Fair enough as an article but I will warn the author on one point. Don't treat critics with kindness and reason. The sort of critics who track you down will not respond to a reasoned approach. As I have discovered in the climate change debate, they will take it as a sign of weakness and respond with even crankier load of nonsense. Answer stiffly once perhaps, but if that doesn't work ignore them. A rule I now intend to follow.(Unless you have, actually made an error in which case you should admit to it once and move on. Errors happen.)

Oh man Nina, I was waiting for the bit about misogynist boy club conspiracy that we got from Deveney.

If you like reading self absorbed self indulgent rants have a good read, it's quite the show...

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2895279.htm

Actually the ABC was always a better fit.

'Of course those who continue to commit offence after offence do deserve punishment if, for nothing else, idiocy and a failure to learn from past errors. '

Amen to that one Nina. Apparently she did it for her kids though, and was the victim in a grand conspiracy against women. I hear violins...

BTW: She's called for people not to boycott the paper she was sacked from. How noble! If ever there was an ego that got out of hand...

@Holley: *waves*

Yes I read Deveney's response. And look- (and I think this is fair)- when it comes to this issue I am unimpressed by anyone (regardless of gender, age, ethnicity etc) who fails to learn from their mistakes. The End

'On the one hand there is a need to set and uphold standards of decency and propriety. '

Please give me a break. The hypocrisy is unbearable. Look at the way the vultures attack Abbot about his faith and yet leave the NSW Premier alone with hers because she is pretty, works for the Labour party and is a woman. At least Deveny does not try and hide her vileness. I would love to know what these standards of decency are that Nina upholds.

Kudos Nina. Very diplomatic.

But according to her, she made no mistakes. She was fighting some 'good fight' with some kind of free license to offend Anzacs, 11 year old girls and cancer victims with impunity (while railing against Hey Hey it's Saturday humour I might add) since she's a 'comedienne'.

Now she sees it as censorship by people who 'don't get her', as if it was her God given right to have a sounding board to rant about whatever she wanted and offend the customers regardless of the quality or even comedy value of her pieces.

I think the biggest fear for her is that it isn't because she's a woman or because she's anti-establishment, it actually is because she had run out of tricks and was resorting to cheap shots in a stale routine that had past it's use-by.

BTW: I'm all for pushing the boundaries, but if you push too hard and people push back don't act like a spoiled little child. Take it on the chin and don't make yourself out to be some victim and bring your kids into it and make it a gender issue and make dubious excuses and justifications.

She's playing with outrage as her stock and trade, and when the outrage industry bites back she claims some kind of martyr status. It's quite bizarre. That she thinks people will stop reading a newspaper because she's not in it any more shows how far up her own ass she has ended up.

sometimes writers and comedians will get it wrong.
IT was not just "wrong" with for example what that silly moo remarked on re some of the logies personalities' personal tragic events. That was just plain brainless. Even more brainless are those Uni examiners who let such morons pass to get into journalism.
No-one's pushing the boundaries of PC but PC is pushing the boundaries of normal peoples' tolerance. PC is nonsense & brainless frivolity personified. Stuff PC & its brainless followers !

Houellebecq,
Thanks for the abc link to deveny.
I read her article.
What can I say?
It's a human rights tragedy when a brave supporter of free speech is martyred in such a manner.
And to think this happened in Australia!
I am however a bit confused by her comment earlier on in the piece,
the one she makes before she spends yet another 1,000 words explaining herself:
<<And I won't be explaining myself>>
Sort of sums her up.

As you can imagine, Mohammed Kharr is very busy and cannot respond to this article personally.
He thanks you for your comments and hopes you continue to enjoy writing such banal articles.

Hi Houllebecq, I know you know about pushing the boundaries, and also the pain of being "censored", as I've made you serve the very very occasional suspension on OLO for outrageous comments much less offensive than Deveney's. ;-)

I'd disagree with Curmudgeon. I always answer emails as politely as I can. Sometimes you actually find that people become reasonable. There is, however, the odd person, who thinks that there is some audience for their continued abusive correspondence. And perhaps there is. One of the things I always assume in internet correspondence is that it might find its way into print one day, so don't say anything you don't want to own on the front page of a daily metropolitcan newspaper, or A Current Affair. It is a good discipline. Of course it sometimes leads you to be more inventively grumpy than you are in reality! :)

I've met Catherine Deveny, she's a sociopath...I'm not kidding, she really is as nasty and narcissistic in real life as her literary alter ego.
Who cares if her kids missed out on Wet n Wild because their Mum lost her job, Bindi and Bob Irwin's father is dead.

