OP-ed
Whenever I learn of another rant on hate radio 2GB I pause. The ‘GB’ in the name comes from the initials of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who inspired the founders of the station in 1926. This fact is absent from both the station’s current website and its Wikipedia entry.
Bruno championed science, fact, religious toleration, freedoms for women. He ridiculed corrupt authority in the Vatican as a giant Ponzi scheme. He could never ingratiate himself with established authority in universities. Not enough nationally competitive grants. He was also a scientific peer of Galileo.
where the hate masters burned him.
He was pursued by the Inquisition across Europe until, exhausted, he finally succumbed for refusing to compromise the truth of scientific fact for the ideology of the Roman Church, just as Socrates did for refusing to pander to the idiocracy. The shock jocks of the age rejoiced as Bruno was burned at the stake as they had done when Socrates was poisoned. Hollow triumphs for the shock jocks, because their names are forgotten while those of Socrates and Bruno live on. Obscurity likewise awaits all of today’s the kings of hate.
Though hate radio has a large following, no doubt it’s practitioners view these followers with contempt. See A Face in the Crowd (1957) with Andy Griffith for the illustration. Or check out Jimmy ‘Drink the Kool-Aid’ Jones.