I’ve realised that controversy sells…

All right, most of us know that Bolt’s book, “Worth Fighting”… Or was it “Worth Fighting For”?

Anyway, Bolt’s book sold less copies than people who’ll read this blog.

Ok, his book is worth less than they’re charging and this blog is free, but my basic point is that – notwithstanding Bolt’s failure to sell more than a thousand copies – controversy sells.

Ok, I’ve always known that. That was why I wrote and produced “The Charles Manson Variety Hour” all those years ago.

It wasn’t exactly “Springtime For Hitler” but it presented a different view on Manson from the established view. When I rang one of those current affair shows, they asked me if it was controversial. I told them it would be once they ran a story on it.

They never got back to me. The trouble was that it was a pretty damn good attempt to say that Manson was neither Satan nor a genius. He was just a sad, pathetic ex-con who didn’t know how to function after years of incarceration. He wasn’t good, but he was about what you could expect from the US penal system. In the end, his followers showed what happens when affluent kids who only care about themselves meet someone who can deal with the criminals from whom they buy their drugs so they’ll do almost anything for a slightly older man. Sort of explains Donald Trump when I think about it…

Anyway, I’ve started to wonder in my old age…

Shit, I’m old. I’m white. I’m a man. Why aren’t I just being paid for all these things? I mean, I should be, right? Isn’t that the way the world works. Isn’t that why Bolt and Price and Turnbull and Trump are very angry? Nobody appreciates how hard it is to be part of one of the most privileged groups in the history of the world.

Anyway, what I was going to say was that maybe it’s time that we should all stop getting angry and just ask all those poor angry white men what they actually want. You know, the whole apology thing.

You know, the Q&A moment where – instead of gasping – we ask Steve Price if he could just articulate how women could become less hysterical. How they could be more like him and Andrew and Alan? You know, those men who never react emotionally. Who take a deep breath and wonder what the best course of action might be.

Andrew, who’s understood that his friend, Tony is no longer PM. And ok, he did suggest that he cried in one of his columns, but they weren’t hysterical tears, they were good, manly tears.

Alan, who’s understood that the banks sometimes have more money and therefore deserve to have their case heard. But that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Steve, who has a very good lawyer and won’t be accused of anything by me, apart from not being ever angry and certainly never hysterical about domestic violence.

Shit, let’s all just stop getting angry and just start saying, you make a very good point.

Coz – let’s be real – as soon as these people have nobody to argue with, they’ll be as pathetic as Tony Abbott when he became PM.