I've met Catherine Deveny, she's a sociopath.
Jay o m,
which Uni let her graduate ?

Houellebecq wrote:

"[She was fired] because she had run out of tricks and was resorting to cheap shots in a stale routine that had past it's use-by."

In other words she was fired because she was an unfunny comedienne.

Can anyone think of a better reason for firing a comedienne?

Actually Graham I don't think I have ever been suspended. I've had 1 comment deleted though in May last year (I checked my email, and it was only for jovial stupidity with Ginx and Col R. On probation I was I think). I was so proud that the saintly Severin was suspended when I have never been. I suppose I am just a little bit better behaved.

I'm damned sure if I am mistaken and I was suspended at some stage I didn't question the umpires decision.

steven,

Yes, I think that's what hurts her the most really.

Jay,

Interesting. That's the impression I got out of that rant, though I must admit I've not read much of her stuff and didn't know how famous she was. It must be a Melbourne thing.

Proxy,

Haha. I really cant believe that was published. I cringe in embarrassment for her. It reads like a drunken text message to an ex lover.

Houllie

"Oh man Nina, I was waiting for the bit about misogynist boy club conspiracy that we got from Deveney."
Whatever Nina has written in the past, there was nothing wrong with this piece. She has added something to our understanding of where the boundaries of polite conversation lay. Steven raised an interesting point, in that people might be a little more forgiving, had she actually been funny.

Deveney's rant, on the other hand, was utterly repulsive. It is the self-serving nature of what many women attempt to pass off as feminism that repulses me. She is claiming the right to say anything, no matter how repulsive, to prove that women have a right to have an opinion. By a similar logic, she could attempt to justify absolutely any action with the rhetoric of choice.

I can easily believe Jay's claim that she is equally revolting in real life. the rest of us couldn't be more offensive if we tried.

I was attending Murdoch University in 1988 where it was compulsory for all first years to plough through a course called Structure of Thought And Reality (STAR- but we won't go there).
One of the (rotating) lecturers started off by making a big song and dance about her wearing a short skirt and lipstick and still being a feminist. As she power-strutted around the stage two lads walked in late. She confronted them by shouting through the microphone "If you ever come into my lectures late again I'm going to cut your f'ing (she used the actual word) balls off!" to the uproarious cheers of the other women in the audience.
Same mentality.
Anybody else would fully expect to automatically lose their jobs but these ignoramuses are genuinely shell-shocked if and when they eventually do.
These behaviours seem to arise out of a repellant blend of narcissism,
a distorted sense of entitlement and an acute sense of victimhood.
Let's just call it pathological feminism.
Like the tantrums of an indulged child, the behaviours are clearly reinforced in the patient by the tolerance of others.
This provides a hint to a solution.

@ Individual, see Proxy's post, I'd imagine ANY University humanities department would pass her with flying colours these days, my experience with her was in a social situation, a "Northcote Thing".

I find myself writing about myself writing about writers writing about themselves writing about other writers writing about themselves.
Signed,
Narcissus.

You're right Houllebecque. You've never been suspended. You must have run close if I thought it had happened. My apologies for a false accusation.

Graham: <"Hi Houllebecq, I know you know about pushing the boundaries...">

I disagree. Houellebecq is about as radical as my Nana in a frenzy of crochet.

Benk: <"It is the self-serving nature of what many women attempt to pass off as feminism that repulses me. She is claiming the right to say anything, no matter how repulsive, to prove that women have a right to have an opinion.">

I agree Benk. On the other hand as people increasingly fling their opinions about (a good thing that they can nowdays) we are going to discover that insensitive a/holes come in both sexes. Being a feminist is not a necessary component.

I don't know much about Catherine Deveney so I've taken the trouble to have a bit of a browse. Her writing seems to evoke extremes of opinion - love it or loathe it. I found it a bit tedious and not often amusing, though some people claim that her wit is amazing.

She said something about being taken out of context so, much as I despise Twitter and similar sites, I went and had a look at the context. The comments weren't much improved by the context. If there was some tricky social commentary in the remark about the child, I didn't get it. I haven't seen any similar attempt to explain the comment about kd lang. That was just brutal and damned nasty. While some may claim that some people just don't "get her"; I would say that the world is not obliged to "get" any of us.

As an experienced writer one would expect her to be able to convey meaning. I just wondered if she wasn't having a hefty tipple while tweeting. I can't see any other rational explanation.