On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 2

 In our first part, we heavily criticised News Corp for just being a bad news organisation.  By that, I mean that as a news organisation, they are bad.  Incredibly bad.  (I didn’t mean that they just produce bad news, oh heavens to Betsy, no)

It should be pointed out, though, once again, that I was only singling out News as the worst of what appears to be a very bad bunch.  I listed a whole bunch of crimes committed by the media in part 1, some of which were also committed by other media sources as well.

A really good example of disgraceful media practice that is committed across the board, is the tendency of the financial media to regurgitate media releases from companies, without any sort of objective research.  Media Watch appears to have strangely left financial journalists alone to date, but will pursue other journalists who regurgitate press releases.

Why The Chaser should not be called to account

It's amazing what gets the creative juices flowing again. I haven't really blogged seriously for quite some time. I haven't even looked closely at the blogs I like.

But this isn't about me. Well, maybe it is a little bit.

But you know, anger is an energy. And last week, I had it in spades.

Last week, Wednesday night on ABC1, the TV sketch comedy show The Chaser's War on Everything broadcast this little sketch:



I admit not to seeing it at the time. I'm not usually home on Wednesday nights, so I usually wait until Thursday night to watch the repeat on ABC2.

On Thursday, I suddenly noticed a flurry of Twitter posts calling for the heads of the Chaser boys. Investigating this further, talkback radio and the media were all over this sketch, calling it a variety of names, usually preceded by "sick".

I must admit, my curiosity was well and truly tweaked by the time that I got around to watching the repeat.

Once the episode had finished screening, I had one of those "Is that it?" moments, where I felt that I had missed something. And sure enough, I had.

The ABC and The Chaser had cut the frigging scene!!

That's right, folks. They had, not only cut it, but they had issued a statement on video apologising for it, and regretting any hurt that was caused. Not only that, I think that it was Julian Morrow who had indicated that they had called the real Make A Wish Foundation to apologise.

The ABC have since taken The Chaser's War on Everything off the air for two weeks.

But let's have a more critical view of this than what the mainstream media have done.

I'll just get this one out of the way quickly: Anyone who listens to talkback radio, NOVA or the Austereo networks deserve contempt. How is this related to this post? It's only related in passing, but I thought that I'd get this one out there. Indeed, I have given Ms Dikkii instructions that, should she catch me listening to talkback radio, she's to immediately have me taken out the back and shot.

Secondly, who made it this far who believes that the sketch was making fun of sick kids? If you answered "yes", you also deserve contempt. This sketch was actually making fun of frivolous charities like Make A Wish. I'll discuss them more in a few moments. Which begs the question: If The Chaser did call Make A Wish to apologise, precisely how insincere was the apology?

Thirdly, The Chaser's modus operandi (as suggested by the title of the TV show) is to make fun of everything and anything. This means that charities (I use that word only in its strictest legal sense) such as Make A Wish were ripe for targetting.

Fourthly, I have no evidence that talkback radio shock jocks actually looked at the sketch prior to going nuts about it. Just think about that for a while.

Fifthly, why the talkback radio shock jocks left Andrew Hansen's marvellous Billy Connolly impersonation untouched (from the same episode) is a mystery to me.

Finally, The Chaser have done far more controversial stuff than this in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. Which begs the question: Now that cutting stuff is an option with these guys, exactly what is going to be cut next?

The Chaser boys are certainly not stupid. The fact that they've swallowed any pride that they might have and apologised is understandable, in light of the controversy that this sketch created.

But here's the thing: They should not have apologised. Nor should they have caved into ABC management over this. I have lost a great deal of respect for them over this and whilst I'm not greatly convinced that the apologies were sincere, the record will show that this is an apology that has been made. And it will be harder in the future for Morrow, Hansen, Craig Reucassel, Chris Taylor, Chas Licciardello and Dominic Knight (I'll leave Charles Firth out of this) to back down and claim that they were coerced into making this apology.

The sketch was squarely aimed at frivolous charities like Make A Wish. The Make A Wish Foundation are there to assist dying children by granting them a wish or two before they die. They make a big song and dance over flying terminal cancer patients to Disneyland or introducing them to Pink.

