Dear Howard Sattler,
An open letter, from most of the people.
Howard,
By now you’ll have had some time to reflect on your interview with the Prime Minister this morning, and the subsequent fallout. If I know you, Howard — and I think I do — you’ll be wondering in your private moments what all the fuss is about.
Because let’s face it, mate, this wasn’t a gaffe.
Were it a gaffe you’d have taken any one of the several opportunities the Prime Minister gave you to pull up and abort this line of questioning, but you didn’t. For over a minute you stayed straight on course, asking over and over again, until finally you crashed your crazy fuckin’ fighter jet squarely into the face of Mount Bullshit. It wasn’t a gaffe: it was a planned question, and a planned confrontation.
So with that in mind, I’m pretty sure you’re convinced that what you did doesn’t matter.
Can I, Howard, suggest a couple of theories as to why you might think this?
It could well be that you’re convinced that you’re just showing the “larrikin spirit” (whatever the fuck that means); that you’re going back to our roots as the Bunyip Aristocracy, treating everyone as equals, be they publican or Prime Minister. After all, Australia has never been one to venerate our leaders to the point of no reproach.
You may even go so far to use a phrase as odious as it is nonsensical; you might say that this cheeky-chappery is ‘uniquely Australian’.
If that’s the case, you are wrong. You’re not a smart alec private at Gallipoli taking the piss out of top brass to the delights of your mates. You’re a grown-ass man addressing the Prime Minister of Australia. You show respect not because she is important, but because her office is. This recognition is the barest of minimums you pay for participating in civilised society. You don’t have to agree with her or like her or be nice about the things she does; respect isn’t reverence. It isn’t blind idolatry. Respect doesn’t mean you can’t hold someone’s actions to account. But it does mean that you have to behave like an adult.
It’s also possible that you see yourself not as a larrikin but as a bold culture warrior, willing to say what others only think even if it means falling foul of the Political Correctness Brigade, who are looming over straight-talkers like you from their high horses, which have managed to negotiate, with some difficulty, the stairs inside their ivory towers.
Please hear me when I say you are not that either.
You’re a coward. The only thing worse than bigots are bigots without even the conviction to own it. You put yourself in the unassailable position of the mere bearer of bad news. “Sorry, Prime Minister, but these are the things that are being said – not by me, of course, except just then when I said it, but this is just reportage.”
Bullshit.
You want to know if Tim Mathieson is gay because he’s a hairdresser, Howard? Is this something that keeps you up at night? Then ask, you homophobe — but let’s not for a second pretend that you’re setting any kind of record straight.
For a whole week we’ve been trapped under the weight of a veritable avalanche of shit. Blue ties, gross menus, and now an entirely appalling scandal within the Australian Defence Force. Howard, you really did pick the wrong week to pull out all the stops and reveal yourself to be the turbo-dick you are.
The good news is, though, that you’re right. It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, Howard, because you don’t. To be honest, I don’t really care what happens to you from now on. You can make a triumphant return to the airwaves, either cowed and humbled or brash and unapologetic. You can resign and start a new life in Italy cobbling shoes under the Tuscan sun. I really don’t care. Because you’re not a king-maker, you’re not an agenda-setter; you’re a symptom. You know, like snot or a milky discharge. You don’t shape public attitudes, you just reflect them. You feed and thrive on people’s fears and prejudices, but you don’t create them. You convince no one of anything other than your own staggering irrelevance.
Best,
Most People
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[CORRECTION]: The original version of this article carried the phrase ‘stuck in the middle of a veritable tundra of shit’. Readers have since pointed out that a tundra is not the correct word for this image and has since been changed to ‘trapped under the weight of a veritable avalanche of shit’. The author and Junkee apologise unreservedly for any distress caused.
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Ben Jenkins is a Sydney-based writer. He writes for TheVine and Daily Life, and has a politics blog called A Baffling Ordeal. You can follow him @bencjenkins if that’s a thing you’d like to do.
Feature image screenshot from YouTube.