16/10/2019

Speed Bump Jokers

ABC - Media Watch
Kerri-Anne Kennerley not the first to suggest climate protestors be run over.
Media Watch: Speed Bump Jokers
Transcript

PAUL MURRAY: They’re sooks, they’ll keep going on, they’re giant toddlers who think, ‘as long as I keep asking for it eventually daddy will give it to me’. Well I can tell you what the result is, as this parent who has a toddler — go to your room.
- Paul Murray Live, Sky News, 7 October, 2019
Hello, I’m Paul Barry, welcome to Media Watch.
And that was Sky’s Paul Murray doing his own toddler impersonation as he spat the dummy at the Extinction Rebellion protesters who clogged up Australia’s capital cities last week.
And on Nine’s A Current Affair, sympathy for the activists was also in short supply:
SALLY: It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all. 
PROTESTERS: What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it?
REID BUTLER: It’s chaos in the name of progress.
SALLY: Dad passed away 10 months ago and mum passed away on Sunday at home in that building …
I just want to get to the home so I can start organising all the clean up … 
- A Current Affair, Channel Nine, 7 October, 2019
So never mind the climate. What to do about those protesters? 
Luckily, Studio 10’s Kerri-Anne Kennerley had a couple of ideas: 
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY:  Personally, I’d leave them all super-glued to wherever they do it.
 … and you just put little witches’ hats around them or use them as a speed bump.
- Studio 10, Channel Ten, 9 October, 2019
And if running them over was a little extreme, Kerri-Anne had a back up plan:
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY: Put ‘em in jail and forget to feed them.
- Studio 10, Channel Ten, 9 October, 2019
So was there outrage at her comments?
Well, enough of a noise for Studio 10’s Sarah Harris to come back to it later to hose it all down:
SARAH HARRIS: … KAK you’re in trouble.
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY: What did I do?
SARAH HARRIS: Well, you are leading some of the news websites at the moment. There you are. ‘KAK says use protesters as a speedbump.’
You obviously weren’t inciting violence ...
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY: Oh heavens no!
SARAH HARRIS: … you were speaking in hyperbole. It’s a joke.
- Studio 10, Channel Ten, 9 October, 2019
Yes, run them over. What a joke. Except it’s hardly funny. And not the first time she’s made it.
A week before, on Studio 10, she said exactly the same thing, but nobody noticed:  
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY: … you know the ones that super-glue themselves to the road or to Canberra? I think they just leave them super-glued there and use them as speed bumps.
SARAH HARRIS: Oh Kerri-Anne! You can’t say that! 
KERRI-ANNE KENNERLEY: No, eventually they’ll get them off. 
- Studio 10, Channel Ten, 1 October, 2019
But Kerri-Anne’s not the only one with a wonderful sense of humour, because back in July viewers on Sky News were cracking up at the same suggestion from 2GB weekend host Paul Kidd:
PAUL B. KIDD: Actually, the first car over them would be bumpy and the next one would be a bit bumpy, but they’d be, they’d be flat after about six cars.
- Credlin, Sky News, 30 July 2019
And he was just re-telling the joke that Sky news host Peta Credlin had made so hilariously the month before:
PETA CREDLIN: Super-glued to the road, holding up all of this traffic. I would have run a car over the top of them. I wouldn’t have gone around them ...
- Credlin, Sky News, 18 June, 2019
And that same day on Sky’s Paul Murray Live, Mark Latham had offered a similar solution, but with a slightly different punchline: 
MARK LATHAM: … do we still have steam rollers?
PAUL MURRAY: Maybe.
MARK LATHAM: I’d like to roll one right down that road …
- Paul Murray Live, Sky News, 18 June, 2019
I think it’s time they got some new material and perhaps stopped making jokes about killing protesters. Because some nutter out there might just take them up on it. 

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