The Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Hornery wrote another scathing article about Kyle Sandilands on the weekend, practically calling for Sandilands to be cancelled.
It’s the second time in less than two weeks that Hornery has come for Sandilands. The irony is that Hornery is himself freshly free from the ‘cancelled’ prison. He faced severe backlash for his column, where he complained that Rebel Wilson revealed her sexuality before he had the chance to break the news in his weekly gossip column.
However, Hornery has survived the backlash and is now back and calling for ARN to cut ties with Sandilands over his recent monkeypox comments.
News.com.au has reported that on-air Sandilands described Monkeypox as “the big gay disease floating around!” He then joked that he wouldn’t let his newborn son near his producer, Brooklyn Ross.
Hornery has denounced Sandilands comments and slammed Sandilands in his weekly Sydney Morning Herald column. He wrote: “Sandilands, who appeared on the back of a float in the 2018 Sydney Mardi Gras, has deeply offended the marginalised groups he claims to have long championed, including gay men, who are confronting potentially the greatest health crisis and stigma to impact them since the HIV/AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.”
Now, Hornery is on the attack again with his latest column in SMH, where he called Sandilands an “untouchable cash cow!” And also wrote, “He’s the biggest star of Sydney’s FM breakfast shows and the master of shock value – for which he’s paid accordingly – but after the latest episode in a long line of controversies, a question must be asked: will Kyle Sandilands ever use up all of his nine radio lives?
“Will his bosses at KIIS FM’s parent company ARN ever be brave enough to cut him loose? Indeed, could they even afford to?”
The article dives into Sandilands’ history of controversial remarks and discusses his value to the network as he brings in ears and advertisers. Basically, Hornery makes it clear that he doesn’t think Sandilands should have a job.
This isn’t exactly a new opinion about Sandilands; after all, he is a shock jock, but it’s an interesting stance from Hornery because he has just survived his own taste of cancel culture where people en masse were calling for him to lose his job. Why? Because he was also accused of doing something hurtful to the LGBTQI+ community.
There’s no denying Sandilands comments about Monkeypox were gross and incorrect, but is there any denying that Hornery’s tone-deaf comments about ‘outing’ a celebrity were also missing the mark? Interesting that Hornery feels he is on a high enough moral ground to attack Sandilands.
Truthfully, there are no winners here. Both Hornery and Sandilands still have platforms because they are two privileged white men that will always benefit from society, giving them the benefit of the doubt.
