The best word that I can find to describe The Weekly is aspirational.
It’s obvious that the Charlie Pickering’s attempt at satirical news wants to emulate John Oliver’s commentary by Last Week Tonight, who himself got his start working as a correspondent for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Aspiring to such levels of comedic virtuosity is probably going to leave any program wanting.
An ongoing issue with The Weekly, though, is how it addresses the subject of ‘race’.
Talking about ‘race’ isn’t problematic per se. It needs to be done, especially in a country like Australia, where racism is ubiquitous but well-hidden. But I can’t think of three people less equipped to handle it than Charlie Pickering, Tom Gleeson and Kitty Flanagan. Lovely people, I’m sure, but all very white.
A year ago, Pickering asked Flanagan whether Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance, who he introduced as a “racism expert and human barometer”.
The absurdity of putting that question to a White Australian woman was at least partially acknowledged by the program itself, with Flanagan stating “I am not the best person to be discussing racism — I am white, so I have never experienced racism”.
Well done Kitty [slow clap].
Instead of leaving the segment there, or asking someone better-qualified, Flanagan went on to say “it’s not racist to be proud of being black” and “reverse racism is not a thing”. The Weekly wanted to have its cake and eat it too— they acknowledged that white people shouldn’t really be deciding what is and isn’t racist, but decided to do so anyway.
The Weekly‘s racial blindspot was again exposed in last week’s 2017 premiere which opened with a parody of #whiteshirtgate — with Pickering declaring to Flanagan and Gleeson “we can’t all be white”.
It was clever, it was so close to being good — I was perilously close to a guffaw before Gleeson said “well what do you want me to do, bronze up?” With Flanagan later stating “I’m actually happy to bronze up, if that helps”.
FFS, The Weekly. I was willing to give you well-meaning idiots a second chance, but you had to fall on your arse within the first 30 seconds of a season premiere. It’s simply not good enough to trivialise blackfacing by casually referring to it as “bronzing up”. The last thing that Australia needs in 2017, is to have its embarrassing love affair with blackface casually dogged on by the likes of misguided progressives, despite how clever or ironic they think they are.
It should be said that the segment wasn’t all bad as it smoothly segued into the introduction of Indigenous staff member Adam Briggs as a new member of staff, and thank god for that. I can only hope that he’ll have a role in the writing process, so that The Weekly’s racial blindspots can finally be dealt with. Here’s hoping.
Hello Niggles 