The Search For Australia’s Biggest Old White Bastard
The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair does not like ladies with opinions. Here's our response.
Yesterday Daily Telegraph columnist and bullfrog-in-disguise Tim Blair launched a readers poll to find and crown “Australia’s craziest left-wing frightbat,” which apparently is a phrase that not only exists, but describes a large number of prominent female thinkers like author Jane Caro, Guardian columnist Van Badham and former Herald journo Margo Kingston. According to Blair, these “frightbats” are “unhinged hysterics” who’ve gotten their ovaries all in a flutter now that Tony Abbott’s in charge, considering how “dramatic” their “psychosocial behavioural disorders” have become lately.
Leaving aside the fact that the best way to determine the craziest broad is a jelly wrestling contest while Tim and his mates look on and high-five each other over some cold ones, ranking notable Australian public figures by arbitrary categories of your own scrofulous invention isn’t that bad an idea. In that spirit, here’s the shortlist for Australia’s Biggest Old White Bastard Awards.
Most Courageous Stand Against Children’s Cartoon Characters: Piers Akerman
A former editor of Melbourne’s Herald Sun and, like Blair, a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Akerman’s hobbies include denying climate change, filling out TV panels in need of some token right-wing nut and being beige. When he’s not having informal complaints made against him for sexually harassing coworkers, Akerman is fearlessly standing up to the big end of town by taking on beloved children’s icon and well-known Communist sleeper agent Peppa Pig.
The face of evil?
According to Akerman, Peppa is sneakily pushing “a weird feminist line” onto its tiny unsuspecting audience, brainwashing them with sinister ideas like gender equality and playing in mud. It’s all part of the ABC’s broader left-wing ideological agenda, which explains why Peppa Pig is definitely made by the ABC as opposed to, say, a British private media company called Channel 5 who are known for making Peppa Pig. While it’s courageous enough to construct a strawman out of literally nothing but a cartoon piglet, Akerman wins this category for having the guts to openly espouse an opinion that even sandwich-board guys yelling about the Apocalypse would think is fucking bananas.
Least Likely To Have Sex With A Dog: Chris Kenny
As you may be aware, Chris Kenny is a journalist, former adviser to Alexander Downer and host of SKY NEWS program Viewpoint who does not have sex with dogs. While he has made a name for himself with rigorous analysis, like comparing the ABC to a bratty toddler and dismissing concern for asylum seekers’ well-being as an effete pastime of the “compassionistas”, Kenny is perhaps best-known for not having sex with dogs.
Earlier this year the ABC was forced to apologise to Kenny for depicting him having sex with a dog despite that he does not, in fact, have sex with dogs. This very important point was driven home in an editorial by Kenny’s own son Liam who, in the middle of pointing out how his own father is a terrible person, made the excellent point that Chris Kenny has, to his knowledge, never had sex with a dog.
Biggest Jowls: Alan Jones
We could mention the time Alan called Sydney’s Muslims “vermin”, or the time he mocked the death of the Prime Minister’s father by claiming he had died of shame, or even the time he helped the Cronulla riots get started by reading racist text messages on-air. But we won’t.
Instead, Alan gets the nod for having the biggest, porridgiest, windsail-flappingest jowls this side of Winston Churchill. Just look at them. Look at those jowls.
Magnificent. Like a bulldog in a wind tunnel.
Most Just All-Round Great Guy: Ray Hadley
For pure radiant decency, old-fashioned charm and general niceness, it’s hard to go past 2GB broadcaster and former football commentator Ray Hadley. Some of the noble deeds that won Ray this category include the time he tried to have a guy fired from his coaching job for going out with Hadley’s estranged wife; the same wife who filed an AVO against Hadley in February.
Props also go to Ray for tearfully apologising to 2GB staff after verbally abusing a junior staff member until he had a breakdown, as well as calling a coworker a “spastic” for some sweary reason.
Honorary Mention For Largest Unconscious Sense Of Irony: Tim Blair
We couldn’t ignore the man whose work made these awards possible. Besides his work on the Frightbats, Blair gets an honorary mention for a blog post titled ‘Old Rich White Guy Complains’, in which he cleverly pretends not to notice the irony inherent in calling someone out for doing something that literally encapsulates both Tim’s job description and only remaining reason for existence. He also gets an honorary mention for his blog’s Twitter account having a princely 1,358 followers, which ought to show the 96,000+ people following Frightbat Marieke Hardy up something fierce.
We couldn’t pick a winner, so if polls are more your thing, Crikey have knocked up an excellent poll searching fro Australia’s craziest right-wing nutjob. Vote here.