Is Karl Stefanovic Ready to be a Loser?
On Karl, Rogan, Pavlou, and The Big Grift
We live in Grifter Hell. America, The Grifter Reich, has exported a mode of rabid turbo-hustling that has spread like black mould through the minds of people the world over. The global economy is a human centipede of conmen — giant sperm whales being fed upon by a seemingly infinite stream of self-sucking minnows. The media ecosystem, what’s left of it, is now closer to Glengarry, Glen Ross than All the President’s Men (or heck, even Network), with a few chosen Ricky Romas striding about like colossi with a trillion little Shelley Levene-types hustling non-stop door-to-door salesman patter in, through, and around them. I know because I am amongst it — I am in it (please subscribe) — and, like Shelley Levene, the flop-sweat weighs heavy on my brow.
The Big Grift is everywhere. The Big Grift is inescapable. Everyone’s a sucker.
But there’s money to be made. Nowhere is this more true than on The New Right, which has turned conservatism into a front for a back-alley casino-brothel run on mountebank parlour tricks, sleight of hand, gambling ad sponsorships, and petty cons that would make Moses Pray blush.
There is gold in them there hills. Question is, are you shameless enough to bury your head in the shit and start sucking til you hoover up a nugget?
Karl Stefanovic is. The longtime morning host/broadcasting personality/lad’s lad has decided to take the plunge. His contract ending at Nine later this year (now terminated after his interview with professional cretin, Tommy Robinson), Stefanovic, nothing if not savvy, unplucked a wet finger from a powdery nostril, held it to the breeze and felt the warm blow of the long fart of The Big Grift — the fart heard around the world — and decided to follow the scent.
The question for Karl is, is he ready to be a loser? That, above all else, is The Big Grift’s key requirement. A Faustian pact: do you want to make a million bucks peddling protein powder to embittered post-sex (as in having it) troglodytes? Then prepare to debase yourself. Prepare to go Full Dud.
This does not come as naturally to Karl as a quick glance at his long career would suggest. Morning TV may solely be watched by homebound pensioners, 6am gym junkies who forgot their headphones, and kids who faked asthma attacks to avoid sports carnival (hi), but it is also the most important and successful bulwark of Australia’s cosmically bleak media landscape. To be a Morning TV Personality in Australia is to be given the part of the nation’s most desired self — a handsome-faced, airbrushed, hollow man homunculi, pillowed in a fluorescent morning light void of meaning, intention, and burden, free to speak in BuzzFeed listicle aphorisms like a benzo-riddled Oracle of Delphi, soothing the audience through the interminable morning comedowns of everyday life.
It is Australia’s cushiest job besides Governor General, and like Governor General, it gives you what should be an unconstitutional grip on the reins of power.
You are someone. You matter. You can not be dismissed. And yet…
Karl is as rapacious and shark-brained as any other successful media personality in Australia. These are people who transcended their humanity the moment they signed their first long-term contract — if they stop swimming, they will not just die but spiral out and self-destruct on a scale that no Dancing with the Stars run will amend. Karl, contract up, long in the trenches of network TV, no doubt saw the writing on the wall. He’s a duke in a dying empire. Why be a public masturbator on the deck of the Titanic when you can build a personalised goon shack on one of the lifeboats? It’s an easy decision, really.
He has already factored in the fall out. This, as is obvious to anyone who follows this racket, is part of The Grift. Sooking is its fuel. Karl’s cancellation tour is a means to convert his pouting into punters. Aggrievement is the business model. Nothing appeals to the morons who make up The Big Grift’s marks like a sense of unfairness, unfairness having dogged them their whole sorry lives (or so they’ve convinced themselves). Aggrievement is the key to the golden kingdom. Aggrievement is the grift.
But to channel it, one must don the donkey skin of the loser. This is easy for born losers, many of whom have made small to middling killings in The Big Grift, either as computer room fascists or selfie-stick propagandists, or both. Just look at Drew Pavlou, who Karl has appointed as his personal Professor Chaos. Drew has turned being an uncharismatic stupol wheelie-bagger into a profitable content-slop con act. But Drew is and always has been a loser. It is built into his scam: he is a lolcow, and people’s fondness of prodding his retched sliminess (as you would a washed up sea slug) is what drives most the engagement which earns him money. Drew can post obviously ludicrous GoFundMe’s for rib removal surgery because we accept that if Drew doesn’t suck himself off 24/7 he will lose his sole source of sustenance and shrivel up and die.
Call it the Jerk Circle of Life.
This is the kind of loser you are required to be to maintain The Big Grift, in Australia especially. To pull off the con, you can no longer sit with the cool kids. Drew has never sat at that table in his life, of course, but Karl has only ever known it. Now he must pick up his tray and sit with the Nazis, the wife-bashers, the war criminals, the gender-criticals, the anti-vaxxers, the lizard people hunters, the flat-earthers, the 5 foot 1, and Kevin Spacey, and he must pretend to enjoy their company for the rest of time lest he bust his own little corner in The Big Grift’s uncountable house of cards.
Karl — who has thrived as an empty suit with a good orthodontist — has to reckon with the fact that the ‘new media’ he’s entered may be the only space where he is even more replaceable than he was on breakfast television. The Big Grift is infinite, afterall. It is all encompassing. It’s everywhere, from The White House to Silicon Valley to Canberra. There is a new Karl every nano-second, and there are only so many $5 subscriptions and boner pill ad reads to go around at the end of the day.
The Australian Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan. To quote Ricky Roma: “you never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.” Well, Karl’s mouth is agape. Is he truly ready to suck shit?
Imagine, watching the very worst of the worst wallowing through an endless sea of gormless, vacuous, feckless, bullshit artists, and then saying to themselves, “Fuck yeah, that’s a bit of me.” I hope the prick gets served an off prawn and chunders his toxic heart out into the nearest shit stained toilet bowel for the rest of time.
Patrick, dear god how do have this much gold in you. 😚👌