It’s Monday so I’m going to take some warm-up swings on fellow blogger and easy target, one Andrew Bolt. For those of you who do not wish to acknowledge his existence, skip ahead a few paragraphs and I promise I’ll get to a constructive idea eventually.
I first encountered Andrew Bolt (in print) in the high school library, getting lost on my way to the daily comics. He was usually wedged in there between the crank letters and the crossword. If you think that the deplorable behavior we see on social media came about due to the internet, I draw your attention to 50/50 in the Herald Sun circa 1999. 50/50 was ‘letters to the editor’ for people too angry or incapable of constructing more than once sentence on their pet peeve to justify a ‘letter to the editor’. Now we have Twitter.
If you enjoy some skewering of Andrew Bolt you can’t go past this article here. Enjoy it as a main course and the below will be a small shared dessert. The nice thing about criticizing Andrew is that you can take a leaf out of his own playbook – Don’t bother to actually read anything he has written to make a reasoned analysis, just build that straw-man high based on preconceived notions. On that basis, here’s the rub on Andrew: He sees himself as smarter than the ‘intellectual elite’ and academics, but also yearns for their acceptance as a peer and equal.
The consistent derision from individuals that Andrew see’s as intellectually inferior has taken him to the point where all of his opinions are formed by taking a contrarian view to the people who hate him. Combine these opinions with the a pinch of showmanship and a loud dog-whistle and you have ‘Australia’s most read’ column. But it also leaves you with a massive blind spot. Even broken clocks are right twice a day, and basing your opinions on other peoples opinions will hurt you in the end.
Now the cost of being wrong for Andrew isn’t particularly high. He’ll simply find another set of car tyres to yap at. But for politicians or business people the cost is much higher. I couldn’t close this piece without touching on Andrew’s political equal in this regard, one Tony Abbott. Call it a nice sherry.
Many of us tend to see the world through a certain lens. We may also have a core competency that carry’s us to success. The ‘Scotty from Marketing’ tag fits so well because all evidence suggests that ScoMo doesn’t wake up in the morning and think ‘how do I make the country better’. Instead, ‘How do I make people think I’m making the country better’. It’s much easier to simply associate yourself with the good and run away from the bad than actually get things done. Tony’s tag was always ‘the pugilist’. Again, the shoe fit – Tony was fantastic in opposition because he took great joy in picking holes, a jab here a poke there until all defense was broken down.
That relentlessness sparring took him all the way to the lodge, but he didn’t know what to do when he got there. Never has a Prime-Minister talked so much about the opposition until he lost the job. Anyone who was surprised by the incapability to pivot hadn’t been paying attention. Tony was always far more hungry for the conflict than for resolving the issues at hand, And like Andrew – was far more motivated by what other people thought than by his own opinions.
If you are even partway through your career, the bad news is that your lens is likely well crafted by now, and is as likely to be both your core competence and Achilles heel by the time you are done. But if you can, don’t be an Andrew, don’t be a Tony. Don’t make your decisions based off other peoples opinions, and don’t set your course in order to piss them off.
Notes from a small Life 