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Andrew Bolt has landed a Sunday morning gig on Channel 10, thanks to his über wealthy fan, mining heiress Gina Reinhart.
Reinhart recently acquired a 10% stake in the network, and has decided that it’s about time for a “Fox News style show” on 10.
Reinhart’s move into media gives her an opportunity for far wider cultural influence and control than she currently enjoys, and it looks as if she’s wasting no time getting that up and going.
Bolt is embroiled in legal action taken against him by several high profile Aboriginals, following his observations that some light-skinned Indigenous people exploit their heritage for personal gain. Bolt apparently thinks that if you don’t look Aboriginal you shouldn’t be claiming that you are, given that he thinks the claims may give you a leg up in your profession and position in the world, and an advantage over non Indigenous competitors.
All the evidence points to Bolt’s on-going enjoyment of the publicity and attention the court case has brought him. Scoring his own weekly TV show must be icing on his cake. Taking personalities such as Bolt on publicly usually does backfire: giving them an even bigger stage on which to parade their opinions seems to work largely in their favour.
Whatever you may think of Bolt’s opinions, he does have the right to express them. Easy enough to support free speech if it’s agreeable, it’s when agreement is absent that the principle really matters. And as somebody said, the only way to contest bad speech is by more and more good speech: trying to stifle opinions, no matter how wrong-headed you might think they are, isn’t going to work well.
On the question of heritage, I can understand why people want to proudly claim everything they’ve got. As someone who has no knowledge of my father and his family, I’ve had my struggles with genealogical confusion.
It also seems pretty natural to me that if one does have a heritage in which family was maligned and discriminated against, there can be a strong desire to restore that heritage and the family to its rightful human place, personally, politically and culturally. It’s a personal healing process, a fulfilling of responsibility to ancestors, and a powerful assertion of place and belonging.
I guess the fact that Andrew Bolt can see it only as exploitative and opportunistic says a great deal more about him than it does about those he’s maligned. But I’m not about to give Bolt the satisfaction of being one more person railing against him. Go for it Andy. There’s still plenty of us producing good speech. You’ve got a long way to go before you drown us out, even with the Fox News template on your side.
No Place For Sheep 
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