Each time Dad broadcast one of these figures, the look on Mum’s face made it pretty clear she wasn’t all that invested. Just give her the date her club was allowed to reopen, and that was all she needed to know. I suppose it would have made more sense for Dad’s enthusiasm if any of us had engaged him in in-depth conversations about Covid but, by this time (like the majority of the population), we were all sick to death of the whole thing and just wanted it to stop consuming our every waking moment. But no, not Dad!
‘Mate, did you hear what that Gladys said today?’ he asked, referring to the NSW premier of the time.
‘Nah, I don’t really follow the news,’ I tried for the five thousandth time.
‘She’s backflipping and her party —’
‘I’m really not that into politics either,’ I threw in for the ten thousandth time, but that also fell on Dad’s deaf ears.
‘The Libs have come out – publicly – and said . . .’ he started, but I must have inherited some of his selective deafness because, to be honest, the rest was completely lost on me.
Most of the information Dad robotically gobbled up during his almost-constant bulletin-watching in those few locked-down months was what I would consider sensationalist and xenophobic.
Why is it of vital importance for a news presenter to tell us what race, age or gender the robber of the local convenience store is, if not to reinforce already heavily ingrained social stereotypes?
Oh, I know a forty-year-old Eastern European woman. I’m going to see if she’s got a new telly on her wall and report her to the police. The news said last night that someone fitting that description robbed a service station and how else would she have got a new TV?
When this type of information is fed to you robotically, incessantly, it soon becomes ingrained in your subconscious. Entire nationalities were suddenly viewed as dangerous when the media used them interchangeably with the term ‘terror’. But when an Anglo footballer is accused of rape, you never hear their name followed by the words ‘a Caucasian man’. Not to mention that mainstream news is more likely to be delivered by middle-aged white men (wearing more make-up than Dame Edna), than it is by any other person.
So much of what my parents see on the television is received as fact. Unquestionable, indisputable fact. As though the act of merely being broadcast means that every word of every presenter or reporter has passed through some truth-checking machine or . . . well, why else would it have ended up on the telly? My parents have always insisted on watching Channel 9 News, though there was that short period Dad developed a crush on the lovely Ann Sanders and could sometimes be found lurking on the dark side watching Channel 7. On the unfortunate days I’m stuck at my parents’ house around 6pm, I marvel that whatever is being served up on news or current affairs shows, and that whatever is presented is to be taken as gospel. P-platers are better drivers than the elderly, microwaves are better for you than an open fireplace’s fumes, law students make horrific crime eyewitnesses . . . all presented as fact. As news. As if the media release they came from was completely unbiased and fair. My dear old mum and dad never seek alternate viewpoints, don’t read newspapers or consider more independent sources such as the ABC or BBC.
I would love to be able to monitor my parents’ news intake by putting the equivalent of the child-lock on their TV. The Pensioner Filter. Only shows that have been rated non-sensationalist, informative, unbiased and thoroughly researched will be allowed through for their viewing pleasure. That, and Jukebox Saturday Night for Jude’s three-wines sofa shuffling, and Better Homes and Gardens repeats so Tara Dennis can continue to inspire her with a hitherto unimaginable home handicraft. Whoever would’ve thought you can turn three empty toilet rolls and a coat hanger into a bird feeder!
I remain grateful and eternally indebted to the universe for conspiring to keep my parents off social media. I can barely begin to imagine what types of fact-less feeds would be accepted by them as truth. But then I guess most of us have been guilty of the same in recent years.
When our ‘oldies’ so readily fall for the rhetoric of xenophobic media, I do think it’s our job to correct them when they slip into casual racism, like when my grandmother referred to the woman nursing her as a ‘darkie’. But then she also referred to a large-nosed nurse as ‘Pinocchio’. We understand that what’s considered socially acceptable changes on an almost weekly basis these days, but the last thing we would want is for others to assume the worst of our parents simply because they haven’t stayed up to date. In reality, what was considered acceptable enough a few decades ago has been resolutely stamped out today.
‘I went to the pool last week and there was only one other person there!’ Mum informed us one day. Swimming had become her latest hobby but I think we all knew it would last about as long as a lit match in a strong breeze. ‘He was a Chinaman —’
‘A what?’ I spluttered.
‘Oh, Toddy, don’t start . . .’
‘Jude, you just can’t say that,’ Jeff tried.
‘Okay, okay, a Chinese man . . .’ she corrected, as though the term ‘China’ is the only thing questionable about what she’d said.
Mum certainly learnt a lesson, though. When she retold the story a few months later, she referred to the gentleman as ‘Japanese’.
* * *
Though Dad knew, to the very number, how many cases of Covid there were in our state, the media was incapable of explaining clearly what the restrictions meant for him. Several times during lockdown, my phone rang with Dad asking me to explain the rules to him.
‘Mate, for the life of me, I just can’t work it all out. Can both of us go shopping or not?’
‘No.’
‘Can we both go to Bunnings if Mum can’t lift the soil on her own?’
‘No, not really, Dad.’
‘Not if I say I’m her carer, by picking up the soil?’
‘That’s not really how they define “carer”.’
‘Can we come and visit you if we have a picnic?’
‘No, sorry, Dad.’
‘Skeet, if we want to leave Cessnock local government and shop in Maitland, are we allowed to?’
‘Not if you don’t need to, no.’
This is just a small sample of the seemingly endless questions my parents had for us during the harshest lockdown period.
Though they live just twenty kilometres or so from us, we’re in different local government areas, so sometimes different rules applied to each of us. Mum and Dad were in a constant state of confusion as a result, desperate not to break any laws, fearful of exposure at the latest named hotspot. Having to shout at your parents (extra loud in Dad’s case) through a door or screened enclosure added an air of the bizarre to our daily lives.
‘I spoke to Jill last week, she said it’s even worse for them on the Central Coast,’ Mum said.
I tsked.
‘She hasn’t left the house in what was it, darl?’
‘Eh?’
‘Almost a month, I think she said.’
I tsked again. Twice.
