You know your beeswax? Why don't you mind it!

I have been reading Australian newspapers online lately, paying more attention to the “Opinion” columns than I otherwise might. Ever since Germaine Greer’s opinion column was absolutely savaged following Steve Irwin’s death, I’ve maintained a rather perverse interest in what columnists have to say on certain issues.

I understand the whole ‘freedom of the press’ and ‘free speech’ and such, but my mother’s advice always rings in my ears – if you don’t want anything read, don’t write it down. Or perhaps it was, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

I have a new respect for opinion journalists, particularly those who go online, blog-style, and spill their guts about a whole range of issues, from the citizenship debate to whether unfit mothers should be neutered. It’s hysterical! And then net-junkies like myself can log onto the newspaper’s site and savage the columnist for putting their thoughts out there, however unpopular they end up to be. Tony from Tamworth praises one columnist for his hard-line take on immigrants, only to have Pamela from Perth chime in and deride him for being too blinkered and not caring enough about the ozone layer. No one said the comments had to be relevant or informed. Why should they be? The opinion pieces aren’t always great journalism either.

But the thing I like most about the opinion columns in the newspaper is that in 30 lines, the journalist does his or her best to summarise a topical or even contentious issue that I have neither the time nor inclination to read too deeply about. I may care about it of course, but my attention span is just too short to conduct my own research. So I care what the columnist writes, and I care what Tony and Pamela have to say about it. But just don’t ask me to have an ultimate opinion on those opinions, because when pressed like that, all I can do is defer to my mother’s ultimate sage advice, the non-committal “oh yeah”. Nothing frustrates a heated debate more than a resigned “oh yeah”. Try it some time – tell them my mother sent you.