Just once you thought 2022 had nothing left to present, alongside comes Phillip Adams. What a time to be alive.
The high-profile ABC presenter is a well-known atheist however another non-believer within the nation might be forgiven for immediately dropping to their knees to thank the Good Lord for the thigh-slapping showstopper of pompous hypocrisy delivered by His misplaced sheep this week. They actually ought to be charging for tickets.
For anybody who missed it – which seems to be a suspiciously excessive quantity – Adams referred to as the legendary Australian singer Kamahl an “Honorary White”. He did it publicly, in writing and on to Kamahl himself.
Kamahl’s crime was to query Adams’ Twitter tirade towards Don Bradman following revelations he had written a letter to Malcolm Fraser after the 1975 election urging the brand new PM to face as much as socialists and unions.
Given that Bradman was a businessman, stockbroker and recognized conservative the truth that he wasn’t too keen on socialists and unionists appears hardly shocking. But for a handful of hardcore Whitlamites nonetheless recovering from the Dismissal this apparently meant The Don was additionally a white supremacist.
Fittingly, Adams opened the batting at 10.59am on Boxing Day with a tweet that mentioned: “Bradman refused to meet Mandela?”
This got here after a 9.03am reply to an earlier Adams submit from the cheerfully named consumer “Poppy Maclean” who mentioned of Bradman: “He refused to meet Nelson Mandela on the grounds he was a ‘terrorist’ … why do we worship men who play with balls?”
Couple of crimson flags there. But not sufficient to cease Lucky Phil from driving house two hours later. Perhaps he ought to have waited for the response to an actual journalist, cricket podcaster Paul Dennett, who replied to Poppy that afternoon:
“Hi – I wasn’t aware of this. Can’t find anything online but I am interested. Do you have a link by any chance?”
Spoiler alert: Poppy didn’t and so Paul didn’t run with it, politely noting the dearth of, nicely, something.
Still, Adams was satisfied, and Kamahl was confused, replying to his “Bradman refused to meet Mandela?” tweet with this easy query:
“Why do you think Sir Donald Bradman refused to meet Mandela? Why do you think the greatest ever ‘spotsman’ (sic) welcomed me at his home from August 1988 every year, till he left us in 2001? He also left me letters he wrote every year. Why Phillip?”
Quote tweeting Kamahl’s harmless query so all his 75,000 followers might see it – slightly sarcastically on condition that it now appears to have been deleted – Adams responded:
“Clearly, Kamahl, he made you an Honorary White. Whereas one of the most towering political figures of the 20th century was deemed unworthy of Bradman’s approval.”
It is at exactly this level that each sane Australian will hear of their heads the sound of the Family Feud in-house synthesiser going “Wenh-wonh”.
The survey didn’t say that Phillip.
As many higher journalists than Adams have effusively since instructed him, his declare of Bradman refusing to satisfy Mandela is nothing wanting horsesh-t. Its genesis appears to lie in a go to by Mandela to Sydney in 2000 which Bradman, by then 92, was too unwell to attend. He died 5 months later.
Instead Bradman despatched a letter and reward introduced to the South African hero lauding him as “a champion of humanity and a man with a compassion for mankind”, in accordance with sports activities journalist Neil McMahon. Mandela likewise famously revered Bradman.
And so on the information themselves evidently Adams is totally improper and a perpetuator of what his sworn enemy Donald Trump would name faux news.
But extra illuminating is the preposterous spectacle of a supposedly progressively white man telling a black man who dares to query him that he isn’t actually black.
Indeed, it’s troublesome to think about a extra nasty, derogatory and racist slur towards somebody who actually was a dark-skinned pioneer in Australian leisure and tradition when it was overwhelmingly white and who suffered a lot racism and mock consequently.
And but that is so usually the go-to trope of left-wing intellectuals and activists each time they encounter an individual of color who dares deviate from their world view. Any black man or lady who succeeds on the earth with no radical agenda is characterised as an “Uncle Tom”, a “coconut” or, as Adams himself referred to as Kamahl, an “Honorary White”.
And when you suppose it’s an remoted incident, simply ask conservative Indigenous leaders like Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price about their experiences with so-called tolerant progressives.
Indeed, it’s behaviour like this that usually makes me reluctant to name myself a person of the left. What I’m, nonetheless, is a person of precept. I consider in free speech and I don’t need Phillip Adams cancelled or counselled or censured or sacked.
All I ask is for individuals to think about that what he mentioned, {that a} black individual he disagrees with should be an “Honorary White” – a despicable South African time period for colored individuals deemed acceptable to the Apartheid regime – was as an alternative mentioned by any non-left commentator.
Imagine if it was mentioned by Piers Morgan or Jeremy Clarkson about Meghan Markle. Imagine if it was mentioned by Alan Jones or Andrew Bolt about anyone. And then think about the white-hot nuclear outrage that may engulf the globe.
The silence you hear now could be the sound of hypocrisy.