This might sound wonderful to you and some of you are probably asking, "Dikkii. Why not grant these dying kids a dying wish?"

I put it to you that the Make A Wish Foundation is diverting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars away from legitimate medical research. Indeed, their 2008 annual report makes the astounding claim that they:

...met all of its Wish granting obligations for 2008...

Obviously, what constitutes a "Wish granting obligation" is a grey area, as they also say on their application form that granting a particular wish is entirely up to the Make A Wish Foundation.

In 2008, they raised AUD 1.75 million. And while this is small compared to some charities, the question should be asked, couldn't this money have been better spent funding legitimate medical research?

In the pages of the annual report, wish recipients talk of meeting the Mythbusters or going to see Liverpool play.

Liverpool. Flying economy class from Melbourne to London's Heathrow airport currently costs about AUD $1,680 through Thai which I used Webjet to find for me. Add in spending, transportation, accomodation, tickets to the game and similar for a minder (presumably a parent) and you are looking at about AUD $10,000 all up. Probably more.

Wouldn't it be better if this amount of money was spent on legitimate medical research?

This blogger is more interested in stuff that the charity is rejecting. While we know that someone in 2008 according to their annual report got to go to Seattle to see the Boeing factory, what about the kid whose wish for a blowjob from Cameron Diaz was knocked back? This may sound extreme, but exactly what gets knocked back? What wishes don't they grant, and what is their internal wish granting criteria?

I would, therefore like to issue a wish of my own in the middle of all this: The Make A Wish Foundation should come clean about the quanta of denied wishes. That is, we should get details about exactly what is being declined, how many, and what is their internal wish granting criteria.

Taylor's closing words from the sketch were, "They're only going to die anyway." Charities like Make A Wish make us feel good about spending on the terminally ill, and not on research that might have prevented these kids being terminally ill in the first place. They must, therefore, be called to account and not The Chaser.

Yes, I have a new favourite TV show

"As you know, weakness is a plague that is destroying this great country, Australia."

So says Steve Foxx, the star/host of cult TV show Double The Fist, which has returned to our screens after a four year hiatus. And you know, I think that he's right.

Australian TV is in a sad place. And, you know, I think that the powers that be really haven't got a clue about why that is.

This is best typified by the sadness that is your average Aussie dad who sits at home in the dark watching whatever woeful British detective show happens to be on the ABC at any point in time, just because the ABC doesn't have ads:

Dikkii: Hey Dad, why don't we flick over to Seven - there's this great new high budget show on that the critics seem to like.

Dikkii's dad: No way. It's American. I want to watch Doc Martin.

Dikkii: That's not exactly a criticism, Dad. I could criticise Doc Martin for being British.

Dikkii's dad: What's wrong with that?

Dikkii: Firstly, nothing. Which is my point. Secondly, I'm not accurately describing the cliched picture postcard seaside English village with the grumpy doctor and countless other stereotypes recycled from The Vicar of Dibley, Bergerac and every other British series. Thirdly, will you hang around to hear me tear into the banal scripting, the bland storylines, the offensive romantic threads, the cloyingly friendly villagers, the... hey dad, where you going?

Dikkii's dad: I'm going upstairs to watch it. You can have your exciting, high-budget American...

Narrator: Given that sister number two married an American, there really is no need for the way he spits out the word "American". Plus, it's unnecessary - he uses it in a derogatory way for American TV, but if you took it out of context, you might think that he had a low opinion of everything and everyone American. Or something.

Dikkii's dad: ...show that you seem so keen on viewing.

Meanwhile, what apparently passes for quality Australian TV is relegated to stultifyingly boring clones of Doc Martin set in the Torres Strait or the Bellarine Peninsula. If I see another "quality" piece of Australian TV set in the country or in a seaside town, I'm going to dry-retch.

The sad state of Australian TV is best exemplified by comedy which was once an edgy and subversive genre typified by shows such as The Naked Vicar, Aunty Jack, Norman Gunston and Kingswood Country.

