Aren't we lucky that we live in a democracy where all opinions can be expressed. However, Stuart, I think you are out of step with the majority of Australians on this one. The Chasers needed to be brought into line. I stopped watching them ages ago simply because they're not funny (to me) - for educated guys, they are immature and boarder on stupid! If you really think you can make comparisons between this particular Chasers skit and the likes of the footy show (I'm not a big fan!), then you really don't get it - there is no comparison. As for the Chasers being a part of the demise of the Howard Government - get a grip. Stuart, I just hope one day you do not have a child that is in need of the 'self-serving' services of any charity, let-alone the Make a Wish Foundation. This is not a blow to free-speech - this is common sense, a good business decision and if you look at it holistically, including the admission by the Chaser team, it should never have got past the discussion stage as a skit.

Comedians who are not funny - are not comedians.

If you want to worship them as a fun loving, anti-establishment satirirical, street art group, well fine - but why should the government aka the taxpayer pay them to do this?

Surely if they are so left in their thinking and so against anything that reeks of our "rulers" then they surely would not want to take such dirty money?

Come on mate, get your hand off it - it's a business and they have jobs at the ABC, they are trying to keep themselves in those jobs by being "edgy" it has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with paying their mortgages.

Unfortunately for the Chasers, they have run out of jokes, material whatever you want to call it and are stale, now they need to go do what everyone else does at this point and go get a regular job .. next!

I am not much of a Chaser fan since pranks generally strike me as juvenile, but I endorse Stuart's view that the best comedy is anti-establishment. This is a comedian's gold field. How script writers choose to saterise a subject depends on their own quirkish humour and their skill at guessing what will make a broad audience laugh.

By knocking down the over the top police security and spin at APEC with their clever and well executed Osama stunt was brilliant and won praise around the world. I would love to see comedians do more stunts and sketches that saterise conservative media moguls, journalists and on-air presenters. Comedians of all styles deserve an entire digital channel, to provide instant relief to the drivel that gets dished out on so much main stream programming.

I think the sketch was clearly in poor taste, but comedians often miss their target and cross the line. Also, the question isn't whether they are funny - I find them less funny these days and even in the past found them inconsistently funny. But their last series did rate its socks off. If this one doesn't, then they may not be back. That is different form the issues around the suspension.

Also the Chaser were a cultural representation of the sentiments that eventually led to Howard's defeat. Doesn't mean they were responsible, or that is all they were.

There is a very strong dose of hypocrisy about the treatment of the Chaser.

The NRL Footy Show recently performed an extremely homophobic sketch involving a father wanting to take a baby that grew up to be gay back because it was "faulty". Few complained. The rate for gay men attempting suicide is around 25%. Performing sketches like that doesn't just offend, it kills.

To that we could add the saturation of shows and images etc on TV that pressure young women into unrealistic body images, to lose weight, all of which contribute to frightening levels of illnesses like anorexia and bulemia that also kill.

No show gets suspended for such things, though a stronger case exists.

The reality is that putting a tighter leash on the Chaser will stop stunts like the one at APEC. They wont occur. That's fine, if you don't like that stunt, or you think that is a price worth paying. Personally, I think it isn't, that we need comedians in a position to do things like that and accept that they don't always get it right.

It wasn't me who said the Make a Wish charity was "self serving", but a doctor who works with sick and dying children. If I ever have the misfortune to have a extremely ill child, I hope people will have taken Dr Suresh Viswanathan's advice, donated to medical research and pushed for governments to contribute more in that direction, so that a cure is possible.

I applaud your piece, Stuart. What no one has mentioned is that the Make-a-Wish foundation had been in the news talking about having to cut services through a lack of funding in the weeks before the Chasers' show aired. I thought the skit was both timely and appropriate, albeit in appalling taste. Unfortunately, in our society as it is presently being reconstituted, Wowserism is being revived as a means of social control.

The comments from the good doctor have very broad application across all of the victim industries, in which there is often a large group of people who draw their living through taking funding that could have otherwise been used to service the group they claim to represent.

"The pitch black humour of The Chaser’s offending sketch is part of a tradition in Australian comedy. It may have missed the mark, but it is hardly unique."
What part of the tradition in Australian humour seeks out a defenceless group as its target viz dying kids, but at the same time the audience doesn't understand what the point of the skit was all about? Perhaps Stuart or somebody out there can explain what the skit was trying to say and how it relates to this tradition. I have read so many explanations, all diverse, I still don't know.

