Hopkins skipkins jumpkins What a difference a weekend makes — the time between people idly wondering what shameless far-right grifter Katie Hopkins was doing in a hotel in Sydney while so many people’s friends and relatives were well into their second year of being stranded overseas, to the cancellation of Hopkins’ visa, was a little over 48 hours.
It followed the customary script of Hopkins employment these days — a network chasing ratings via her performative bile, swiftly finds the Hopkins of it all is a bit more than they can handle. In this case it wasn’t her fondness for spewing the rhetoric of conquering war criminals, but her yawn-inducingly predictable anti-lockdown stance and attendant shock tactics.
Since, we have gold-standard buck-passing from those responsible for bringing her to the country. Channel 7, whose googling of Hopkins apparently didn’t get as far that time she told a meeting led by a high-profile Holocaust denier she was “on [their] team”, were shocked, just shocked, to find out she would flout COVID-19 restrictions. Then Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews, in announcing that Hopkins’ visa had indeed been cancelled, argued that her application to be let in had been supported by “a state government”. Which slightly ignores that Australia’s immigration minister has unparalleled personal discretion over who gets let into the country via the “Character Test” — something that has been used to keep Chelsea Manning out of the country, but not, say, Lauren Southern.
Further evidence, if any were needed, that Australian media is happy to act as a sewage inlet for the cheapest far-right hucksters, long after they’ve outstayed their welcome in every other market.
Seven Curses But of course, why should we expect that anything in Hopkins’ past would have turned Channel 7 off? In the last three years alone we’ve seen:
- Seven sued for racial discrimination over a 2018 Sunrise panel whereby a commentator called for another Stolen Generation
- A ruling from broadcasting regulator ACMA that a story attributing “crime surges” to “African gangs” breached accuracy guidelines
- The running of a Facebook survey asking viewers if they thought “anti-white racism” was on the rise
- An uncritical interview with Blair Cottrell, leader of the far-right group United Patriots Front as though he were a concerned citizen leading a neighbourhood watch
- The gratuitous identifying of “three black players” missing penalties in the England football team’s Euro 2020 final loss
- An ongoing love affair with One Nation.
Stenographer watch It must be lovely for our perpetually beleaguered PM to watch two arms of the biggest employer of journalists in the country fight to be the place his talking points first get published. So yesterday Sky News “revealed” the shocking news that, far from sitting on his hands, “Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a key driver in advising the NSW premier to go harder on restrictions to attempt to quash the virus in Australia’s biggest city”. This morning, perhaps seeing that his turf was under threat, The Australian‘s Simon Benson delivered the following analysis:
Scott Morrison is the target of a coordinated and unbridled political campaign directed by the state labor premiers and the federal opposition. And it’s working.
On the latest Newspoll numbers, the Morrison government would obviously lose an election. And probably lose it badly.
… The risk for Morrison was always going to be that people would eventually link the lack of access to vaccines to the mugging of their liberties. It’s pointless to argue whether this may be a misdirected anger. It is the reality that Morrison is now dealing with.
Morrison, in this reading, has not stumbled from one calamity to another throughout his leadership, betraying a pathological indifference to the truth and the responsibilities of his office — he’s simply the victim of brutal, sustained politicking.
I’m of the opinion that the whole Hopkin’s mess was a setup. Channel 7 knew she was going to do something offensive eventually, so now they get free publicity for a show no one cares about.
Hopkins on tattoos:
“I really think if you have a tattoo you have to wonder about what kind of future you have ahead of you.…For me, tattoos are just a way for people to find attention who haven’t found another way in their life to achieve it by conventional means.”
Words on social media are much like tattoos. They are a permanent feature; they can never be entirely erased.
So what might you say of Hopkins: that ‘her ignorant and ill-considered words are just a way for her to find attention who hasn’t found another way in her life to achieve it by honourable means.’
Did Sydney based #7 think that Melbournians would lower themselves to her level of cynical exploitation by watching this apparent visual vomit ?
Do they think we are also THAT crass ?
I thought 30s Germany was known about, but then, of course the idea that you lose the argument if you invoke a troubling past has now enabled this societal decline.
Mark this day down for future reference next time you hear Andrew Bolt and his ilk crying about “left-wing cancel culture” – it was a coalition minister that cancelled Katie Hopkins’ visa over a weekend and without giving her a chance to defend herself. I don’t recall seeing a single comment from Labor calling for that to be done.
Sure, they questioned why she was given a visa and a quarantine spot in the first place, but they didn’t go so far as to suggest that she should have her visa cancelled and should be deported without natural justice.
Sorry K, if you think Bolt and his ilk will have the slightest second thought They’ll be screaming vindication that left wing cancel culture is so rife even Liberal ministers are doing it.
Apparently 7 had said she’d broken her contract and was no longer wanted anyway – the minister was just jumping on the bandwagon.
Natural justice??? It was her own tweets wot done her in. She openly defied the laws of land. There’s not a lot of room for argument here.
The Australian’s Benson and Morrison go back a fair way
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/pms-candidate-lacks-security/news-story/19d0cb19b440db261cd688327286cc4e