Now, the best comedy that Australia has to offer seems to come in the form of shows that rely on cleverness for their appeal, such as Frontline or Kath and Kim. And while cleverness can be appreciated, it simply does not perform in the belly laugh stakes compared to idiot humour, toilet humour, double-entendre, smut and slapstick.

Not only that, but as Steve Foxx might say, it's completely weak.

Let me tell you a story about my relationship with Double The Fist.

About three years ago, sister number one gave me a DVD of the first few episodes of the first season of this show. I watched the episodes. I didn't actually "get" them. I promptly forgot about them.

To me, it was another "clever" attack on bogan culture. And an ultra-low budget one at that - season one was reportedly shot for under AUD $250,000.

For the benefit of my international readers, "bogan" is a generic Australian term that roughly translates into North American English as "white trash" or into British English as "chav". Regional variations exist - in Sydney, a bogan is referred to as a "westie", in Hobart, a "chigga" and in Brisbane and Canberra, I believe that terms such as "booner" and "bevan" have been used in the past. But "bogan" has gained national currency over these in recent years.

Unlike their North American or British counterparts, there has never been any outright hostility in Australia towards bogans. Nor is there a racial component - you can be a bogan from an Anglo-Celtic background just as easily as a bogan from an Arabic background.

Indeed, the main characters in Double The Fist are all pretty much bogans.

But that was then.

Fast forward to 2008, and after the event, I hear on the grapevine that Double The Fist has re-commenced a new season on the ABC. Something was tweaking my curiosity about this show: Was there something that I missed the first time around? Did I subconsciously "get it" and not know about it?

So I went and downloaded the first episode.

In the first couple of minutes, it all snapped into place. I got it.

In short, this is a show of pure genius. And it may just save Australian comedy.

Double The Fist is a celebration of what it means to mix fantasy in with reality. It's both a parody, and a far more extreme version of, Jackass, the Three Stooges, B-movies, splatter movies, ozploitation flicks and ridiculous storylines.

It's prime goal, is to find activities that can be deemed to be fistworthy.

It has a plot - in the early episodes, it was this extreme sport show where our four main competitors - Foxx, his brother Rod, The Womp and Mephisto - as well as their ever present sidekick in a Panda suit, Panda go out of their way to try activities that make them worthy of "fist".

They dot this with little snippets where our crew go out to do ridiculous activities to either be awarded "full fist" or penalised with "no fist".

The difference with this as opposed to a show like Jackass, is that (a) humiliation is non-existent - these guys have no shame, and (b) the stuff they do is clearly stupidly life-threatening and probably couldn't be tried at home.

Indeed, in the first two episodes of the current season, there are two deaths but our intrepid posse bounce back as good as ever the next week. Now, they're fighting vampires, zombies, local councils, medieval recreation societies, etc.

In short: fighting weakness.

Shall we meet the characters?

Steve Foxx

An angry, angry man. Foxx is on a crusade to rid Australia of weakness. And host what he describes as the world's greatest TV show. At the end of season 1, he found himself in space.

He returned to earth the fistworthy way, of course:

Rod Foxx

Rod sees himself as a ladies man and all round athlete. Which translates as a bit of a sleaze who clearly wanks in front of mirrors. Since the end of season 1, he's grown what can really only be described as possibly the most spectacular mullet ever seen.

He also likes to watch certain sports:

Mephisto

Mephisto is a nob. And a dodgy one at that. Supposedly, he's a failed security guard who's wanted by tax authorities in multiple locations.

He's always thinking ahead:

The Womp

An ex-wrestler in a state of arrested development. The Womp has a high pain threshold, supposedly because he suffered a brain injury when he was younger.

Womp has been getting work as a stunt clown at demolition derbies:

Panda

Foxx's assistant. It speaks volumes that Panda is both female and the smartest one of the whole crew.

Panda is Panda (from season 1):



So there you go.

Just before I finish this off, get a load of the trailer for season 2 - talk about over the top:



I'll say it again: This show is sheer genius.

Download episodes 1 and 2 here and view them, or are you unworthy of fist?