I was shocked at the lack of judgement....however, banning them for 2 weeks is ridiculous. Just increase the appropriate editorial oversight.

The other skit which was a shocker was the send-up of Sophia Loren, who had come out for a charity.

She took it with grace ...... but I cringed with the offensiveness of the event. I was very disappointed that night.

Otherwise they have been terrific.

I'm more offended by those celebrities that use sick kids as props to advertise their own compassion.

Some do it quietly and away from the spotlight but many don't perform until the cameras are on.

Many people who claim to have strong opinions about this recent stunt also claim not to watch it.

So Wobbles what was the point of the skit?

"What part of the tradition in Australian humour seeks out a defenceless group as its target viz dying kids, but at the same time the audience doesn't understand what the point of the skit was all about?"

IMO, the Chaser aren't so dumb or insensitive as to satirise the recipients of the aid. Their only legitimate function is to point out the hooks that charity groups use to tear-jerk money out of the public. The deeper question is whether or not the income the charities attract is used for the purposes as understood by the donating public or whether it is just smart advertising to prop up the charity industry for its own ends.

You only have to check out the horrendous Footy Show skit

http://livenews.com.au/rss-link/johns-brothers-footy-show-in-hot-water-again/2009/5/28/208040

to get a handle on how much The Chaser has been punished for the crime of 'poor taste'.

There's no comparison.The Footy Shows mark was savage and without any saving value -- and that's not the first time the program has wallowed in vilifying either women or gay men. But no one is saying that they should taken off the air for 2 weeks. So why should The Chaser wear these consequences.

The main difference is that the Footy Show can get away with its entrenched mysogyny and homophobia because under cover of sport these attitudes are tolerated.

Why?

Within the milieu of football we are all very aware what that the culture offers women in regard to rape and indecent assault -- and what is registered across all codes as a practiced homophobia.

I think I have watched one show of the chaser and found it stupid. I wouldn't waste my time again.

I also would not go to see a stand up comedian who just uses foul language.

Hope they cancel the chaser for good.

I also do not find the Chaser funny. However, that's no reason for canceling the show. I also hope to live long enough so that Elvis and Rock & Roll are only of interest to antiquarians. Satire sometimes misses the mark. The only reason to cancel comedians is that most people find them not funny.

Bad taste is in the eye of the beholder. I think it was in extremely bad taste for Bush 43 to lie his country into war, authorise torture and allow his Enron buddies to rip off the country. He was never funny intentionally.

Stuart,
Let me see if I've got it right. This article is about your disagreement with the management decision to suspend 'the Chasers' episodes?
Undoubtedly you have that right but I suspect it has more to do with your professional paranoia rather than the actual suspending of the Chasers' program or reality.

In my rebuttal to your argument I would suggest that in your haste to dispose of the smelly herring you failed to fully acknowledge why the it failed. To correct this deliberate oversight I would it failed for a number of reasons among which would be lack of care and due diligence, unchecked egos, and poor writing in short sloppy work. By filming in the hospital ward with children confused the target consequently it was in appalling taste.
This is important to note in that it gives sound reasons for the management decision.
Look at it this way If I owned a business and I had one group of staff who were upsetting my clients. Wouldn't I justified in removing the problem at least until it died down?

Your argument about the hypocrisy is null on two grounds .
The first is a separate organisation. Is Myers hypocritical because it has different employment practices to the Dept. of Defense?
The second is that your example of the “footy show” is on a private enterprise where the emphasis is on profit. They will simply ignore the complaints while it's making money.
The ABC isn't and they can't afford to ignore its owners by way of the elected government.

I would also add that that as presented the argument showed little understanding of the nature of humour or sociology.
The tactic was arguing by non existent extremes. The boy who cried wolf comes to mind.
Likewise the all or approach smacks of manipulation. e.g. elevating Chasers to a undeserved level. Personally, I don't confuse audacious with clever.
For the record I am a fan of New Matilda's satirist, G&S, Monty Python et al

My point about the Footy Show was that those leading the charge to slam the Chaser and demand they be pulled into line and hauled over the coals, or even taken off air (Daily Telegraph - which dedicated pages to it, Miranda Devine, shock jocks etc) had in their overwhelming majority *nothing* to say, no one word, about the much more offensive sketch the Footy Show did - not just more offensive but, as I said, actually dangerous. That type of sketch actually needs to be opposed, not necessarily with censorship but by taking a stance of complete rejection of the bigotry it contains.

Green Left Weekly did that, http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/796/40972 Unfortunately I didn't see anyone else in the media raise it in any serious way.

