Too PC? Or not too PC?

You'd be hard pressed to have not heard master of controversy Alan Jones' latest mishap.

If nothing else, the whole business has provided the photo of the week.

But just in case you live under a rock, or drank too hard this weekend, I can fill you in. Shock jock Jones made a crack about Julia Gillard at a Liberal-affiliated 'do. In short, Jonesy made a comment that Gillard's recently deceased Dad must have passed away from the shame of having such a daughter.

Yes, it's a rude comment. No, he probably shouldn't have said it at an official function.

Is it funny? I'll leave that to you.

And now his 2GB radio show's advertisers are pulling the plug, including Woolworths and Freedom.

Liberal frontbenchers at the event seem to have suffered collective amnesia and/or deafness: none of them can recall hearing the comments. How odd.

Unfortunately for Jones, they were recorded. So there's no denying it happened. And it should be noted, people were recorded laughing too. So someone found it funny.

So now we ask ourselves the question, amid universal condemnation of both his original comments, and criticism surrounding his 'inadequate' apology, how far is too far?

Have we all not made similar questionable comments amongst friends? Obviously there are few of us who have a captive audience in front of which we can insult public figures.

But are we too precious these days? We leap on people for making mistakes. Then we jump on them again when they apologise: it's always too little too late.

I don't like what he said either. But I know in my heart I have said similar things to friends, that I shouldn't have, for a laugh.

Do we really need to fall over ourselves to tweet our disgust and blog our hatred?

Are we taking everything too seriously?

I doubt Julia Gillard is crying herself to sleep over his comments. She probably has the sense to write them off as a crappy attempt at humour.

I don't want to give the impression I think we should go at each other in a no-rules fashion.

It's just in this era of 24/7 news and media saturation, how much is too much?

Food for thought.

Here's a different perspective from writer Anne Summers with a feminist slant.

Spiel x

Happy Birthday to Papa Spiel! Much love to you xxx