"He is an institution in our media community... he’s the conscience of our country."
Carte Blanche executive producer George Mazarakis
On apologising on national TV this evening for his racist article having offended detractors (including most South Africans), self-professed 'celebrity journalist' Brave Dullard confessed no regret at having written it. Disingenuously distorting Vince Maher's brilliantly provocative suggestion in the Mail & Guardian that racism might sometimes be revealed by the reading rather than the writing of contentious columns, the Sunday Times hack fired last week by editor Mondli Makhanya may some day come to view his appearance on 3 talk With Noeleen as his Britney Spears moment.
But I doubt it.
Bullard, covering his over-exposed and to now over-paid ass, smugly asserted he'd not been online since penning his pernicious piece. Denying knowledge of white-supremacist FaceBook groups (there are none) and myriad virulently racist annotators leaping to his unearned defence — and emboldened by reported job offers from several so-called leading Sough African print publications (the Independent Group's The Star picked up his latest piece), he was barely able to restrain himself from accusing the Sunday Times's editorial team and his readers of having written the execrable piece themselves.
Look, we have some great journalists in this country but our newspapers are far from world class. Dave Bullard might, given luck, contacts, and some bent and twisted acts of an unknown nature, be able to inveigle his way into a British tabloid but, as a newspaper columnist, he's sadly over-rated.
South Africans are presently engaged in an extremely healthy, sometimes volatile debate on racism and its effect on our society. Bullard, with an eye to the main chance, exploited the moment but betrayed his employers and South Africans by attempting to pass off a highly offensive piece of race hate as a 'contribution' to the debate attending one of our most dehumanising and debilitating social ills.
Perhaps more stupidly, he tried to pass himself off as a good journalist. Maher's column put paid to that little deceit.
If our media learn anything from the Brave Dullard, they should remember that engendering conflict generally leads to its realisation. Worse, poor journalism perpetuating the problems it purports to address drags our print media into a spin cycle of the sort evident on Google's news page, where thousands of publications daily bombard a gullible public with millions of words posing as substantive reportage.
The nauseatingly embarrassing U.S. presidential nominations race, the Global War of Terror, the U.S.'s impending strike against Iran, an imploding global economy, resource scarcity, irreversible environmental degradation and rumours of rain are prime examples of subjects on which a great deal of time, money, and energy are spent — while avoiding their subjects altogether.
The opportunistic likes of Bullard slither from this swamp of relativist verbiage to poison us with their words. They create a form of post-modern confusion in which it's acceptable for Thabo Mbeki to claim no crisis in Zimbabwe and for ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe to accuse the Scorpions of "...sheltering former apartheid security police intent on destroying the ruling party."
I'm keen to communicate Mantashe's comment to one of my neighbours. A lawyer in the National Prosecuting Authority whose figure would lend a svelte allure to any SAPS uniform, she has assured me the Scorpions merely followed the money.
Cutting a somewhat forlorn and pathetic figure, Dave Bullard appears to be leaving the room.
"If something goes out with my name on it I want it to be excellent."
Dave Bullard
It is, Dave, it surely is... now remember to close that door behind you.
Bullard Apologises
Following threats to approach the Labour Court, Dave Bullard comes clean and apologises to his friends and readers in a column he cannot help but lace with implicit excuses for his loathsome behaviour:
"...I offer sincere and heartfelt apologies to those who were offended, including Mondli Makhanya, my friend and former editor, whom I respect enormously. Particularly offensive to so many was the suggestion that a family who had lost a child would mourn for a week or so and then have another child.
Despite my claim that this is a fantasy SA, I realise that this was an insensitive remark to make and I humbly apologise.
The use of the term "simple tribesmen" was never intended to imply stupidity but to suggest an uncomplicated lifestyle. Nonetheless it offended my readers and therefore requires an apology. Other critics referred to my cavalier disregard for ancestor worship and one even felt that my suggestion that huts were built to catch most of the day’s sun insinuated that black people are lazy. Once again, I am sorry to have caused so much offence to so many of my regular readers."
Dave Bullard
Isn't it amazing how swiftly "celebrity journalists", drunk with a power derived from the words they wield, distance themselves from any effect their words might have? Indeed, what can one do with a person like this?
You forgive him. I know I do. That said, I don't trust the Brave Dullard to behave any differently in the future than he has in the past. But it takes a big man to climb down and, for doing so, Dave Bullard has my respect.
