Been cancelled in culture wars? Tough cheese

Hear the one about the comic who tried to cancel Coon cheese? Cancelled. The one who sought to cancel the cancellers? Also cancelled.

Comedian Josh Thomas, who has been embroiled in a racism row after venturing into cancel culture by targeting Coon cheese. Picture: Jeff Camden

Did you hear the one about the comedian who tried to cancel Coon cheese? He got cancelled. What about the comedian who sought to cancel the cancellers? Also cancelled.

George Bernard Shaw fam­ously advised: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

On Tuesday, two more Australian comics lived to regret climbing into the ring. Please Like Me star Josh Thomas, whose TV show deals sensitively with sex­uality and mental illness, waded into the Black Lives Matter movement by posting an image of Coon cheese on social media, calling for it to be renamed as the term was often used as “hate speech” towar­ds indigenous Australians.

It’s amazing the respect people have for the name of a man who invented a processing technique of cheese - who died in 1934.
And the disrespect they have for Black people.

— Josh Thomas (@JoshThomas87) June 14, 2020

Here’s the thing about mud: sometimes it sticks when you fling it; sometimes it comes back and covers you in ignominy.

Never mind that the cheese is named for US cheesemaker Edward­ William Coon. Thomas’s handful of Coon-cancelling supporters­ were drowned out by a swell of outrage, with the Queensland-born comedian soon embroiled in his own racism scandal.

A 2016 clip had resurfaced which showed him complaining about the difficulty of casting non-white actors. In the clip, widely shared on social media, he is joined on a panel discussion by three white writer-actors: Dan Harmon, the American creator of Community and Rick and Morty, and Australians Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor. Warning the audience “this is going to sound racist”, Thomas said it was hard to find actors from diverse backgrounds with experience.

On choosing an actor to portray a 7-Eleven worker, he mused: “Do you make them Indian? Or, is that offensive? Or, then if you make them white, is that a bit like you’re lying, really?”

On Tuesday, Thomas apologised, saying he had been a “really dumb, illogical, insensitive idiot”. “The answers I offered in this clip are in no way constructive or correct­,” he wrote. “I am committed to doing better.”

Meanwhile, there was no apology from comic Meshel Laurie, who was called out for posting a comment to her Facebook page saying that “blackface has no cultura­l relevance in Australia”.

Meshel Laurie. Picture: Jason Edwards

Instead Laurie, who has appeared­ on The Project and Have You Been Paying Attention?, said she’d been hacked and accused one of her accusers of being “a psychopath”.

Laurie, a practising Buddhist who recently accused a woman on social media of “cultural appropriati­on” over a painting of a Native American headdress, took to Facebook to deny the comment was hers, despite its appearanc­e on her account.

By early evening, Laurie had “found our culprit”, she told The Australian. After consulting with Facebook, she said, she discovered the post was the work of a former administrator who still had access to her page. She had spoken to the person involved and was satisfied there was no malice intended.

Moments later, her troublesome Facebook page had been remo­ved.