Friday, November 16, 2012

Final Hamster Wheel shows same old left-wing bias

In comedy and satire everything is exaggerated. So you can see the political subtext very clearly. Many satirists purport to dish out mockery across the board without fear or favour. But that's a crock. They're just as selective as anyone else. And it shows.

Watch anything vaguely humorous on the ABC and you'll see the same dreary left-wing bias every time. The writers and performers are clearly terrified of transgressing uber-PC rules relating to race, gender and sexual identity among other things.

Take the final episode of the Hamster Wheel, which was shown this week. Pretty much every sketch reeked of obnoxious undergraduate Bolshevism (as it always does). Kinda sad for many reasons, not least because the "boys" who write and perform the show are swiftly approaching middle age.

For example, there was a segment on some media beat-up by A Current Affair about the growth in the number of Asian shops in a shopping mall. It was an easy target that was predictably handled. But there was one little part of it that I thought was particularly interesting because it revealed a specific double standard often applied to racial politics in this country.

The boys were making fun of the fact that the tabloid show had hugely exaggerated the extent of the Chinese "takeover" of the mall in question, saying that according to the racists at ACA "just a tiny bit of Asianness makes something completely Asian".

If such a concept can be freely mocked when it comes to discussions of "Asianness" then surely it would apply to related aspects pertaining to Indigenous issues too, right?

No way. As we are all well aware, the official line is that just the slightest hint of Indigenous ancestry is enough to make someone completely and authentically Aboriginal. And woe betide anyone who dares suggest a contrary view.

Good to know that the Chaser boys observe this little legal idiosyncracy very carefully. Otherwise their show could result in even more wasted taxpayers' millions in the form of massive compensation payouts to people whose feelings they had hurt.

And it's not just the writers and performers who know what's required of them by the bullying Left. The audience are right up to speed on this as well.

The "standby eulogy" for Julia Gillard was a case in point. Apart from the fact that it failed to mention the AWU scandal specifically -- which would surely have been the biggest target by a country mile if they really were anarchic takers of the piss (I mean, if anything's gonna "kill" the PM, surely it's this!) -- the audience took offence at the lame, tame gags near the end and even started to groan. It's as if they were saying: "Boys, we chuckled at the beginning to give the impression that we can laugh at our own side. But mocking the Great Helmsperson's recent face plant was simply beyond the pale. You're seconds away from being officially deemed sexist and misogynist. You have been warned!"

Depressing stuff. And to think lefties believe they're the ones with the best sense of humour! What a joke.

4 comments:

  1. Comedy festivals are great for that (and why i don't watch them any more), comedian after comedian with virtually the same standup routine with all the humour of "acceptable" PC mantra, taking swipes at people as they fit on the perceived "victim" hierarchy. What makes me laugh is they are always advertised as "cutting edge". Cutting edge of what, a polystyrene cup.

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  2. I'm waiting for the comedian with a sense of humour and some courage to get up and ask, "Did you hear the one about the Irish Aboriginal Immam and the Asian Lesbian Lumberjack"? That should really set the "perpetually offended" going. But you are right Joan I haven't heard a "cutting edge" comedian with anything funny to say, and withoout a continual string of foul language for a long time. Find I do a lot of Monty Python and Blackadder replays. Even replay the Goon Show.

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  3. Yes, comedy in this country is very conformist, timid and overwhelmingly left-wing. The performers know that their careers will suffer if they question any of the PC dogmas, so they just go along with them.

    I don't mind that many comics are genuinely left-wing. They have a right to be that and some of them can be very funny. But most will not admit their biases, claiming that they mock all sides equally.

    That's so obviously not the case. It's the dishonesty that annoys me more than anything.

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  4. Matt, I understand what you are saying about the racism debate, but I think that you are in more danger of being predictable than the Chaser boys. It would help if you were able to clarify your position on what they did say as well as what they didn't.

    For example, they didn't talk about aboriginality in their piece on the ACA Asian Invasion beat up. But they did make the following points:

    * The ACA piece was racist - highlighting the "[real] Aussies v Asian" conflict the show promoted and the use of Pauline Hanson as some sort of expert.

    * It was inflammatory - the "Asian takeover" is "coming to a suburb near you in [Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane]", plus the use of Pauline Hanson as above.

    * It was a massive exaggeration - suggesting only 4 out of 43 stores had been affected by the "Asian takeover".

    In response, you state that the ACA piece was a "media beat-up" and concede "the fact that the tabloid show had hugely exaggerated" its subject material. You seem to claim that the Chaser's approach is "predictable" because it was so obviously true. At every point you appear to agree with the Chaser's critique.

    But all the time, you are also saying that the ACA sketch is an example of their "obnoxious undergraduate Bolshevism", so it's really hard to know where you stand. Are they actually Boleshevists legitimately critiquing an exaggerated racist media beatup in a predictable way because this is such an easy target and its all true?

    Or just another example of Chaos on Bullshit Mountain?

    yours as ever,
    ThePirateKing

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