Tim Blair: Australia’s best frightbats were quiet in 2018 and potential newcomers below standard
Top-order bats went missing in 2018, and not just from the Australian Test cricket team. Across the frightbat spectrum, potential candidates were not up to standard, writes Tim Blair.
Opinion
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The editors and writers at Wheels magazine, Australia’s most influential monthly automotive magazine, faced a monumentally difficult decision.
Their 17th annual car of the year award would soon be due, but they could not agree on a winner.
In fact, they couldn’t agree on almost anything except that the vehicles they were to choose from simply weren’t very good.
Some were better than others, of course, but the overall standard was depressingly low.
So the editors and writers decided, in order to protect their award’s value and integrity, that there would be no award at all.
When the March, 1980 edition of Wheels hit the newsstands, there wasn’t even a car on the cover. Instead, there was a lemon with wheels and the words: “No car of the year.”
This was a big call, back in the day. That prestigious award could add thousands in car sales practically overnight. Manufacturers absolutely sweated on it.
Yet the magazine made the right choice. Their annual prize wasn’t the result of a simple comparison test or “best of”. It was for a vehicle that significantly advanced car design and execution in Australia.
In recent years I’ve become aware myself of the awesome responsibilities associated with running an important annual award, and not just because Wheels once invited me to be part of their car of the year judging panel (Volkswagen’s Golf was the winner, for the record).
Back in 2014, I launched the first poll to decide who should be crowned our nation’s prime leftist frightbat.
“They shriek, they rage, they cheer, they despair, they exult, they scream, they laugh, they cry!” the original poll announcement declared, to widespread acclaim.
“There’s never a non-emotional moment in the lives of Australia’s left-wing ladies’ auxiliary, whose psychosocial behavioural disorders are becoming ever more dramatic following Tony Abbott’s election.
“Only one of them, however, can reign as our solitary monarch of madness. Only one can stand above all others, wailing and howling, while the rest look on and ask: ‘Where’s the Ritalin?’”
Ten female media types were nominated in 2014, with the eventual winner – following many thousands of votes – being Guardian columnist Vanessa Badham.
Then-president of the Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs streeted the field in 2015.
The award was subsequently opened to male nominees, due to modern requirements for inclusiveness and the sheer abundance of frightbattery getting around.
Former army chief, Australian of the Year and political correctness campaigner David Morrison was a deserving frightbat winner in 2016.
The following year, Waleed Aly’s 21,451 votes saw him home ahead of Yassmin Abdel-Magied (18,144).
But when the time came to assemble a list of nominees for 2018’s frightbat award, I found myself in the same quandary as those Wheels staffers back in 1980.
Sure, there were frightbats. There will always be frightbats.
But where was the quality? Where was the frightbat-worthy craziness that truly deserved international celebration?
The usual contenders didn’t put in a great effort. Badham, our first victor, has become easily ignored through her dull repetition.
Two-time runner-up Clementine Ford’s sweary-Mary act hasn’t translated well to the long-form columns she calls “books”.
Ford’s fellow Nine columnist, Elizabeth Farrelly, committed the worst frightbat sin of them all by occasionally making sense.
Several of Farrelly’s recent pieces were rational and not even particularly self-referential, which is a long way from how she responded to her first frightbat nomination four years ago:
“I’m not especially left-wing. Not communist. Not even socialist. I simply try to work from first principles – justice, truth, beauty. Is that emotional? Was Plato hysterical? Was Jesus? Mandela?”
They weren’t, but comparing yourself to those individuals may well be.
Among other previous candidates, Yassmin Abdel-Magied disqualified herself by relocating overseas, which is contrary to strict frightbat award rules. Triggs finished up at the AHRC and basically vanished.
Who knows what David Morrison is up to now, except that it probably involves a frock.
And what of the up-and-comers? Where are those who would seek to join the frightbat immortals?
Well, Aboriginal activist Tarneen Onus-Williams gave it a red-hot go, telling an Australia Day audience: “F--- Australia, hope it f-----g burns to the ground.
“If you celebrate Australia Day, f---er, you’re celebrating the death of my ancestors.”
She then walked back her words, claiming: “Sometimes when you're a bit poetic things get taken out of context.” That evasiveness is not the frightbat way. And nobody has heard from her since.
Former AHRC Race Discrimination Commissioner Thinethavone “Tim” Soutphommasane can’t make even a stupid Twitter point without boring everyone to sleep.
Army boss Lt Gen Campbell showed some promise with a directive to soldiers banning the “display or adoption of symbols, emblems and iconography” which he believed were “at odds with the army’s values”.
He’s since clammed up, too.
Alex Turnbull, son of Malcolm, might be one to watch in future polls but left his run way too late in 2018. Now that he’s an ex-politician and therefore eligible, Malcolm as well could be a frightbat starter in 2019.
In the end, it was a difficult but justified call to hold no frightbat poll this year, just as the Wheels crew’s decision 38 years ago was correct.
You can’t hand out these trophies if the standard isn’t met. To do so would devalue the awards and diminish the considerable achievements of previous winners.
Bring on 2019, and a truly worthy crazy queen.
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