Some Of His Best Friends Are Gay

THAT appears to be the take-home story in Andrew Bolt's rhapsodic praise of newsreader Peter Hitchener's decision to tell his audience he's a homosexual. This scoop, Bolt says - with an imperious sense of the newsman's elevated position in the social hierarchy - was a "gift to his viewers." They must feel privileged. What next, the weather man presenting us with news of his lifelong love of crossdressing? The last time I heard of such noblesse oblige was when the National Archives of Australia made available online the service records of World War One Diggers. A Gift to the Nation it's called. And now we've been given another national gift: the service record of a nice chap who reads an autocue for a living. He likes other men. There. Australians all, let us rejoice. No, you don't have to be a "homophobe" or a bigot to find this offputting. It is an embarrassing breach of good manners.

Bolt also applauds Australian journalists - for not pursuing the world-historical matter of a newsreader's sexuality. They knew, even if the country was unready to be trusted, that this was "irrelevant to his job and no one's business but his own." What a shame their judiciousness wasn't emulated by Hitchener himself. The irony is that melodramatic gay revelations are becoming almost as cliched as the "camp gags, or shows about fashion, cooking or design" that Bolt characterises as the bad old days for gays. John-Michael Howson, he argues, has endured "intense frustration" from only being given work covering showbiz. What alternative did network executives have? Howson filing nasally intoned reports on the "simply atroh-shus scenes in Beirut, darling"? There were bad old days. But Hitchener's job was safe, as he knew, so let's not mistake his narcissism for real courage on screen.