Arsehat of the Year
Crikey‘s Arsehat of the Year for 2020 is not the first winner to be a popular media figure who takes any criticism they get as evidence that they are just too much of a dangerous teller of incendiary truths for all the milquetoast pearl-clutchers in the mainstream.
Hell, he’s not even the second. In that regard, YouTuber Jordan Shanks, aka FriendlyJordies, has to settle behind Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones, the respective winners in 2011 and 2012. Illustrious company.
But Shanks is, as far as we know, the first to campaign to win. Like fools, in giving him a kick after he used his nominally left-wing platform to tell his largely young audience that a bloke shouldn’t necessarily lose his job for sexual assault, we failed to see this coming.
Indeed, ending this awful year by giving the Arsehat to someone who actually wants it — above many other far stronger candidates — is an appropriately dispiriting note. Shanks’ campaign at least makes him a slightly worthier winner.
So congratulations to you and your fans Jordan. You wanted it very badly, which we can all agree is extremely cool, and now it’s yours.
A shoutout to our silver medalist this year, who will go down as one of the great “shoulda-beens” in Arsehat history. Indeed, had it not been for the above intervention he would have won by a huge margin.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison started 2020 with truly dire leadership during the bushfires.
Things never got better. There’s his default setting of evasion and dishonesty. The tautological, meaningless slogans. The irritable, flippant responses to legitimate questions. Saying “we’ll get through this together” while his senior ministers hurled partisan trash at the Victorian state government.
His cheap, confected apoplexy over Australia Post execs buying watches while the Department of Infrastructure paid a Liberal donor 10 times the going rate for a parcel of land. He led a government that managed, in 2020, to be the sleaziest, most corrupt outfit in Australia.
Throughout 2020 Morrison and his government lead an ideological war under the cover of COVID-19 — from the construction of a secretive, fossil-fuel dominated commission to respond to the crisis, to the draining of independent regulators, to the late attempt to gut industrial relations protections.
If you’re as disappointed as we are that he’s missed out, take heart. With Australia’s comparatively strong showing in response to COVID-19 — something for which he does deserve some credit — and an essentially invisible opposition, one imagines he’ll have every opportunity to get back on the list next year.
Person of the Year
Crikey readers have delivered, by quite some distance, the 2020 Person of the Year award to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. No leader in the country had a tougher 2020, perhaps save Morrison early on — and Morrison had a largely compliant media happy to move on from Cobargo as soon as he had. Andrews had no such out.
It is no secret that Crikey has joined and in some cases led criticism of Andrews — there was, in truth, plenty to criticise.
But it’s also true that the relentless barracking from News Corp in particular was gleefully, transparently partisan — you only need to compare the coverage of second waves in South Australia and New South Wales to the front pages that greeted Victoria’s setbacks. Ditto the grubby attacks from federal ministers discussed above.
Throughout this, Andrews quietly did something we’ve been wanting a politician to do for a while: he showed up. Day after day. For 120 consecutive days he fronted the media, explained what was happening and why, and he stayed until there were no more questions. And after months of lockdown, the hard decisions paid off.
Andrews was also one of the few politicians to acknowledge the link between the virus and insecure work, and his government produced a budget that acknowledged that not everyone was affected by the virus equally.
The report into the disastrous hotel quarantine program was released yesterday. Elsewhere, Bernard Keane is giving the Andrews government a well-deserved excoriation for its many failures on this front. Further, the way the virus was policed was hugely problematic. 2020 wasn’t going to give us a saint.
Indeed, Andrews, the “party apparatchik from central casting” hoisted beyond all expectations to become cartoon villain or cult hero, is a perfect emblem for 2020; great triumphs and miserable failures, relentless buffeting and impressive resolve.
I think the article calls it as it happened. Andrews and his government made mistakes, but the level of vicious excoriation from President Shmomo Boofboff and his sycopantic Pentecostal a**kissers far exceeded the mistakes made. Andrews got no slack at all from the rabid, right-wing nutjob media and still managed to do his daily press conference and deal with “opinion minions” like the utterly loathsome and vulgar Credlin. Hated by some he might have been, but it is difficult, I think, to prove that his lockdown decision was the wrong one. President Shmomo, on the other hand, presided over an epidemic of ineptitude and wanton corruption. He fine-tuned the art of making non-announcements sound important. He managed to simply not talk about anything that looked like he had responsibility for (nothing more exemplified this than Robo-debt). He managed to put polish on his hollow and pompous fake empathising; somehow got away with his absurd “this is me at home” campaign and took blustering and batting away anything resembling criticism to a new zenith (he’s not done yet – he can still scale new peaks). But on every occasion, the media let him off the hook, as does the mindless electorate. And all the while, “we” let him. “We” reward him for his supercilious fakery and let him get away with lies and deceit. WTF?
More likely than “…he can still scale new peaks…” of bathos is that he’ll so plumb new depths that the Mariana Trench will seem like a street gutter.
Don’t forget that Lumpen Dullard from Marketing got us off to a tremendously responsible start to our pandemic response by declaring, ‘I’m going tp the footy’ – and did just that – immediately after health authorities had recommended all gatherings of 500+ people be cancelled. What a tool. What an Arsehat.
In my opinion Daniel Andrews showed something that is altogether rare in modern politics, if not modern society totally
And that is leadership without hubris
And I applaud that in his reactions to the mistakes and the successes on managing the Covid-19 crisis
I’ll probably keep voting for Dan in perpetuity (the alternative is unthinkable) but his administration dropped the ball big-time when it came to the quarantine program. Months of restrictive lockdown, economic damage and mental health issues because they created an efficient program for distributing Covid from hotels to the wider community. They still haven’t fessed up to the mistake, which in my mind disqualifies Dan from getting a gong like this.
A top article delivered here, Charlie Lewis.
Andrews underwent a towering volume of criticism by the nation’s (hijacked by the L/NP) mainstream media.
He more-so exemplified by the nothingness contributed by Morrison himself who had been guided by his mobster government ministers.
Christ, Crikey, what IS it with you and continuing to spread dishonest nonsense about Jordan Shanks?! He said absolutely NOTHING OF THE SORT about the (completely unfounded) accusations about Luke Foley. Jesus. Can you do your actual job as investigative journalists, please?
I’m seriously considering not resubscribing if Jordan Shanks is your genuine idea for Arsehat of the Year, and not any of the actual dishonest, corrupt arsehats that Shanks helps to expose.
I totally agree with your comment.
Subscriber since 2007, and I voted for Jordies. It was really a vote against the cheap hipster-journo tactic of trashing people and their bodies of work based on isolated out of context quotes. Choose worthier recipients next time and the asshat awards will soon recover the prestige they deserve.