please don't go andy bolt

Don’t go, Andrew Bolt! You're the apex predator of our media landscape

The star commentator says he has had enough – and many of his opponents cheered. Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t think we would be any better off without him


Ed Butler
theguardian.com, Thursday 13 March 2014 16.04


There is a classic scene in The Simpsons parodying the borderline un-parody-able Fox News, wherein the network’s news helicopter is emblazoned with the slogan “Not racist, but #1 with racists”.

It was the first thing that sprang to mind upon reading about poor, maligned Andrew Bolt and his claim that, so hurt by an accusation of racism by Marcia Langton on Q&A, he didn’t turn up to work on Tuesday (freeing him up to write a cheeky 14 posts on his blog, happily).

It came to mind because, much as there would be high fives aplenty on the final day of the rotisserie of rubbish that is most of Bolt’s output, I don’t think we would be any better off without him.

First things first: Bolt is a behemoth on the Australian media landscape. In the fetid ecosystem that is our incubator of conservative columnists, he is the apex predator. Purely on the basis of his ability to stir up outrage, he makes the likes of Janet Albrechtson, Piers Akerman and Miranda Devine look like kindergarteners fingerpainting. In short, he’s nailed it. And that’s why we need him.

We need him because those who tend to not enjoy reactionaries stirring up the baser instincts of their readership need a villain. We need him because he provides the media cul-de-sac where disenfranchised and uber-conservative white Australians with an inflated sense of victimhood can be effectively quarantined. Bolt is, in effect, their horse whisperer. He provides a place where people who are worried about the hordes of brown-gay-muslim-feminists coming to take our jobs and possibly our very lives can gather and commiserate.

He’s cornered the market for reactionary partisanship, and that’s fine. Let this frightened slice of the population gather there, I say. Let them wallow in the content that Bolt provides them, carefully calibrated to both infuriate Australia’s dwindling bigoted minority while reassuring them. At least, we’ll always know where to find them (and thanks to the fine work of the likes of @boltcomments, we can read some of his readers’ best “work”, too).

But let’s not overstate his influence, either. He speaks to the converted. He exists in an infinite loop of rage and victimisation among a shrinking audience. Conservative politicians love him because he keeps their most loyal voters in a constant state of agitation, but those people are not influential. Tabloid editors love him, presumably because he gets everyone wound up, writing letters to the editor, clicking on articles and basically propping up a struggling industry. Smart conservatives? They probably strongly dislike him. And if you’re reading this, of course, you’re probably not in Bolt’s target demographic, and thus would be quite happy to see him “spend more time with his family”. But, again, that would be a mistake.

So please, Andrew, don’t go. You are a sparkling beacon, a lighthouse passing your beam of (debatable) truth under the rocks of Australia’s political landscape.