It’s not often that I get opinionated in anything even remotely resembling a serious fashion, but this whole Logies/Wil Anderson/Catherine Deveny thing is just getting on my nerves.
First of all, (and this explains why I said “getting on my nerves” and not “I’M SO INCENSED” or “I WANT TO OVERTURN A VEHICLE!”) I don’t see the point of being all morally outraged at the public’s moral outrage. That’s like trying to stop your neighbour from turning his stereo up loud by turning yours up louder. And then they turn theirs up louder. So you turn yours up louder. And then eventually it’s so loud that no one can hear a damn thing in either house. You completely miss who got kicked off Masterchef, plus the vibrations loosen all your fillings and make your pictures fall off the wall. No one wins.
So, as I understand it: The media have immolated Wil Anderson for his tweets during the Logies. They would have immolated Catherine Deveny for her tweets as well, but no one outside Melbourne knows who she is (I’m sorry, Melbourne, I love you – but you really need to get some perspective on your celebrities. Once you get north of Somerton, no one knows who the hell you’re talking about. Get your head out of your ass). Instead (and this is actually much worse), she got fired.
Now, I am not a fan of Catherine Deveny or Wil Anderson. At all. In fact, they’ve both been the subject of some tweets of my own which probably wouldn’t stand under scrutiny from the decency brigade over at the Herald Sun. However I, like most people who possess the capacity for abstract thought, think the reaction is way over the top.* (And, sadly, not surprising in the least.) It’s not like they shook a baby or set fire to an elderly person. They made some jokes on Twitter. Some were inflammatory, some were inappropriate, some were just weak. But it was Twitter. Who is actually taking Twitter seriously (besides Lindsay Lohan’s father, and maybe a Kardashian or two)? Catherine Deveny wasn’t actually suggesting that Bindi Irwin get laid. Wil Anderson wasn’t actually accusing John Mayer of giving him herpes; nor was he actually suggesting that Molly Meldrum was high on dru-
Okay, who are we kidding, we all know that last one was totally true. Have you heard Molly speak lately? The man hasn’t hit a consonant since 2003.** The point is they were jokes. JOKES. On TWITTER. It’s not worth the public outrage and it’s certainly not worth the sack.
If you’re going to go to the effort of being upset, be upset that neither Catherine nor Wil exercised proper quality control over their jokes, and they let some very shoddy material dilute what was actually comedy gold. As a budding (or failing, depending on how much of my career you take into account) comedian, this hurts me (even more than it hurts to admit that two people I don’t particularly care for wrote some fucking hilarious gems). It’s not the infammatory jokes that were bad, nor the potentially insensitive jokes – it’s just the ones that weren’t funny. That’s the injustice. If only they’d put a bit more effort into separating the wheat from the chaff…well, they’d still be in this predicament. But they wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of having half the country read their C material.
Remember what your grandma used to say about wearing clean underwear in case you’re hit by a bus? It’s like a modern version of that:
Always put your best jokes on Twitter, in case it becomes the centre of a nationwide media storm.
*I’ve experienced this kind of moral outrage first-hand. When I was on air in Canberra I made more than a couple of jokes which earned me some delightful complaint letters. One letter in particular, after I described Today’s then-newsreader Sharon Ghidella as “having the cold, dead eyes of a drowning victim” was three pages long – it explained in vivid detail why I was going to Hell, when I was going to Hell and what was going to happen to me when I got there. It was a ripping great read. Actually, it mentioned “ripping” specifically. My limbs, to be exact.
**Ha ha! I can say what I like, because I’m not employed by any major publications and I’m a complete nobody! Suck it, current affairs programs!
