This piece was written for this week’s Unicorn Challenge photo prompt from CE Ayr and Jenne Gray.
The Press Gang
Davo and his retired mates were watching the TV news at their local pub when a report on the bushfires included a reporter shoving a microphone in the face of a woman whose house had been destroyed, killing her family, and asking her ‘How do you feel?’
Thus began the Press Gang, a vaguely organised bunch of retirees bored off their brains and keen for some action that would, potentially at least, bring about some change in the increasingly insane and amoral world of the media.
They began with the usual media scrum outside the law courts and became famous for sprinkling maggots in the hair of women reporters just before they did their piece to camera, persistently photo-bombing male reporters while grinning like maniacs, and quietly letting down the tyres of broadcast vans.
But the movement really gained momentum when the Gang started releasing rats into the spin session press conferences held by politicians, clueless sports stars and vacuous actors plugging their latest piece of pap, such as the movie ‘War and Peace II – Aliens vs Androids’ and the ‘reality’ TV show ‘Celebrities Cage Fighting Bears’.
Having made the media a public laughing stock, the Gang took a breather for a while. And then the TV news showed a camera crew chasing a young man down the street pestering him about whether he’d had unnatural relations with his chickens. Davo jumped on his bike and headed to the pub. The Gang needed to get back together again.
Six Crooked Highways 
Such a creative mind you have, Doug 😀 and your words so often paint pictures that others envisage but may not be able to express in such humorous ways. Everyone has a living to earn but it is difficult for most to see how thrusting microphones in the faces of traumatised people and asking them inane questions could be in any way fulfilling
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Exactly, Brian. I long to ask those parasites whether their parents are proud of them. And thank you for the re-post on Facebook. Much appreciated, as always.
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Raleigh-ing to the cause?
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Only antipodeans would get that pun. 🙂
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There would be hope for the world yet, if this were all to come to pass, Doug!
Who will you sell the film rights to?
And who will play Davo?
Or will this be your film debut?
Great piece of social criticism, right on the mark as always.
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I’d sell the rights to Australia’s George Miller (Mad Max, Babe etc) and Davo would be played by Shane Jacobson, who was Kenny, the dunny man, a classic Australian film. Of course. I’d write the screenplay. 🙂
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Most creative, Doug! You have an easy way of writing that I find very appealing and a great sense of humor … also very appealing.
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Many thanks, Nancy. I won’t be appealing that opinion. 🙂
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Your usual caustic wit sprinkled through acerbic social commentary.
The same fatuous questions asked after the loss of a family or a fitba match.
A wee classic, sir!
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Thank you, kind sir.
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I just close my curtains, lock the doors and turn off the TV, radio and phone.
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That’ll show ’em. 🙂
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Would it be so simple!
thought-provoking story, Mar as àbhaist, D*
*yeah, taking my virtual life in my hands trying for a google translate of the complimentary qualifying phrase: ‘as usual’.**
** maybe we won’t tell c?
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They never learn, do they? Which provides Davo and the gang, as well as the rest of us, untiring entertainment! 😂
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Vigilantes can’t afford to take a breather, I fear, even ‘vaguely organised’ retired ones. I love the maggots in the hair tactic. BTW, where do I join?
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🙂
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