[imagesource: Daily Friend]

Hi, David,

Hi, all of David’s ardent defenders on Twitter.

Spare us the angry tweets – we’re not going to argue with you.

In fact, I would rather not have written about all this, because it really just plays into David Bullard’s hands, and reminds people that he is still around, stoking those flames.

Let’s get the basics out of the way via News24:

Columnist David Bullard has been sacked as a Daily Friend contributor by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), following a controversial tweet in which Bullard seemingly made light of the k-word. The Daily Friend is the IRR’s news and opinions platform.

Here’s the tweet in question:

Sure, he could say that he’s actually talking about ‘Karens’ – you know, the ‘talk to the manager’ and ‘coronavirus expert’ on Facebook – but he knew what he was doing.

It wasn’t long before he came under fire on Twitter, which was clearly the aim of the tweet in the first place:

The IRR’s Michael Morris said Bullard’s tweet was at odds with the principles of the IRR and the Daily Friend.

“For that reason, we have decided to bring an end to his column and his association with the Daily Friend,” Morris said.

In response, David tweeted:

At the time of writing, Bullard’s ‘author’ page was still live on Daily Friend, with the following description:

After 27 years in financial markets in London and Johannesburg David Bullard had a mid life career change and started writing for the Sunday Times. His “Out to Lunch” column ran for 14 years and was generally acknowledged to be one of the best read columns in SA with a readership of 1.7mln every week. Bullard was sacked by the ST for writing a “racist” column in 2008 and carried on writing for a variety of online publications and magazines. He currently writes for dailyfriend.co.za and politicsweb.co.za.

It’s worth revisiting what that column that led to his sacking covered:

In 2008, Bullard, then a regular contributor to the Sunday Times, was fired from his post after an “extremely racist” column of his was published in the newspaper.

Bullard’s column, titled “Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing”, described what South Africa would have looked like had the “evil white man” not come “to disturb the rustic idyll of the early black settlers”.

You can read the column in full here, if you wish.

Those familiar with Bullard on Twitter know that the ‘k-word’ tweet really isn’t out of character, which makes the supposed ‘outrage’ around the entire thing rather laughable.

This is perfectly illustrated by writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey:

Given that he now has a few extra hours to kill, Bullard is looking forward to a lazy Friday.

Just the one problem:

It can indeed.

Happy Friday to all.

[sources:news24&dailyfriend]