Stuart I am a fan of the Chaser but not the new series I must admit. I have found it a bit gross and OTT,trying to be so anti-establishment as not to be funny.

It would be a fine art to be able to manufacture comedy without falling flat on your face or pushing the boundaries too far so as to be offensive or just plain boring.

I have to disagree that the censure of the Chaser stems from the Right wing or as punishment in effect for APEC and the like.

It may have something more to do with the fact that Chaser is funded by the taxpayers and hence people feel the need to comment about content even if it were something they might endure on a commercial channel. Also the skit involved child actors explicitly playing dying children whereas similar skits were more subtle.

I wouldn't watch the Footy Show because it is facile but each to his own.

While the Make A Wish skit endeavoured to make fun of the Foundation rather than the kids themselves, it was a failure in terms of a duty of care towards those families who are facing exactly these illnesses. It was a bad call by Duthie who has since been demoted but I guess these experiencs serve as a thermomenter to what will be acceptable to Australia's (in general) fairly broad minded public.

How interesting! The editor of the Marxist-Leninist Green Left Weekly opposes censorship. Marxist-Leninists supported censorship when Marxism took power in Russia. A GLW seller told me he agreed with censorship should his compatriots take power.

Following their accession to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks took measures to prevent challenges to their new regime, beginning with eliminating political opposition. When the freely-elected Constituent Assembly did not acknowledge the primacy of the Bolshevik government, Vladimir Lenin dissolved it in January 1918. The Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, which protested the action, withdrew from the Bolshevik coalition in March, and its members were branded enemies of the people. Between 1918 and 1921, a state of civil war existed.

Bolshevik policy toward detractors, and particularly toward articulate, intellectual criticism, hardened considerably. Suppression of newspapers, initially described as a temporary measure, became a permanent policy. Lenin considered the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) the center of a conspiracy against Bolshevik rule. In 1919, he began mass arrests of professors and scientists who had been Kadets, and deported Kadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Nationalists. The Bolshevik leadership sought rapidly to purge Russia of past leaders in order to build the future on a clean slate.

These harsh measures alienated many intellectuals who had supported the overthrow of the czarist order. Suppression of democratic institutions evoked strong protests from academics and artists betrayed in their idealistic belief that revolution would bring a free society. Writers emigrating shortly after the revolution published stinging attacks on the new government from abroad. As a result, further exit permits for artists were generally denied.

The disenchantment of most intellectuals did not surprise Lenin, who saw the old Russian intelligentsia as a kind of rival to his "party of a new type," which alone could bring revolutionary consciousness to the working class. In his view, artists generally served bourgeois interests, a notion that fueled the persecution of intellectuals throughout the Soviet period.

Free speech must extend to an opposition.

My uncle Bill was a Bolshevik arrested by the czarist police before the revolution. He managed to leave the Soviet in 1921 cured of Bolshevism.

The purpose of this type of satire is to raise questions about our ethics, morals and value judgements. The idea that we all respond with such outrage at this one incident where one particular set of kids are shown to be suffering is meant to make us think about WHY we don't express the same rage and disgust at the fact that EVERYDAY according to the World Health Organisation, tens of thousands of kids suffer and die in many countries around the world. In some countries like Africa, they don't even have the luxury of lying in a hospital bed as they rot away from PREVENTABLE diseases! So, let's not over react to a spot of satire which should make us think and question ourselves. The Chaser needs to keep making these kinds of thought provoking programs that force us to confront our priorities and examine our humanity.

The skit on dying children was completely uncalled for; black humour might be fine for a small group of people to help them come to terms with difficult circumstances, but black humour can be very offensive for a wider audience. In the past the Chaser team have been brilliant at times, at other times rather pedestrian. However, in these politically correct times we need people to be pushing at the edges like the Chaser team has been doing. Those who are traumatised in one way or another should not be targets of black humour though.

In relation to the Chaser changing people's views in relation to political affiliations, the now Opposition successfully did that to themselves prior to the last election.

I was called by a Make a Wish Foundation telemarketer recently. She explained to me that unless I helped them financially, some terminally ill children would not get the wish that they had asked for. I offered a sum of money but was told that there was a minimum donation. Whether or not it was intended, the phone call made me feel very guilty, almost as if I were personally responsible for upsetting a very ill child.

Maybe the Chasers recieved a call similar to this one prior to writing the sketch?

Nora

Am in agreement with you. The Chaser were doing what the Chaser do. Some of it is hilarious and some of it makes me squirm - the Sophia Loren punk for example.

