HAD you asked me ten years ago what I thought of Stan Grant as a person, I wouldn’t have had any emphatic opinions to share. My cursory impression of Grant as a journalist was that he was good at his job. The full television package, in fact: good-looking, eloquent, methodical and with a gracious but determined demeanor. Politically, he was obviously left-leaning on indigenous issues but didn’t come across as a soft touch or a flunky for any party. His curriculum vitae, inventorying senior and prestigious postings in Australia and abroad – across multiple networks and mediums (private and public) – is impressive. Here, I would have concluded, is a man never held back by racism. On the contrary, his Aboriginal ancestry helped him land rewarding jobs that would have been closed to people of any other cultural background. Despite not having the qualifications or the bibliography to justify it, he was appointed to a professorship at one university and a Chancellor’s chairmanship at another. The faculty dogsbodies in Tudor bonnets and Target flannies who went on strike earlier this month can only dream of such leapfrogging. In short, Grant formerly seemed to be a bridging figure – privileged but deserving – who had it made.
Then, to quote Captain Willard on the crumbling Kurtz, things started to slip. When Grant began writing a Saturday column for ABC online – more or less as a personal hobby to go with a series of by then more exalted positions at the national broadcaster – a different man emerged. He was now a passive-aggressive victim and a firebrand mystic obsessed with historical racial injustices and the unique perfidy of the British. He rarely mentioned present-day depredations against tribal women and children. Before 1788, the ‘first nations’ were a commonwealth Eden and, spiritually speaking, still were. The purpose of these columns, it’s fair to surmise, was to encourage black antagonism to “whites” and sideline gentrified reconciliation; not for others but to ameliorate the bourgeois guilt of an embarrassed in-betweener. Grant was so loftily platformed and unsackable that weaponised melancholy and race-baiting were luxuries he thought taxpayers could afford. He should have been reprimanded by ABC management long ago for repeatedly breaching APC guidelines on gratuitous references to the colour of individuals and groups but he wasn’t.
In April, the imperious Q+A host did a trial run of his later meltdown – and stole a march on Adjoa Andoh of “terribly white balcony” fame – by attacking the ABC’s New South Wales election results panel as “entirely white.” When Queen Elizabeth II died last year, not only did he publish another maudlin essay about the evils of whiteness, he told fellow (though minor) grievance royal Patricia Kavelas he felt a “visceral anger” towards Australians for betraying him by mourning the monarch. So much so that he rushed out a book condemning “whiteness as an organising principle.” I’m not sure what that is or whether it kicks in when choosing a second wife. Any other journalist who said and wrote such things about Asians or Aborigines would have been fired. Alas, ABC management had little choice but to include Grant on its coverage panel for the Coronation of King Charles III. Either he would be allowed to continue his crusade of loathing during a religious ceremony or the ABC would have been pilloried for cancelling the Brown Prince in the year of the Voice. The rest is hysteria. George Pell was persecuted by the ABC and sent to prison by a grateful state. By contrast, Grant’s nastiness is proven and his punishment light. Running away from a few beastly tweets on a paid holiday won’t live long in the song lines of the resistance.
He’s certainly got his hands on his hyper-bowels.
Where are those race hate laws when needed?
Like you C.L. I had a bit of time for him in the past, but like many other Lefties, he began to believe his own bullshit and was overcome by it. Mayb he just found that tanning parlours aren’t good for you and he needed an out.
CL,
To use a fishing metaphor: you caught, scaled, gutted and filleted that fish completely. You possibly also dipped it in flour, fried it and served it with a nice salad and chips.
The MSM is covering for all these alleged abusers by declining to publish the horribly evil and racist comments that have caused poor Stan to down tools. Surely, just like Nazi hand raisers the best course of action would be to do what the media does best, find these people and interview them, make them show their faces to the public, and explain why they abused Stan.
Unless there is a danger the narrative might explode, then the nothing to see here approach makes mighty sense.
I didn’t mind him on SBS and I was impressed with his on the ground reporting from Pakistan when he was with CNN.
But race baiting is nasty. He should reread MLK’s words about content of the character.
Stan has thrown all his toys out of his pram with no wheels.
The column is terrific. I especially appreciated “the song lines” making it into the final flourish.
However, the “Brown Prince” has looks that do not appeal to me.
I guess the attacks on him were more about his first wife/second wife choices than about his own colouring. And a man who offers up a school photograph to claim he was a stand-out poor, sad little boy is just full of himself.
