Them's Fightin' Words

It’s been over a week since Mark Esterhuysen, a former newsreader for 702’s Eyewitness News, released the Hiroshima equivalent of F-bombs during a live news broadcast at 1am on a random Tuesday and catapulted himself to instant internet fame.

In case you missed it, here’s a transcription of what he said, verbatim, right before they cut to a convenient ad break:

Good morning. I’m Mark Esterhuysen. Fuck racism, fuck the pigs who killed Andries Tatane, fuck the AWB, fuck racism. We are all wild animals here, meant to live free. Fuck capitalism, fuck fascism. Fuck this fucking wage slavery graveyard shit. Fuck domestication, fuck Julius Malema, fuck the state. Fuck perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. This is the only fucking planet we have…”

Right after that he proceeded to direct anyone who disagreed with him to his Twitter profile, Facebook page and blog http://markesterhuysen.blogspot.com/.

Can you believe the balls on this guy?! Hahahaha! What a legend! Here’s the original:

Naturally the first thing I did was to try and find out if anyone at work had hit the guy’s site so I could get the address (I kept misspelling “Esterhuysen”) and was told in no uncertain terms that this guy is COOKED!

FUCK YEAH! I thought. I love crazies!

But reading his site I soon realised that the poor guy isn’t crazy at all. Misguided, maybe, but outright shit-your-pants-mad? I don’t think so.

His site consists of about 10 posts, at least 5 of which are long, sprawling diatribes about his dissatisfaction with modern civilisation and this desperate need he feels deep down to get as far away from it as humanly possible.

I’d be lying outright if I said I’ve never thought that. In fact, for a long time when I was younger I entertained the idea of falling off the grid completely. Finding some remote desert island somewhere and living out the rest of my days spear fishing, climbing coconut trees and living in an A-frame hut on the beach.

Esterhuysen’s need to get the hell away from it all was calcified by an article he read on the Men’s Health website that was posted in October last year which, to be perfectly frank, stated some pretty obvious facts about how being exposed to the great outdoors is one of the best ways to sharpen the mind and senses and how modern society has all but cut us off from nature completely, to our detriment.

In fact, all of Esterhuysen’s posts seem to be pretty obvious at face value. Civilisation is tyrannical, agriculture is the root of all human evil, the abhorrent ecocide we are committing on a daily basis isn’t receiving the level of attention it should be, the sooner we go back to the Stone Age way of life, the better.

They’re all arguments I used to believe fervently. It’s a FACT that we are, by all definitions of the word, insane. All of us. Every living person on this planet, because we are systematically destroying the very thing upon which we rely for our existence as a species.

So the guy took a stand for what he believed in. He used the medium of commercial radio to stick it to the man in a 25th Hour inspired tirade, such was the strength of his convictions.

But here’s the kicker – what did his passionate outburst result in?

One Time Airlines recording an Esterhuysen-inspired ad that rips off his F-bombing and turns his entire outcry into a big fucking joke so that they can sell more flights.

Let’s just pause and reflect on the irony of that.

A guy who is so concerned with the way we’re destroying the planet voices his vehemence on radio only to be made fun of by an airline so that they can sell more flights, burn more jet fuel and stamp their carbon footprint firmly on the face of our planet.

Esterhuysen may be an ideological fool, but I admire what he did, and if that makes me an ideological fool as well, then so be it.

This weekend, J-Rab and I are going to (finally!) sign up with a recycling service in an effort to try and make some positive change. Sure, it won’t stop cars from driving or planes from flying or BP from fouling up our oceans, but it will make a difference, even if it’s a tiny one.

My old man goes to church on Sundays, which I found pretty bizarre when he first started going because he’s never been religious at all, but he never spoke about it or got all weird and preachy so I just let it be.

After returning one Sunday, he left a pamphlet on the entrance hall table that told the following story:

Two friends were walking along a beach one afternoon when they noticed that the spring tide had washed hundreds of starfish up onto the beach that were drying out in the sun and dying.

As they walked, the one friend randomly picked up starfish and threw them back into the sea.

Irritated with the futility of this gesture, the other friend eventually snaps.

“There must be a thousand starfish on this beach! Would you just give it a rest, you’re not making a difference!”

To which his buddy simply picks up another starfish, throws it into the sea and says, “I made a difference to that one.”

Mark Esterhuysen might have become the butt of everyone’s jokes, but at least he’s trying to make a difference in some way.

Which is a damn side more than I can say for me.

-ST