The Make a Wish foundation, is like many a Chaser target, a 'sacred cow' and I think the point that Spikyone made has some relevance. There are charities who use guilt and bullying tactics to extract a donation. It wasn't one of the best Chaser skits but to expect good taste on a satirical show like Chaser, is to expect the Footy Show to be about football instead of "Blokesworld".

The ABC overreacted, however it is held more accountable than commercial television. Ironic when one considers that the ABC is more likely to push boundaries than Channel 9. Therefore dear old Auntie has to be seen to 'behave', unlike Sam Newman.

I don't and won't ever be tuning into the Footy Show, but will be tuning in again for the Chaser when it returns and I expect to be shocked, prodded and entertained - it is, after all, satire.

This dangerous precedent is a symptom of our increasingly charity-centric, child-centric society which has lost all sense of balance, for some years now. We have wrapped ourselves so tightly in red tape and our children so tightly in cotton wool, that none of us can breathe! I am one of 11 children. We all survived. It was a flaming miracle: We had to obey our parents, to stay safe: No bike helmets, no soft landing when falling from the bars in the playground. No teenage binge drinking, but no child-proof caps on poison bottles either. We were told 'Don't touch, it will hurt you.' and we obeyed. Respect. Common sense. How about child-proof caps on alcohol-pops? No? Not funny? Oh well, then how about we all lighten up a little. The Chaser skit should have been left alone, seen for what it is: Bad commedy, but an opinion. Just that, nothing more. Not an attack on reality. Just an opinion. Just like the opinions aired on the Footy show. Society needs to take a much closer look at charities, too. They are not, by virtue of their existence, above the law! Or at least, they should not be. The circle of outrage needs to take a good look at itself, because we all need to be able to breathe, not just those with children and supportive of charities.

"Bad comedy, but an opinion. Just that, nothing more "
But "Why go to any trouble when they're only going to die anyway?"
Opinion? Yes but an opinion directed at whom? The grieving parents, relatives and friends of terminally ill children, who are so selfish to try and give little children something special before they die. Instead they should be directing their money towards starving Africans/Burmese/Bangladeshies/Cambodians etc. How pathetic.

SM: "the conservative media,... whipped up a lynch-mob mentality."
Odd, I haven’t heard of any lynch mobs attempting to kill people, or doing violence to them – nothing remotely resembling a lynch-mob.

SM: "the ABC’s head of comedy Amanda Duthie was sacked for approving the sketch."
Duthie was not sacked, she was stood down as head of ABC comedy, but continues as Head of Arts and Entertainment. People can argue about whether she should have been subject to this action, but she was not "sacked".

SM: "the AFL nor NRL versions of Channel Nine’s Footy Show ... are infamous for their misogyny and homophobia. They have been largely left alone by the same media voices savaging The Chaser."
Matthew Johns was stood down (I think “sacked” is the right word here) by Channel 9, after media and other criticism. Gary Burns has lodged a complaint against The Footy Show, and I hope he succeeds; if he does, there will clearly be serious discussions about the format of the Footy Show.

SM: "War, racism and attacks on civil liberties are recurring targets. The Chaser performed at anti-war rallies against the US-led invasion of Iraq."
What is the point here? I attended all of those rallies, and did so in part because the invasion would bring suffering and death to children. Why is it inconsistent to criticize The Chaser for, in their own small way, mocking sick children?

SM: "Those criticising The Chaser argue the sketch mocks sick children. In fact, the sketch was targeting the Make a Wish charity".
The sketch targeted the Make a Wish charity, sure, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t also mock sick children. It could do both – and it did.

SM: "The decision to suspend The Chaser is a blow to free speech. It sets a dangerous precedent of silencing comedians whose job it is to satirise society."
I haven’t noticed the Chaser comedians being silent. They still have their (public-funded) show, and every newspaper is full of comments from them. Exactly how are they “silenced” by a two-week suspension of the show?
Helen

Australia has an unpleasant culture of trying to prevent critics from being taken seriously by fostering prejudice against them. The Hawke government excelled at it, in particular attacking academics and public intellectuals. (Think of comments about Balmain basketweavers. The ALP paid the price of this when those voices could not cut through the media babel when the Howard government was elected.) The Howard government also fostered prejudice against its critics--attacking lawyers, supporters of asylum seekers, United Nations authorities and committees--indeed, anyone from outside Australia. ('We will decide who comes to this country' for instance. All very juvenile, but it seems to have worked.) The process goes on in the columns of newspapers, and in OLO. (Think of comments about Balmain Chardonnay drinkers, liberals ((absurdly described as leftists)), the commentariat, civil libertarians ((also absurdly described as leftists)).)

