Rita Panahi: ABC’s ‘comedy’ is anything but funny
THE taxpayer-funded ABC is where humour goes to die, and a controversial skit which includes Aboriginal comedians repeatedly using the c-word to describe white people is a woeful catastrophe, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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THE ABC is where comedy goes to die. Its nightly “comedy” programming on what used to be called ABC2 is a dumpster fire of poorly rating, cringe-worthy fare that is about as funny as an ingrown toenail.
And, slightly less insightful. The low on laughs, high on Left-wing sanctimony content is of course produced on the taxpayer’s dime.
THE PROTEST SUNRISE DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE
A “comedy” sketch produced by the public broadcaster’s Black Comedy team has caused a stir online for its repeated use of the c-word to describe white people.
In the sketch parodying a Sunrise-like breakfast program, the singularly unfunny Nakkiah Lui and three Wake Up To Yourself panellists discuss whether “white people are c---s”.
The entire catastrophe is so woefully unfunny and tone deaf that you immediately feel sorry for all involved.
It’s the hypersensitive activist class trying to employ irony to make a political point, and it’s a big swing and a miss.
Comedy should be fearless, uncompromising and unencumbered by worries about offence — but most of all, it should be funny.
Mel Brooks warned that PC culture would be the death of comedy, and a side effect of seeing the world through a filter of racial and gender politics is that you become a humourless, bitter bore forever spouting BS about “white privilege”, “cultural appropriation” and “the patriarchy”.
But on the upside, you have taxpayers funding your asinine activism on the ABC.
GROWING CULTURE OF OUTRAGE AND HATRED
IS social media making us more intolerant and irrational?
You’d be forgiven for thinking that, given the way Twitter, and to a lesser extent Facebook, facilitate daily outrage orgies over trivial or often imagined offences.
We’ve seen online rage turn into real threats, boycotts and other forms of bullying.
And there’s been a perceptible increase in the hysteria that accompanies any discussion that is remotely political in nature.
SKY NEWS ANCHOR ROLE FOR RITA PANAHI
Facts and logic are vanquished in favour of emotional, often infantile, outbursts.
Last Friday, hundreds of activists descended on Sunrise’s Martin Place headquarters to scream about “white people” and protest against the Channel 7 breakfast program for discussing the plight of abused Aboriginal children.
Leading up to the protest, Sunrise host Samantha Armytage and panellists Prue MacSween and Ben Davis had been subjected to ugly vitriol for discussing the front-page story on measures to save at-risk Aboriginal children from further abuse.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that they’d said something particularly egregious to elicit such a response but in reality, all three expressed concern for vulnerable kids and agreed with Assistant Minister for Children and Families, David Gillespie, that it should be easier for non-indigenous families to adopt brutalised indigenous children.
Gillespie has been alarmed by the rates of sexually transmitted disease among Aboriginal children and does not want abused kids “recycled back into harm”.
“Foster care is not ideal, but there is a reluctance to put them in a more permanent situation for fear of creating another Stolen Generation,’’ Gillespie said. “I’m more worried about creating an abandoned and damaged generation. If a child is being raped, we can’t just say it’s OK on cultural grounds.’’
The prevailing opinion among the panellists was that the safety of children subjected to horrific sexual and physical violence should be of greater concern than “political correctness” and “fears of being labelled racist”.
That was enough to set the activists into overdrive, firstly on social media, then in several articles and poorly written feminist feelpieces.
Aboriginal activist Tarneen Onus-Williams was among the triggered brigade, tweeting: “Sunrise never fails to surprise me. The Stolen Generation was an act of genocide and war. Sunrise and MSM are just trying to build their case to further justify genocide and further displace Aboriginal children, families and people.”
This is the same woman who told an “invasion day” parade she helped organise this year: “We have not organised this to change the date. We have organised this to abolish Australia Day because f--- Australia. F--- Australia, I hope it f---ing burns to the ground.”
Onus-Williams also called radio host Neil Mitchell “racist” for the crime of asking her straightforward questions that she was either not capable of or unwilling to answer.
University of Melbourne academic Marcia Langton tweeted that she was “considering a s18 RDA (Racial Discrimination Act) complaint”.
That seems rather precious from a woman who had four days earlier tweeted a foul diatribe to Mark Latham, which she belatedly deleted.
On March 9, Langton tweeted to the former Labor leader: “You deserve a slow, painful death and humiliating obituaries eg ‘Australia celebrates as white supremacist, homophobic, far Right-wing asshole finally dies’ ‘Australians look forward to a life without hate’.”
It takes real chutzpah to preach about eliminating “hate” while wishing a “slow, painful death” on someone you disagree with.
When you relentlessly use the terms racist or racism to describe everyone and everything that is not racist, you strip that word of all its power. That can become a problem when real racism raises its ugly head.
Along with the usual puerile personal abuse and straw man arguments, most of the criticism of the Sunrise segment was centred on the fact the three commentators were white. The lack of an indigenous voice on the panel was seen as an unforgivable sin.
But it’s simplistic and, indeed, racist to suggest that all indigenous people think alike, and the mere presence of an indigenous panellist would somehow prevent the resultant controversy.
Let’s be frank; if the three white commentators subscribed to hard-Left ideology and rejected the minister’s idea of making it easier for non-indigenous families to adopt indigenous kids, then none of the easily agitated ne’er-do-wells would have sprung to action.
The end result of this outrage culture is that many who care deeply about this issue are reluctant to speak for fear of being viciously slandered by activists.
Indigenous leader and former Labor Party national president, Nyunggai Warren Mundine, has described the reaction to the Sunrise discussion as a textbook example of attempting to “silence conversation on abuse of Aboriginal children” by targeting people with false allegations of “hate speech”.
If you’re more disgusted by a banal discussion on morning television than you are by the deplorable rates of sexual abuse, violence and neglect in indigenous communities, then you are part of the problem.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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