He’s not the only cuddly toy ..
Long may he vent!
Strangely, he seems to have gone a steadily darker shade of brown over the years, just as his anti-white racism has ramped up.
Does this imply an ideological danger of getting a tan at the beach?
One sure test of character is how a person behaves when they are the subject of constant, undeserved and uncritical adulation. When you are surrounded by people who keep telling you how wonderful you are and who would never dream of saying no to you on anything. Looks like Stan failed the test. Just like Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.
Stan needs to lay off the Coppertone or he’ll end up looking like Chunder Loo.
ha ha
the old Coppertone ad
It is, at the least, that so much reference is made to the colour of Grant’s skin. Unless the claim is that he has no Aboriginal ancestry, it is irrelevant. He is free to alter his colour by sunbathing, or by chemicals in the way many with no such descent do. At worst, these references are designed as a put-down to embarrass him and/or delegitimise his arguments.
I regard references to what “whites” do or don’t do as racist in nature. It’s hard to make this claim when people Iike Grant are ridiculed on the basis of their skin colour.
It is odd that …
It seems unlikely that comments on the change to Stan Grant’s skintone would be greatly upsetting to him.
The column lists his achievements/successes; but he’s also a performer, not unlike the American wife of a British royal who has been noted for browning-up her face and reminding the audience she is a woman of colour.
The vanities and all the sillinesses of celebrities, and celebrity-commentators (they’re free to bleach or bronze) are always going to be noted.
But is there an advantage in having white skin? is there no advantage in having black skin?
I imagine that some people in your society are thoroughly sick and tired of Brown Moses and others of his ilk implicitly saying white people are worse than syphilis.
Far out
your -> our
Rafiki. The claim is that Stan is NOT proud of what he is: mostly white. His solarium or shoe-polish-tin visits indicate HE believes blacker is better, and HE believes he needs blackface to bolster his ‘”ase”….contrary to your assertion that an uninitiated white man, with no skin name, no dreaming etc etc IS an Aborigine right from the get-go.
Nope. Stan is a farce inside a joke wrapped in BS. The reason he now goes around in black-face is that he needs to “prove” he was / is discriminated against because he’s so very black.
Might as well pretend to be disabled by feigning a strong limp, then declare it’s prejudice to say “But I saw him out running laps just yesterday. Bloke’s a fraud…and NOT Aboriginal in any degree. Ask any full-blood, actual aborigine, their opinion on what is…and isn’t…. a blackfella FFS.
BTW; Jacinta Price has it correct that she’s a Celtic Walpiri woman, so what’s Sstan’s beef with his reality?
Stan By Your Man
Mandalay, why do you assert that Grant makes solarium and shoe-polish tin visits? I had a quick inexpert visit to Google and one source said that why brown people get blacker as they age might be down to genetics. Skin discolorations down spots might be a reason.
Stan’s problem is that he looks European but has dark skin..that’s a common combination.
Enough with the skin tone stuff please, folks.
Good debunking of Rafiki, Manta. I was going to have a go at it, but I couldn’t have topped your effort.
…
Here’s an alternate theory to Stan’s attack on the ABC. Three decades ago, the ABC broadcast a show made by Working Dog Productions called Frontline. It was a satirical (or accurate) look at the three commercial current affair shows showing on tv at the time. Stan was fronting one of them, and the Frontline protagonist, took the piss out of Stan as much as, if not more than, the other two hosts.
Could it possibly be that Stan has played the long game, got himself into a position where he is beyond criticism at the ABC, and has now hit them where it hurts most? No, surely not …
Pathetic ABC snowflakes:
ABC MD wants ‘sufficient protection’ for staff ‘negatively affected’ by Voice referendum.
I understand your cautioning C.L. and respectfully disagree.
I had not seen a current photograph of ‘tan rant’ for some time but his current appearance goes to his very integrity as a human being.
Does he ever go back to Wagga Wagga?
I have actually worked with some genuine full blood Australians from Wagga and they were battling against elitist Aboriginals back then!
Check his photo in this article,
ABC boss David Anderson defends coronation coverage; regrets ‘not backing’ Stan Grant
I don’t feel debunked Jupes, but never mind. I do appreciate your reference to Frontline, not because I think your revenge theory far-fetched, if not bizarre, but because it reminded me of its brilliant satire. But then I felt depressed because we may never again see the likes of it on Australian TV.