Like most of the writers on this topic, I think the Chaser skit, while targeting the Make a Wish Foundation, was wrong to also attack dying children. It is clear, though, that some of the commentators are trying to have the Chaser group starved of outlets.

It is time we changed this culture

I don't think the Chaser guys themselves knew exactly what they wanted to say but they reacted to an intuition that something about the Make a Wish Foundation lacks integrity.

Dying children make many adults feel very uncomfortable and powerless. In order to appease their feelings they try and "do" things to avoid those feelings. They are not acting to make the kids feel better. They often put pressure on kids to come up with a wish that they can fulfill even though as the doctor said their only real wish is to get better and go home. If adults find it difficult to deal with dying children they should admit that rather than use the kids to alleviate their own pain.

I think the skit was a criticism of dishonest adults rather than sick kids and as such it was very good satire of the type we really need.

The Chaser guys have been bullied into apologising by people who do not want their own behaviour exposed for what it really is. Child abuse can take many forms!

phanto:"I think the skit was a criticism of dishonest adults rather than sick kids"
SM:"In fact, the sketch was targeting the Make a Wish charity".
Fractelle:"There are charities who use guilt and bullying tactics to extract a donation."
Antiseptic:"The Make-a-Wish foundation had been in the news talking about having to cut services through a lack of funding in the weeks before the Chasers' show aired .... often a large group of people who draw their living through taking funding that could have otherwise been used to service the group they claim to represent"
RobP:"..point out the hooks that charity groups use to tear-jerk money out of the public. The deeper question is whether or not the income the charities attract is used for the purposes as understood by the donating public or whether it is just smart advertising to prop up the charity industry for its own ends."
pelican: "While the Make A Wish skit endeavoured to make fun of the Foundation rather than the kids themselves"
Nora:"think about WHY we don't express the same rage and disgust at the fact that EVERYDAY according to the World Health Organisation, tens of thousands of kids suffer and die in many countries around the world."
Spikyone:"Whether or not it was intended, the phone call made me feel very guilty, almost as if I were personally responsible for upsetting a very ill child. Maybe the Chasers recieved a call similar to this one prior to writing the sketch"
Most bloggers thought the target of the skit was "Make a Wish charity" or similar charities due to their offensive fund raising techniques,dispersal of funds, etc; Phanto thought it was "an attack on dishonest adults"; Nora thought it was an attack on people who aren't upset by the suffering of tens of thousands of kids in poorer countries"
Well all we know from the Chasers themselves is "we don’t think the Make a Wish Foundation deserves anything other than praise". So either the Chasers are telling porkies or most of the bloggers got it wrong.

blairbar:"all we know from the Chasers themselves is "we don’t think the Make a Wish Foundation deserves anything other than praise""

My suspicion is that the Chasers were attempting to make a sarcastic point about the money drying up for the Male-aWish Foundation and possibly encourage greater funding. It is from that intent that the greater issue of whether these victim-based charities are worthy of support at all has arisen.

Leaving aside the M-a-W mob for a moment, we've recently seen the NSW Rape Crisis Centre trying to get their representatives into football clubs, where there are pots of money, on the basis of the "Claire"/Johns incident, where no rape occurred. We hear a lot from "single mother" groups, all of whom are constantly reducing the range of activities that fall outside their interests as they choose to promote them. We hear a lot from "disadvantaged children's advocated" or "child abuse experts", and always there is the claim that the problem would be fixed if only we spent more money on the group making the claims.
We have "pink ribbon days" and "white ribbon days" and "yellow ribbon days", all of which cost lots of money to run and seem to do nothing whatever to reduce the number of victims of whatever it is they claim to be fixing. Breast cancer should be a solved problem by now with the number of "Foundations" and charities devoted to it and Bob Hawke's "no child in poverty" promise should be a reality.

In the meantime, managers and staff of these NGOs are drawing high salaries, volunteers are working for nothing and the victims continue to exist.

What has happened over the past 20 years of Laboral Government is that our society has been trained to be recipients, not creators of benefits. We have been conditioned to expect someone else to have responsibility for fixing our own problems, or at least for accepting the burden of trying. It's time we reevaluated our way of doing help it seems to me.

