Adam Hills Does Not Want To Kill Anyone

So first Adam Hills tweeted this:

Australia would send a better message to the world if we just hung Pauline Hanson from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

— Adam Hills (@adamhillscomedy) November 15, 2015

And now he’s said this:

It occurred to me that if we dangled Pauline Hanson alongside the French flag, perhaps it would let Muslims around the world know we don’t blame them for the atrocities of an organisation that claims to represent them.

In my head I saw Miss Hanson in a harness, maybe a trapeze, looking comically chastened, suspended below a girder. I thought it was a funny image, so I tweeted this: “Australia would send a better message to the world if we just hung Pauline Hanson from the Sydney Harbour Bridge”

I committed a mortal sin of twitter – sending a tweet and not being clear about what you mean.

About an hour later I checked twitter and was surprised by the outrage. I mentioned it to my wife, who replied that perhaps people thought I wanted Pauline Hanson executed by having her hanged from the Bridge.

In time I have come to realise that the word “hung”, although technically not the same as the word “hanged”, still puts the same image in people’s heads. For that I apologise. I was in no way suggesting Pauline Hanson should be executed.

Angry at being told off by most of twitter, and my wife, I returned to the scene like a dog to its vomit. I tried to clarify that I meant “hung” like dirty laundry, not “hanged” like a criminal. I tried to reinforce that I don’t think Pauline Hanson’s views represent the majority of Australians. I tried to make the image more and more absurd, to reinforce that I was both joking, and not at all advocating someone’s death.

None of it helped.

So here is what I do not think: I do not think Pauline Hanson, or anyone, should be executed, and hanged from any Australian icon, let alone the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I do not condone violence against women. I do not support the shitheads that call themselves ISIS.

And earlier this year we said this:

See, we’re starting to think the loveable Hills we were getting for all those years on Australian television was the act, and the shouty angry guy who seems just a little too scary for comfort is the real deal. Free from the confines of being the safe pair of hands on Spicks and Specks, it might just be that he’s letting the mask slip to show a guy we’re kind of glad is currently half a world away.

Personally, we would have gone with “dangled”.