Ridiculous Royal Rubbish

The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled by The Damian Smith 

I’ve been asked to weigh in on the 2DayFM prank call “scandal” and as an advocate of freedom of speech and enemy of de-individuated mass stupidity, I shall.
This entire affair fills me with such rage and rancour that I hardly know where to start.
This story has been in the news for days now and shows no signs of abating. That in itself is perhaps the greatest shame of this entire affair, excepting the loss of life at the centre of it. There is no story to this. “Australian radio station makes prank call” is the extent of it. And that’s where it should have ended.
Instead the tabloid press took this tiny incident and inflamed it beyond belief or reason. After blowing the story out of proportion it then snowballed at every turn and what was a throw away article at the bottom of page 3 has now cost a radio station millions of dollars, two nascent DJ’s their careers and one woman her life. And for what? Ratings.
Firstly: the prank. Yes it was dumb. It wasn’t clever or inspired or even funny. It was the standard sludge that has, regrettably, come to be associated with commercial radio. But why are we treating that as a crime? These two DJ’s are being vilified because their stunt was not some Carlin-esque biting political and social satire. By extension of this logic I could argue that some of the great comedians we revere today: Carl Barron, Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, any of the Russell comics (Peters, Brand, Howard, Kane) be gagged just the same. Comedy is the hardest of all the art forms. Humour is such a subjective thing not only from culture to culture but on a deeply personal level. It is literally impossible to appeal to everyone. Unfortunately there is only one way to find out whether a joke is funny or not and that is to do it, in front of as many people as possible. There is no other way. Now the irate soldiers of the “That’s Not Funny” brigade are marching against 2Day FM demanding that heads roll. The message that this sends is that comedians, such as myself, should never do any material that you don’t know, with one hundred percent certainty, is at once brilliantly funny and guaranteed to never offend anyone, ever. Ergo comedy will not exist.
I actually saw more than one media outlet ask the question “is it time for us to stop making jokes at someone else’s expense?”. This is perhaps the most absurd and offensive question I’ve ever heard asked. Every joke is at someone else’s expense. Every. Last. One. As Thomas Hobbes, the famed English philosopher said circa 1600
“…the passion of laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmities of others, or with our own formerly…”
When Louis CK get’s up there and talks about how he’s overweight, you’re laughing at his expense. When you watch Australia’s Funniest Home Video Show, you’re laughing at someone’s expense. When Rodney Dangerfield can’t get no respect and when Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t know what the deal is, you’re laughing at someone’s expense. Every joke ever.
Secondly: the shitstorm. This was never an issue. Prank call goes through, a couple of teenagers listening to 2Day FM titter quietly, perhaps a nurse at a hospital gets a censure for transferring a call without verifying the source. End. Even the royal family themselves thought it was a bit of a laugh. But no, the British tabloids couldn’t let it go at that. Some upstart jesters from a British penal colony had the poisonous gall to attempt to speak to the royal family. Someone had forgotten their place. And that’s when the trouble started. The British fascination with the royal family has ever puzzled me. I don’t know why they exist and I wish they didn’t. To mine the royals are a waste of time, resources and money. A relic from a bygone era when men used to live in thatch huts, stab each other for a goose and burn people to death for being different. But the Brits, oh they love their doughy, Germanic overlords.   read on...