I agree, the last line of the skit was an unfortunate choice of words. But The Chaser has always taken the line that no sacred cow is too sacred for them, and it's this fearless irreverence that helps make it the great show it is. The Chaser's style of satire is sorely needed in Australian media. There is very little produced these days that holds the mirror up to ourselves, warts and all, in the way The Chaser boys do. We need them and the current moral outrage won't do them any harm. This little storm in a teacup has raised their profile in a way that all the best ABC promos could never achieve.

My disappointment here lies more in the fact that the material in question was most probably not entirely original, but I guess everyone has to get their inspiration somewhere. With Kevin Rudd's government replacing John Howard's, a large source of ready made material has definitely dried up and the boys quite understandably have to dig a bit deeper. The Chaser's Make a Realistic Wish Foundation appears fairly obviously to draw on the same theme that inspired the Mansion's fictitious Reasonable Request Foundation, which ran on the Comedy Channel last year. So, while a bit of the gloss has rubbed off for me, they still ride pretty high!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC3ktLHpr8E&feature=related

david f

With respect, David, your Marxist-Leninist rant is as relevant to the Green Left Weekly as it is to this debate. The Weekly has no association with the atrocities carried out under Marx and Lenin and it was an uncharacteristically cheap shot from you to attempt to make that link. The GLW has its finger on the pulse on so many issues that just don't get an in-depth run at all in the mainstream media. It adds enormously to the range of opinion out there and doesn't deserve the ignorant maligning you've dished up here.

Bronwyn

Thanks for the link - The Mansion skit definitely hits the mark that Chaser failed to do. Loved the line about wishing for Pamela Anderson and getting Angry instead.

I really believe that the ABC gets over-scrutinised - I thought with a change of government we'd see a bit less of the jackboot brigade. Didn't they get rid of the likes of Janet Albrechtsen et al?

Dear Bronwyn,

Thank you for noticing my rant. It was inspired by contact with a person who was pushing the GLW at a gathering. The GLW brings up issues that are absent in the mainstream media, and I am happy for them to do so.

However, the GLW seller admitted to me that he would, if he had the power, muzzle the capitalist press.

Possibly the Marxist-Leninists have murdered about 100,000,000 people. I believe that anybody should be allowed to express themselves and push their views. That includes Nazis, Marxist-Leninists, religious fundamentalists and others I have little regard for.

However, when Nazis, Marxist-Leninists and religious fundamentalists defend freedom of expression I will rant against hypocrisy.

isabel berners -

you make the comment that Matthew Johns was stood down, and say that the Footy Show has been subject to similar criticism.

No it hasn't.

Johns was stood down over the group sex incident.

The actual skits performed on Footy Show have not been subject to the same criticism as those on the Chaser.

Actually, I don't think either show should be attacked like this - but fair's fair, and this certainly isn't.

If the Chaser and the NRL Footy Show would only stick to picking on working class people like the rest of the Australian comedy industry, they would be in the clear.

"Well all we know from the Chasers themselves is "we don’t think the Make a Wish Foundation deserves anything other than praise". So either the Chasers are telling porkies or most of the bloggers got it wrong."

blairbar,

Or the Chaser were told to say it or else, or they sniffed the wind themselves and decided that it was better to be seen to voluntarily stop train surfing on public TV. In all, I think it was a partial retreat to appease those who genuinely felt offended by the skit. I imagine that the real targets will remain on The Chaser's radar, although the boys had better be quick because as I understand it, this is the show's last season. Maybe the Make-A-Wish skit was always designed to be part of their shock and awe campaign.

1.RobP:"Or the Chaser were told to say it or else, or they sniffed the wind themselves...be part of their shock and awe campaign"
2.Fractelle" "I thought with a change of government we'd see a bit less of the jackboot brigade."
3.Bronwyn:"With Kevin Rudd's government replacing John Howard's, a large source of ready made material has definitely dried up and the boys quite understandably have to dig a bit deeper."
1.Well RobP, still means they were telling porkies.
2.,3.The Chasers main appeal lies among the 15 to 35 age group; the targets they have selected are those which this group relates to; eg John Howard, Roman Catholicism, Conservatism,George Bush etc. The intent of their "humour" is to make fun of these targets and they have been very successful. However this time their "shock and awe campaign" collapsed. Why? Because this very group has siblings, nieces, nephews and friends with children who have been or are terminally ill. This was something close to their hearts. The clear target of the skit was this group of misguided, stupid people who would waste money on dying children. I guess Bronwyn if this is an example of their digging deeper who knows what the next target will be.
Well Fractelle you have no idea about "jackboot brigades"; to compare Australia over the past 20 years with Nazi Germany only displays your ignorance. By the way one of the largest group of supporters of Nazism in Germany were youth, particularly University students.

