Piers Akerman: Little progress as hypocritical apology didn’t explain delighted response to joke

Belated apology to appalling anti-Christian joke exposes the shamefully shallow nature of The Project, writes Piers Akerman.

The struggling Channel 10 network’s lame panel show, The Project, belatedly apologised for permitting a homosexual comedian to deliver an appalling anti-Christian joke.

In keeping with its support for the Gay Pride celebration, the US-owned Channel 10 invited queer comic Reuben Kaye on to The Project and gave him the final segment Tuesday, during which he provided a line which had host Waleed Aly smirking as his co-panellists Sarah Harris, Sam Taunton and Kate Lambroek laughed like drains.

Kaye has a well-deserved reputation on the gay club circuit for his beyond-edgy humour. Like most of the material presented by the LGBT+ (and you can run through the entire alphabet as more so-called genders are revealed), his schtick is not mainstream family fare.

The killer joke which had some on the panel throwing their arms up in the air so overcome were they with mirth was: “I love Jesus, I love any man who can get nailed for three days straight and come back for more.”

This is in line with the antics of the drag queens who routinely mock the Catholic Church by dressing as nuns – though during the AIDS epidemic of the ’90s, it was the nuns who provided palliative care to AIDS victims at St Vincent’s hospice which is a one-minute walk from the Oxford St route of the annual Mardi Gras parade.

Fans demanded The Project apologise for a Jesus joke comedian Reuben Kaye made on air.

That parade in which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese boasted of becoming the first prime minister to march even though Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy had joined the march back in 2018. following the Dykes on Bikes and Boys on Bikes who had kicked off the evening’s festivities.

The Project’s Muslim host Aly, a darling of the progressives and indeed, a favourite of the former Liberal prime minister, has been a fierce defender of Islam throughout his media career.

The Project hosts Waleed Aly and Sarah harris react to a joke about Jesus by Reuben Kaye. Picture: The Project/Channel 10

When Kaye delivered his thigh-slapper, Aly did nothing to indicate he felt uncomfortable, let alone offended.

Had The Prophet Mohammad been the butt of his joke, his reaction would have been radically different.

No one jokes about the founder of Islam without risking their lives, as acclaimed author Salman Rushdie knows to his cost.

When Muslim terrorists set bombs which killed three and maimed 264 in 2013, Aly leapt in to say that the most likely perpetrators were “American patriots” (you know, spooky white guys) and went on to tell his audience that the West was “maturing” in the way it handled terrorism.

Salman Rushdie tweeted this image of himself after his attack. Picture: Twitter

Presumably after the visceral response in the West to the Islamist Bali bombings and World Trade Centre atrocities.

There is, Aly opined, “a pragmatic recognition that terrorism is a perpetual irritant”.

That “perpetual irritant” nearly cost Rushdie, one of the world’s most celebrated authors, his life last August when an Islamist stabbed him in the face and arm, blinding him in one eye and costing him the use of one hand.

Rushdie was making a rare public appearance after having had a fatwa placed upon him in February, 1989, by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the then Supreme Leader of Iran and one of the most prominent Muslim leaders, after publication of his best-selling novel, The Satanic Verses.

Rushdie’s Japanese translator was subsequently murdered, his Italian translator was stabbed and a Norwegian publisher was later murdered while 37 people were killed in Turkey when a hotel was set alight because a guest was to translate the work into Turkish.

Waleed Aly offered an apology a day after comic Reuben Kaye made a joke on The Project that resulted in a deluge of complaints. Picture: The Project/Channel 10

Twenty-four hours after the despicable Kaye cracked his one-liner, Aly and fellow panellist Harris offered an apology after the network was deluged with complaints and calls for The Project to be cancelled.

Harris said the joke had “taken us all by surprise”, but that doesn’t explain the panel’s delighted response.

Aly said: “We want to acknowledge the particular offence and hurt that it caused our Muslim and especially our Christian viewers. Obviously, I understand how profound that offence was.”

Which doesn’t explain why he didn’t immediately react with a display of distaste to the “profound offence”, responding instead with a smirk.

The reality is that progressives dislike Christianity and are working to erase it from our history though the Christian philosophy underpins every aspect of our law and democracy.

It’s OK to joke about Jesus on The Project (until the viewers complain) but not about The Prophet.

Aly is held up as Ten’s in-house intellectual but this episode exposes his hypocrisy and the shamefully shallow nature of The Project.