtual paedophilia because he married a younger woman. A woman who is thirty years old. He compares that to a teacher in a boarding school writing love letters to his pupils, favouring some other others, and obsessing with the ones he liked.

See, any idiot can set up an "institute".

Finally, I understand the significance of the title of the book.

For those young people out there who may never have heard the term "Jonestown" before, it was originally the site in Guyana, South America, of a bizarre religious cult. Jim Jones, the guru of "The People's Temple", ordered nearly a thousand of his followers to commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-aid. They obeyed, and all died in what is still the most shocking example of cult behaviour the world has seen.

I thought it was a little rough comparing Alan Jones to Jim Jones. But after seeing the weird reactionaries to his cause, what would Alan's followers do if he ordered them to drink the Kool-aid?