Well, how about that! Andrew Hanson sung a cheery little ditty on The Chaser last night about how no one ever speaks ill of the dead – no matter how awful the particular dead person may have been – and suddenly every politician and public commentator is up in arms about it.
And since a sizeable proportion of said public commentators are talkback radio hosts, a large number of elderly, unemployed, bigoted and generally mentally vacuous folk (very few if any of which would have seen the performance because they stopped watching the ABC when it started showing programs about lesbians) are now up in arms as well.
Even the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader have chimed in, although that’s only to be expected now there’s an election on (no politician in election mode is willing to look ‘weak’ by refusing to condemn whatever the noisy minority is yelling about this week).
Now, to be true the song contained a lot of “strong” language. Herculean in fact. And it said a bunch of fairly nasty stuff about a number of well liked people, all of whom are of course dead. But everyone complaining about it seems to have missed an important point. The song was so over the top, the lyrics were so face-slappingly confronting, and Andrew Hanson performed it with such incredible, manic vitriol that no one with even half a brain could have regarded it as anything but satire of the highest order.
Yes, it was rude, it was tasteless, it was really quite awful, but it was astoundingly funny. Jaw droppingly, gasping for air funny. And extremely well written. And in a show that’s all about satire and comedy, isn’t that what’s it’s all about?
(Oh, and everyone who was offended needs to go and look up the definition of transgressive humour).
Anyway, on the subject of noxious eructations I’ve added a new article to Wikipedia, on the Lincoln Street sewer vent. Go check it out. Go on!
