Debating with a bunch of 12-year-olds

One of the most telling tidbits of knowledge I learnt before I started out on my path towards professional journalism concerned the Australian tabloid press, a topic which I knew little of at the time, and probably know even less about today. I don't know where I heard it, but according to my source, all Australian tabloids were written with such simple language and sentence structure that a 12-year-old child should be able to pick one up, read it and understand what's happening around the world. This is, I was told, a conscious effort by editors and journalists alike to ensure everyone with a fifth-grade education could pick up a copy and become an informed member of the community; newspaper sales, of course, were secondary. But there are, and it may come as a shock, depending on whether you're a regular Herald Sun reader or not, some concerns I have with this approach, because the choice to frame news and debate around a 12-year-old's vocabulary does have its side effects.

I have to admit that I often enjoy picking up a copy of our nation's largest selling rag, Melbourne's Herald Sun, and navigating my way through all the partisan headlines ("$1 a word for Labor mate" was today's gem) and eye-grabbing pictures, before I finally come to rest on the opinion pages and begin to read. In truth, there really isn't much point picking through the scarce number of words the lay-out subs manage to squeeze on a page in between the ads and the pictures that make up the "news" section of the paper, so I flick through and head straight to the opinion section, and usually to Andrew Bolt. But today being Monday, there is, of course, no Andrew Bolt to entertain me, so when I went down to my local coffee shop looking for a fight I was forced to read Bolt's ideological shadow, Paul Gray. Gray has adopted some of Bolt's best, or should I say most effective techniques of subtle persuasion, his stock standard being the ability to polarize almost any discussion into a debate about the left versus the right, or us versus them, where the left is invariably anyone who disagrees with him.

Today Fidel Castro is Gray's ideological weapon of choice with which to bludgeon the greenies, peaceniks and free-thinking liberals; but it could just as easily have been homosexual rights ("Are gays in God's plan?") or the appeasement of North Korea ("They kept train that carried the food"), all of which Gray has used before. Almost any situation or debate can be framed as a fight between left and right, neocon and hawk, dictator and freedom-fighter, and let's be honest here, this style of argument is an easy way to fill a column - I know that when I was in fifth grade I found things easier to undertand if it was a case of good versus evil (no offence to fifth graders intended). Throwing all nuance out the window, Gray's work, along with many on the left, as well as the right, demonstrates a lack of respect for their audience, and a real reluctance to move past the us versus them mentality of the Cold War. This is Gray's incisive analysis on the progression of liberalism throughout the 20th century, as he tries to prove a point about North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Liberal intellectuals in the 1930s refused to denounce Stalin, even praising his "egalitarianism", while millions were being deported into the Soviet gulag.

Liberal politicians insisted Hitler could be negotiated with, even as he prepared for "the final solution."

Liberal-minded hippies eulogised Chairman Mao and carried his Little Red Book as China's people were being crushed by the madness of the Cultural Revolution.

This standard liberal mindset resists all notions that the West should use its strength to overcome certain leaders, such as Kim Jong-il, in the interests of protecting humanity.

Those pesky liberals Gray speaks with such damning authority about, with their "standard liberal mindset" and hatred of US power, are often just as bad as commentators like Gray, likely to tag anyone who argues, or disagrees with them as a fascist, a conservative (ouch, what a slug) or any number of words that seem to have lost their true meaning in this tit versus tat ideological war. Far too many people today use the word fascist to describe our Prime Minister, a description which is more than just offensive, but plain childish and intellectually lazy to boot. Part of the reason for this is that the debate is often being carried out in the public arena of the tabloid press, each paper (Murdoch papers, anyway) with a commitment to keep anything they print at the reading level of a 12-year-old. The left and the right do exist, but they don't come in the one-size-fits all shape Gray and his sparring partners on the other side of the debate would like us to believe.