“Hypocrisy” of Kamahl-Adams Bradman feud

Joe Hildebrand calls out the hypocrisy of ABC star Phillip Adams’ “Honorary White” tweet, amid lenient public response.

Just when you thought 2022 had nothing left to give, along comes Phillip Adams. What a time to be alive.

The high-profile ABC presenter is a famous atheist but any other non-believer in the country could be forgiven for instantly dropping to their knees to thank the Good Lord for the thigh-slapping showstopper of pompous hypocrisy delivered by His lost sheep this week. They honestly should be charging for tickets.

For anyone who missed it – which appears to be a suspiciously high number – Adams called the legendary Australian singer Kamahl an “Honorary White”. He did it publicly, in writing and directly to Kamahl himself.

ABC presenter Phillip Adams. Picture: Julie Adams

Legendary entertainer Kamahl. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Kamahl’s crime was to question Adams’ Twitter tirade against Don Bradman following revelations he had written a letter to Malcolm Fraser after the 1975 election urging the new PM to stand up to socialists and unions.

Given that Bradman was a businessman, stockbroker and known conservative the fact that he wasn’t too fond of socialists and unionists seems hardly surprising. But for a handful of hardcore Whitlamites still recovering from the Dismissal this apparently meant The Don was also a white supremacist.

Fittingly, Adams opened the batting at 10.59am on Boxing Day with a tweet that said: “Bradman refused to meet Mandela?”

This came after a 9.03am reply to an earlier Adams post from the cheerfully named user “Poppy Maclean” who said of Bradman: “He refused to meet Nelson Mandela on the grounds he was a ‘terrorist’ … why do we worship men who play with balls?”

Couple of red flags there. But not enough to stop Lucky Phil from driving home two hours later. Perhaps he should have waited for the response to a real journalist, cricket podcaster Paul Dennett, who replied to Poppy that afternoon:

“Hi – I wasn’t aware of this. Can’t find anything online but I am interested. Do you have a link by any chance?”

Spoiler alert: Poppy didn’t and so Paul didn’t run with it, politely noting the lack of, well, anything.

Phillip Adams and Kamahl's Twitter feud about Sir Donald Bradman and replies. Picture: Twitter

Still, Adams was convinced, and Kamahl was confused, replying to his “Bradman refused to meet Mandela?” tweet with this simple question:

“Why do you think Sir Donald Bradman refused to meet Mandela? Why do you think the greatest ever ‘spotsman’ (sic) welcomed me at his home from August 1988 every year, till he left us in 2001? He also left me letters he wrote every year. Why Phillip?”

Quote tweeting Kamahl’s innocent question so all his 75,000 followers could see it – rather ironically given that it now seems to have been deleted – Adams responded:

“Clearly, Kamahl, he made you an Honorary White. Whereas one of the most towering political figures of the 20th century was deemed unworthy of Bradman’s approval.”

It is at precisely this point that every sane Australian will hear in their heads the sound of the Family Feud in-house synthesiser going “Wenh-wonh”.

The survey did not say that Phillip.

Phillip Adams and Kamahl's Twitter feud about Sir Donald Bradman. Picture: Twitter

As many better journalists than Adams have effusively since told him, his claim of Bradman refusing to meet Mandela is nothing short of horsesh-t. Its genesis seems to lie in a visit by Mandela to Sydney in 2000 which Bradman, by then 92, was too unwell to attend. He died five months later.

Instead Bradman sent a letter and gift presented to the South African hero lauding him as “a champion of humanity and a man with a compassion for mankind”, according to sports journalist Neil McMahon. Mandela likewise famously revered Bradman.

And so on the facts themselves it seems that Adams is utterly wrong and a perpetuator of what his sworn enemy Donald Trump would call fake news.

But more illuminating is the preposterous spectacle of a supposedly progressively white man telling a black man who dares to question him that he isn’t really black.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more nasty, derogatory and racist slur against someone who really was a dark-skinned pioneer in Australian entertainment and culture when it was overwhelmingly white and who suffered much racism and ridicule as a result.

And yet this is so often the go-to trope of left-wing intellectuals and activists whenever they encounter a person of colour who dares deviate from their world view. Any black man or woman who succeeds in the world without a radical agenda is characterised as an “Uncle Tom”, a “coconut” or, as Adams himself called Kamahl, an “Honorary White”.

And if you think it’s an isolated incident, just ask conservative Indigenous leaders like Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price about their experiences with so-called tolerant progressives.

Indeed, it is behaviour like this that often makes me reluctant to call myself a man of the left. What I am, however, is a man of principle. I believe in free speech and I don’t want Phillip Adams cancelled or counselled or censured or sacked.

All I ask is for people to imagine that what he said, that a black person he disagrees with must be an “Honorary White” – a despicable South African term for coloured people deemed acceptable to the Apartheid regime – was instead said by any non-left commentator.

Imagine if it was said by Piers Morgan or Jeremy Clarkson about Meghan Markle. Imagine if it was said by Alan Jones or Andrew Bolt about anybody. And then imagine the white-hot nuclear outrage that would engulf the globe.

The silence you hear now is the sound of hypocrisy.