Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

Ok, so tonight The Weekly continued on its merry way being a shithouse news program, but somewhere in there they decided to throw in some coverage of the media’s coverage of Waleed Aly’s Logie nomination. You know, this kind of rubbish:

5. Aly needs to be truly popular to win.

It would be great if Aly was popular, but his show isn’t yet the league of breakfast television juggernauts Today and Sunrise. As prosaic as those shows can be, there’s no arguing with their huge draw with audiences.

And this:

“The Logies are an embarrassment. It is a complete joke. What has Waleed ever done? Because he does an editorial slapping someone down every now and then, does that qualify him for a Gold Logie? And is The Project successful? No.”

(we’re guessing the journalist found that particular “well-placed TV insider” inside the Herald-Sun offices, as it’s remarkably similar to opinions publicly held by at least one of their regular TV writers)

And most importantly for the clumsy and ham-fisted point we’re about to make, this:

‘Where is Lisa Wilkinson’s Gold Logie?’ fellow Channel Nine star Ben Fordham inquired during the show, to which Karl eventually responded: ‘Lisa’s too white’.

Clearly there’s enough going on there* for a hard-hitting show like The Weekly to really sink their teeth into. So what jokes did they get around to making?

Well, it seems Charlie Pickering was the one who should be outraged, because he was on The Project for years and never got a nomination. “Was it because I’m white?” Pickering said, “who knows?”

Huh?

Obviously that joke wasn’t the same as the joke made on The Today Show. Totally different. Not at all similar. Not alike. Nup. Sure, The Weekly didn’t actually mention The Today Show‘s clumsy racism, but just because they made the exact same joke doesn’t mean… wait, what?

(rumors that we’ll be offering a prize to anyone who can actually tell Charlie Pickering and Karl Stefanovic apart are clearly untrue. We can’t afford to give away prizes)

Basically, if you felt like it’d be nice to have some more evidence around to point out how pissweak The Weekly actually is when it comes to anything remotely resembling a tough issue, then good news! Watching them confront a pretty gosh darn obvious case of entrenched racism in the Australian media and not only being unable to say the word “racism” but instead going with a recycled joke from The Today Show – before deciding that the best angle to take was “ha ha Charlie, Aly was nominated for doing your old job better than you did” – should get the job done pretty nicely.

Not that “ha ha Charlie, Aly was nominated for doing your old job better than you did” isn’t kind of funny.

*what actually seems to be going on is that this year’s Gold Logie’s field is so weak the winner (whoever it is) will be coming from a dud show, which looks bad for the awards and the industry as a whole. It was fine for Carrie Bickmore to win last year because she’s blonde and pretty and there’s the whole tragic dead partner backstory to justify her winning on a show no-one watches, but Aly is a lefty Muslim (and therefore supposedly not on-side to TV Week / News Corp readers) on that same low-rating show so now it’s time for “insiders” to sink the boots in.