My personal sleep paralysis demons Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O invited Pete Evans onto their show to give him a chance to be “uncancelled”, which was about as frustrating as you would expect. Aussie media stop rehabilitating dipshit men challenge.
Pete Evans, who you might know for his kooky COVID-19 conspiracy theories, alleged neo-Nazi symbol display, anti-sunscreen tirade and general medical misinformation, is apparently someone we should all consider the perspective of, according to shock jocks Kyle and Jackie O.
The duo that’s about as dynamic as my last two brain cells have a segment of their show called “Uncancelled”, where they essentially hear out a celebrity who’s been “cancelled”, gently interrogate them, and then ask their audience if the person deserves to be uncancelled. Because it’s all that easy, amirite?
Anyway, this time the two brought on Evans, whose demise truly accelerated when he spruiked a $15,000 light machine as a cure for COVID. Yep, that’ll do it.
“Did we ruin a bloke’s life just over being scared about COVID?” Kyle asked in what I assume was meant to be an empathetic and self-reflective tone, before the half-hour-long segment proceeded to platform Evan’s bullshit, the majority of which had to be bleeped out for legal reasons. Take it as a fkn sign, mate.
In the segment, Jackie O asked Evans about the lava lamp and then both hosts noted neither of them knew the symbol Evans shared was a white supremacist symbol either.
White people admitting they don’t know much about racism does not excuse them from not knowing much about racism!
But, I digress.
When Evans was asked about COVID misinformation, masks and vaccines, a whole bunch of his answer was bleeped out. Like, to the point where much of what he was saying was unintelligible. But the gist of it was that he seemed to double down on his bullshit.
Then, they moved onto the light box/lava lamp, which Evans claimed he never said would cure COVID.
“Sorry, can I just pull you up – Pete Evans, you were asked about the lamp and you laughed it off and said, ‘Oh I never said it …’ You were fined $80,000 because you did get on Instagram and say ‘Buy this $15,000 lamp, it’s got a setting for COVID’,” producer Brooklyn Ross stepped in.
“You don’t look back on that and think, ‘I shouldn’t have done that’?”
Kyle then said Brooklyn is “mainstream media” who “believes every press release”, lol.
Evans’ answer was again, mostly bleeped out — I’m pretty sure my ear is now permanently damaged — but here’s a key bit:
“No, not at all,” Evans responded. Yikes.
He then said he had “never used” the device, which is wild given he was literally spruiking it for $15,000.
“What did that setting do? What was it supposed to do? You were selling this machine, you didn’t know what that setting did?” Ross pressed.
“I wasn’t promoting it as a way to cure COVID,” Evans insisted. Uh huh.
He then went on some random tangent about pharmaceuticals being pulled off the market too for misleading claims, which was, again, bleeped out.
Evans also denied being a white supremacist, despite sharing a Nazi symbol on Facebook and making provocative comments on it like “I was waiting for someone to see that”.
“I’ve never been associated with anything to do with Neo-Nazism. And if you look at all of the body of work that I’ve done, in the 20 cookbooks [I’ve released], I celebrate every single culture that I know has beautiful food in the world, including Jewish food, including Indigenous food,” he said (where Kyle interjected with a joke about Hitler’s “favourite hotdog”).
“It seems to be sort of the lowest-hanging fruit these days, where the media attack people for that notion, you know, that somebody’s racist.”
So, basically, in this 30 minutes of radio time, Evans didn’t take responsibility for a single thing he was accused of, and deflected the entire time. And then Kyle said he always liked Evans, and Jackie O said she was sympathetic to his whole wellness thing, and both of them talked shit about “the media” as if they aren’t part of it.
Kyle also claimed news writers have “no free will” and are forced to write what they do because of Big Media. Just an FYI, as a news writer, that is just false.
Despite the BS, majority of Kyle & Jackie O callers on and off the air voted that Pete Evans should be uncancelled.
Brb, going to lay face-down on the ground and disassociate so I don’t have to fkn deal with this.
