Your line in the Sandilands

 

You know what, Jackie? I don’t doubt you’ve been traumatised by your experience. I’m sure many of your ‘guests’ have been as well.

The difference is, none of them chose to spend the prime of their life being the socially acceptable enabler for a vile, abusive shitbag. That’s the trade-off for the millions you made from it.

You could have chosen to walk when your mate decided to hook a 14yo sexual assault victim up to a polygraph in front of her mother for shits and giggles. People would have respected you for that. But it wasn’t until the abuse affected you that you found your line in the Sandilands.

Your occasional tut-tutting does not absolve you of responsibility. It only gave deniability to your co-host and network.

By all means take the cretin and the network to the cleaners. But my violin remains firmly in its case over the fact you’re the latest victim of the monster you helped create.

You can’t call me AI

I woke up this morning* to see that both Trump and Musk had posted A.I. videos of themselves as action heroes.

And I’m left wondering: Who the fuck is impressed by this shit?

How is it that two of the most powerful men in the world are so tragically insecure that they feel the need to do this? And how can millions of people still think they’re geniuses and not pathetic?

If you’re middle-aged and your life hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped, and it gives you a little confidence boost to paste your head onto the body of James Bond or an extra from Sparta, I get that. It’s mostly harmless.

But when you’re already more rich and powerful than the actual action heroes you’re pretending to be without having to do any real work, why is that still not enough? Why do they have to play digital dress-up? And why does a culture that considers personal success as the ultimate measure of human value let them get away with it?

I know some of you are going to file this under “haters gonna hate.” You know who you are. But let’s unpack that. I don’t hate them. If they weren’t destroying so many lives, I’d feel sorry for them.

I’m a creative, and have been since long before I realised it. I’m a writer, I’m a musician, I’m a composer. You don’t choose the pursuit, it chooses you.

To me, it would be the ultimate admission of lifelong defeat to have a machine make me look as cool as I’ve always wanted to be. And who would respect me for it if I did?

So the real question is: how does a mediocre, low self-esteem shitkicker like me end up with more self-respect than people who are rich and powerful enough to send the world into a spin on a tweet?

I’m not rich, famous, or powerful and never will be. All I have is the love and respect of those who mean the most to me. Can those guys in the A.I. videos say the same? I don’t think so.

 

* Ba-DOW-ba!