Good on you Stuart. From many of the comments here there is certainly cause for concern that freedom of speech is under threat.

if the chaser team truly believed they did the right thing they should not have apologised.

but they did..

No matter how OTT the Chaser gets, there are two places they won’t go – they don’t do misogyny and they don’t do homophobia. If either of these elements enters the script, it’s to lampoon their exploitation by the mainstream establishment, which programs us from the cradle to laugh uproariously at any man who makes fun of women or effeminate men.

This puts the Chaser well apart from the other 98% of male comedy teams – including the much revered Monty Python. For this fact alone, I’ll forgive them the occasional bad-taste stunt that goes badly wrong.

‘Dr Suresh Viswanathan from the John Hunter Hospital said the “skit achieved what it set out to do, and that was to start debate about issues that are seen as taboo. Let us debate the role of charities such as the Make-a-Wish Foundation.” ’

This comment is spot on. Under successive right-wing and pseudo right-wing (aka Labor) governments, Australia has moved from a proudly progressive, socially responsible welfare-state pioneer to a smug, philanthropy-based culture that offloads its social obligations onto the capricious benevolence of the wealthy.

Brilliant writing, Stuart, and the best analysis on the Chaser controversy I’ve seen yet

Blairbar: "However this time their "shock and awe campaign" collapsed."
You think it has collapsed? Oh, good! I'm glad you think that way, that means the Chaser can get on with what they do best, and have been doing all along. To my mind, their campaign did not collapse.
It has now been drawn to the attention of a far wider audience than it would have, if people had just let it be.
Therefore, the Chaser have achieved their ends, even though some of us needed the good Doctor to make it plain to all.

This is a good article, it has merit - for the most part. The question was asked, "Why has this skit attracted more attention?" And the answers given so far have all missed their mark. Comparing a comedy skit that involves terminally ill children to that of the Footy Show or the APEC stunt is comparing chalk with cheese. Losing a child is not comparable to anything. It's clear to me that most commenters here have not had to endure the loss of their child, because if they had, there wouldn't be the myriad of comparisons or the minimising of the seriousness of the loss by dismissing it as bad-taste-satire. Losing a child is nothing like losing a grandparent, a parent, sibling or pet. Losing a child is a part of losing your own future, coupled with a sense of helplessness and loss of control. The grief surrounded by losing a child is of the most intense that can be experienced, and it is the MOST tragic thing a parent can ever go through. One has to be able to comprehend this before one can fully understand why The Chasers skit has received the amount of attention that it has.

Shivers: It is precisely the sense of helplessness and loss of control that cause people to react in irrational ways to the death of a child. People, including children, die and that is a fact of life – we can try and prevent what is natural or we can fight against it to our own detriment. Why do people need to be helpful? Why do they need to be in control? This is the real problem and it is what causes them to do what they want for dying kids rather than what the kids want. This is why such organisations like the Make a wish Foundation exist. It is about adults trying to avoid what cannot be avoided. It is probably not the only area in their lives where they try and control events beyond them.

Those who experience the pain of the loss of a child also become quite illogical in their efforts to deny the pain. They try and belittle the suffering of others which is exactly what the Chaser have been accused of doing. How do you know that none of the posters here has not experienced the loss of a child? Maybe they have and come through the experience and can put it all in perspective. How can you say that the grief is ‘the most intense that can be experienced’ unless you have had the experience of every type of grief that exists? Dismissing the opinions of others just because they have not had that particular experience is exactly what you accuse them of doing to those who have had it.

The Chasers were saying nothing about the experience of the loss of a child and everything about the way some people seek to deny the pain of the experience. It has touched a nerve because there are many people who want to deny the pain, go through the grief and come out the other side. Most people do come out the other side and regain their perspective. There are people who have lost a child and agree with the Chaser’s point of view.

Beautiful comment shivers. I have never suffered the loss of a child or grandchild but last year a friend of mine's little boy died from leukaemia after months of treatment, then remission but sadly the fatal return of the illness. He was taken off all medication and his parents told he had about four weeks to live. They asked him to make some wishes. He wished for two things: to visit Melbourne or to see his siblings fish at the beach. A family friend arranged for the little fellow and his family to spend three days on Bribie Island. The little boy's wishes were granted; he returned home and died three day's later.
I guess the parents and friends were "pander(ing) to parent guilt" and the money spent on the little fellow's last few days would have been better served by donating to medical research. But they were loving parents who wished their son to have a little bit of happiness after months of treatment and sacrifice. At the funeral, mourners were asked not to bring flowers but to make a donation to the Leukaemia Foundation.

