900,000 Australian TV viewers had no problem with the most recent episode of Good News Week. Some viewers, however, who need to keep themselves in the headlines, didn't :
Crude language, sex and violence on the box has a family group claiming TV is becoming nothing more than a septic tank of dirt and garbage.
In Monday's Good News Week, bad language was rife -with the f-word dropped once every 10 minutes. The popular satire program also featured jokes about masturbation, child molesting, erections and sex with dogs.
The usual suspects are involved in these fresh yelps of MoralOutrage!
"It used to be about coming up with good ideas and talent to entertain people; now, it's all about scraping the bottom of the barrel to be more shocking than the last guy," he said. "It's like diving into a septic tank. There's just too much gratuitous sex and violence on television. The networks should be held accountable.
"Not everyone can afford cable television, so poor people like us are stuck with whatever the networks dish up to us."
Must not have any good books worth reading. Or any thick books based on myths written in the 4th century, and rewritten in the 15th century worthy, of another flick through. Are there no Christian video games yet?
Some viewers"It's not acceptable, particularly on the ABC and SBS because our tax dollars subsidise them."
900,000 other Australians didn't have a problem with that Good News Week. But who cares what they think?
Minority opinions are far more important.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Storm In A Palestinian Sperm Bank Sample Cup
By Darryl Mason
Probably the funniest thing about the debut of John Safran's new series Race Relations was the tailored warning to sensitive viewers from the ABC's Director of Television, Kim Dalton, "urging conservative viewers not to watch the program" :
"If you think you are going to be offended or outraged (or want to be offended or outraged) then don’t tune in," Kim Dalton says.
More bias from the ABC.
Why should conservatives get tailor-made viewer warnings from ABC directors that a show might contain 'liberal' content that may cause them offence? Where are the viewer warnings for Lefties when Piers Akerman makes an appearance on Insiders?
In the end, Safran's Race Relations proved to be wholly uncontroversial, and far milder than most were led to believe by tabloid media hype and a concerted effort to whip up more Chaseresque MoralOutrage! hysteria before the first episode even aired.
According to this story, only five complaints were received by the ABC over Race Relations, even though an audience of more than 700,000 tuned in, mostly people under the age of 30.
It's not that there wasn't challenging content in the show, it's that the public seems well bored by the kind of confected controversy that click-bait hungry online media try to whip up on a nearly daily basis now.
The ruse didn't work this time, Australians refused to play along, and in the end Race Relations debuted with barely a whimper of MoralOutrage!
It will be worth watching to see how the rest of Race Relations unfolds, but it feels like they're giving far too much away in the promos. Burning away at our interest, our curiosity about what Safran is going to get up to next. The constant promos are like spoiler material, killing the surprises to come. Oh look, Safran blacks up next week, and when is the episode on when he goes on dates as a chick, or as the Elephant Man?
Hearing for weeks that John Safran masturbates over a photo of Barack Obama was a lot funnier than actually seeing it done.
It's not enough to simply make us cringe. That's far too easy. Safran's big missions is to challenge our minds, our prejudices and our beliefs with his look at inter-racial love and relationships in a world where the White Man-Dominated 20th Century is already fading fast in the rear-view mirror of history.
On Twitter, ABC boss Mark Scott points out this piece published at the National Times on how TV comedy is being killed by committees and the easily offended. Excerpts :
....the BBC has decreed that its comedies are not to be ''unduly intimidatory, humiliating, intrusive, aggressive or derogatory''. John Howard Davies, who used to run BBC comedy, pointed out that this is the sort of absurdity that happens when a committee decides guidelines. An individual exercising editorial judgment is far preferable, especially if that individual has been chosen because of his or her connection with the real world, and what makes people laugh in it.
I have occasionally thought that I used to find programs put out by the BBC funny because I was so much younger when I saw them. However, watching re-runs of old comedy programs, I realise I was wrong: they were, plainly and simply, very funny. The famous Fawlty Towers episode in which Basil insults the Germans fails every one of the new guidelines. It is racist, intimidating, humiliating, mocks Spaniards, Germans, and the mentally ill, and commits other offences too numerous to mention. It is also dementedly funny, even after repeated viewings over 30 years.
After 70 or so years of influencing and shaping the definition of the national sense of humour, the BBC now seems to have forfeited its ability to do that.
I don't know what, indeed, there will be left for us to chortle at.
It makes me realise that my wife is right when she says that once you get past the age of 40, there isn't really anything on the BBC for you. Except Gardeners' World, of course: and we should make the most of that until someone realises how much it discriminates against those who don't have gardens, and who might feel humiliated by the lack of one.
The push for more censorship of Australian comedy and satire does not appear to be coming from the public, but from groups concerned with garnering publicity and profile and tabloid media looking for easy, cheap content to fulfill it's weekly clickbait 'Moral Panic! quota.
Netball Australia has condemned an ABC Television skit featuring a fake interview with a man claiming to have been sexually assaulted by the national team.
The skit, a clear reference to May's Four Corners interview with the woman at the centre of the Cronulla group sex scandal, is due to air on ABC's new current affairs/comedy crossover show, Hungry Beast next Wednesday.
A promo for the skit aired on Wednesday night.
Err, yeah. It was pretty obvious the short segment that aired was the skit in full, and not a promo for a longer segment next week. How fucking dim do you have to be to not get that?
And how ironic then that Hungry Beast's first show also featured a segment testing the gullibility of Australia's media.
I liked Hungry Beast. I thought the mix of skit comedy, serious interviews, media japery and WTF? statistics was very interesting. The jump from jokes to a shattering segment on the wife and mother of an Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan was jarring, but not wrong. And one seriously bizarre haircut from a host was not enough to turn me off.
Here's producer Andrew Denton talking about his latest creation :
UPDATE : The Daily Telegraph is crowing now about how it's manufactured MoralOutrage! beat up got the Man Gang Raped By Australian Netball Team skit pulled from repeats of Hungry Beast.
Gee, what a victory for good taste. Society has been saved, yet again, from laughing by the Daily Telegraph, backers of kid-killing wars and co-distributors of made-up stories about children having sex because of coloured wristbands.
You won't see the the skit on ABC TV again, but, curiously enough, the Daily Telegraph is running the 'banned' video on its website, with no adult content warning, generating revenue from taxpayer-funded TV clips, for which they paid nothing to use, as number-one-story-of-the-day content.
Most of the people who bothered to comment on the story at the Daily Telegraph website see it as anything but yet another pathetic MoralOutrage! beat up, and a further denigration of Australia's once infamous reputation for being able to have a good laugh at themselves.
"I feel sorry for my 8 year old son, because when he grows up Comedy will be illegal."
"Oh My GOD! Its official, we are now just like the YANKS. Consumed with political correctness and afraid to laugh at ourselves. WE ARE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE."
It's an interesting conjob the Daily Telegraph has been running, from the days of The Chaser. Record a clip from an ABC-TV show, whip up some MoralOutrage! the next day, try and get the clip banned from further repeats on the ABC, while running the clip on your own news site, while also pointing out that the fact the 'controversial skit' has now been censored, leaving most readers little choice but to watch the clip at the Daily Telegraph website.
When will ABC managing director Mark Scott stop caving in and finally tell The Daily Telegraph to go and get fucked?
They look like a symbol of childhood innocence. But these bracelets are part of an "insidious" game that sees primary school kids perform sex.
And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA.
The exact same story, under the same byline, appeared in the Courier Mail. With a slight change of emphasis to lock in local interest, and concern :
"...these colourful bracelets are behind an "insidious" craze of primary schoolkids performing sex acts that it is feared will soon sweep through Queensland."
WA, Queensland, where will this insidious made-up craze that doesn't drive children into sex spread next?
PerthNow readers were not so easily fooled :
"this is so obviously made up/an urban legend, nice 'news' story"
"'And it is feared the craze may soon sweep WA' a fine example of yellow journalism."
"Stupidest news report I've ever seen. Parents don't be concerned if see kids wearing them it means nothing. Ridiculous!"
"These harmless fashion statments are not promoting the sexualisation of youth - this ill-informed journalist is!"
"Theseare all over the u.k media as well with almost identical headlines andstories.why would adults honestly think 11 year old kids would behaving sex behind sheds because the right bracelet was broken!!Hysterical adults on one side and pedo dreamers with wild fantasies ofdelusion on the other.Leave the kids alone!"
This near daily focus on the alleged sex lives of children by the mainstream media,where the stories more often than not turn out to be totally false, is disturbing to say the least.
Is this the kind of "quality journalism" News CEO John Hartigan thinks Australians will pay to read online?
CosmicJester notes the only sources for this 'story' appear to be a Facebook page and UrbanDictionary.
If the"journalist" had bothered to google these evil sex bracelets, theywould have found out that they are nothing new and they are mainly amoral panic/urban legend designed to scare dim witted journalists andparents.
Snopes.com reveals that this panic goes back till at least 2003 and is a slightly updated urban legend from the 1990's.
UPDATE : The bullshit 'shag bands' story did the trick. It became the most read storyon the CourierMail, News.com.au and PerthNow websites :