Dear Phanto
For the last time what is the "Chaser’s point of view"?.

There is a difference between satirizing and making a serious public comment and it appears that Chaser got this horribly wrong.

If one of the free to air current affair shows took on the same topic and asked the same question ("is promising unrealistic wishes to dying children cruel?") then perhaps it would have been framed in the right way to attract good social debate. But let’s simply see it for what it was - The Chaser team did it for a laugh, a skit, a 2 minute spot on their 'comedic' show.

It was never going to be given some serious treatment team as important social commentary by the Chaser team. Clearly many feel the topic requires more than something as superficial as what the Chasers offered. Hence the outrage. Protecting their freedom of speech is one thing, framing public comment in such a way so as not to unduly offend or traumatize sections of our community is quite another

Is the Australian public so feeble that they cannot bear to see someone poking fun at their holy cows?

Censorship is now based on not being PC.

What an over sensitive bunch of fairies we have become. Most productions are so PC as to trite and boring. No wonder the film Australia tanked, it had all the edginess of a bowl of cold porridge.

My comment: "Grow a spine."

Dear Shadow Minister
Your comment: "Grow a spine."
My comment: "Find your heart"

BB,

My heart is in perfect working order.

However, I would prefer to see a few disturbing articles than have someone else deciding for me.

For the delicate flowers, I propose that the ABC starts a new channel called butterflys and Stephen Conroy makes a website fluffybunny.com.au where nothing upsetting ever happens.

Many others would prefer to live in the real world.

Dear Shadow
Compassion, love, heartbreak and sorrow are all part of "the real world." Why mock these human emotions?

blairbar:"Why mock these human emotions?"

Because making decisions on the basis of those emotions is flawed and leads to bad outcomes.

Thus we have a school here in Brisbane cancelling a dance because 2 girls claimed to have felt "uncomfortable" at a previous event.

No one asked the Chasers what their point was before they went off the deep end. It was enough that some people felt "uncomfortable": rationality was not required.

Where does it stop?

Dear Antiseptic
"Because making decisions on the basis of those emotions is flawed and leads to bad outcomes."
So my friend's son spending three of his last six days seeing his siblings fish on Bribie Island was an example of a bad outcome?. The little fellow smiled and laughed; something he hadn't done for a long time.
I have given up with some of you people; no more correspondence from me on this subject.

BB,

Humour is based on life experience, and is to a large extent a coping mechanism using absurdity to put the experience into perspective.

That the outcry is coming almost exclusively from those with no direct experience (knowing some one that has does not count)is testimony that it is only about what they consider to appropriate.

Callers on the ABC radio that had direct experience were actually the least offended, and in fact found it funny.

Every time you let a bunch of prissy busibodies tell you what to think, then your world shrinks a little.

Freedom of speech and thought is too precious to let it be erroded by vocal minority of twerps.

blairbar:"So my friend's son spending three of his last six days seeing his siblings fish on Bribie Island was an example of a bad outcome?."

No, it was a personal moment of compassion, which is all well and good. It's when matters of public policy or of public expenditure are determined on emotional grounds that we get bad decisions.

I asked "where does it stop?", which is the point you could address if you could get past the emotive response. Why is the Chaser team responsible for our reactions, as negative as they may be? Most particularly, why is the Chaser team responsible for ensuring that their output doesn't make people "uncomfortable"?

I do wish you could understand that I'm not in any way criticising or belittling the response of the people in your example. I am perfectly capable of empathising with their pain while still looking at the broader view. Once upon a time that was regarded as a good personal characteristic...

I agree with Antiseptic. The right to say what offends nobody exists in the darkest tyranny. It may be harmful to say what offends. I believe it is a greater harm to prevent saying what offends.

We cannot be sure that everything we say is right, good and proper. However, the effort to make sure that only what is right, good and proper is said prevents saying what should be said. Free speech is risky. It may cause unnecessary conflict and offense. However, its elimination ensures tyranny.

When I saw the link I was utterly disgusted that these spineless cowards could steep so low to make fun of desperately sick children. They are cowards who target innocent children. If they wanted to make fun of society values, I can think of loads more ways to do this, but to say things like "they are going to die anyway" and "why go to all the trouble?" - that's just low. Here is what I think: http://whitesinnz.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-honestly-did-not-think-it-was-funny.html