Muzzling 'The Chaser' - the politics behind the outrage

The Chaser comedy team had its top-rating show, The Chaser’s War on Everything, suspended by the ABC for two weeks after an outcry over a sketch screened on June 3 that joked about the Make a Wish Foundation charity for sick children.

The sketch presented an alternative - the Make a Realistic Wish Foundation, in which charity workers callously denied dying kids their fantasies. For instance, a girl who wanted to meet teen idol Zac Efron got a stick instead.

The response was a hailstorm of outrage led by the conservative media, which whipped up a lynch-mob mentality. The Sydney Daily Telegraph dedicating an entire section of its paper to attacking The Chaser.

The ABC responded by suspending the program and announcing a review of its editorial approval process. On June 10, the ABC’s head of comedy Amanda Duthie was sacked for approving the sketch.

The Chaser issued a statement apologising for the sketch. They said they didn’t intend the sketch to be offensive, thinking it so over-the-top no one would take it seriously. On their suspension, the statement said: “we are disappointed by the decision, and we don’t agree with it”.

No doubt many took genuine offence at the sketch. However, the extent of the attacks indicates something more at work than genuine offence at a misjudged sketch. Since when did one sketch in poor taste justify suspension of an entire show?

By such criterion, neither the AFL nor NRL versions of Channel Nine’s Footy Show would ever appear. Both are infamous for their misogyny and homophobia. They have been largely left alone by the same media voices savaging The Chaser.

The Chaser team is extremely popular - the second series of the War on Everything was regularly watched by more than a million viewers. This success is tied to their willingness to challenge the status quo. They are at their funniest in their role as outsiders throwing rocks at the establishment - irreverently mocking its pretences and pomposity.

War, racism and attacks on civil liberties are recurring targets. The Chaser performed at anti-war rallies against the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Their most famous stunt occurred at the 2007 APEC summit in Sydney. The city was locked-down and highly militarised, with civil liberties all but abolished. All this to protect the war criminal George W Bush. The Chaser sent a fake motorcade through supposedly impenetrable security into the heart of where the summit was being held, before Chaser member Chas Licciardello jumped out dressed as Osama bin Laden.

The stunt exposed the lie that the extreme measures were to stop terrorist attacks, rather than stifle dissent. Along with the thousands who defied the police state laws to march peacefully in the streets, The Chaser stunt helped catalyse public opinion against the repressive laws.

The stunt mocked and humiliated the authorities. It exposed the spin from our rulers justifying measures that made ordinary people’s lives in Sydney at the time a nightmare.

No wonder The Chaser is so popular.

The Chaser was an important cultural aspect of the movement that brought down the right-wing government of John Howard.

The Chaser began on TV in 2001 with an election special. A highlight was Chaser member Craig Reucassel gatecrashing the Liberal Party celebration party dressed as “The Race Card” - a reference to the tactics Howard used to win the poll.

The Chaser’s first regular TV show, CNNN, mocked the corporate media and Howard’s pro-war policies.

The incredible success of The Chaser’s War on Everything has brought about a contradiction. From naughty boys upsetting the applecart, their success has catapulted them into the mainstream they mocked. One response appears to have been to become less political - and less funny.

However, they haven’t completely dropped the politics: a sketch on the same episode as the one that got them suspended featured Chaser member Julian Morrow travelling to Poland to visit a known CIA-run torture prison. The Polish authorities deny it exists, so Morrow assisted them by standing in front of its barbwire fence with a megaphone shouting “Nothing to see here!”

It isn’t hard to see why powerful forces want to tame The Chaser.

However, the APEC stunt was too popular for the right-wing media to slam. The New South Wales police tried, but it’s hard looking stern with egg on your face.

The “Make a Wish” sketch provided the excuse to unleash hostility. It has been used to give more power over The Chaser to an ABC management gutted by the former Howard government and stacked with right-wingers.

Those criticising The Chaser argue the sketch mocks sick children. In fact, the sketch was targeting the Make a Wish charity, which grants very ill children fantasy wishes and trades on the associated good will.

In a letter to the June 5 Sydney Morning Herald, 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.

“As a doctor, I can tell you sick children want two things: to get better and to go home.

“If you are concerned about sick children, donate to medical research or make it an election priority. Research works, and that is why children now survive diseases that were once terminal, such as leukaemia.

“Such charities pander to parent guilt and have become self-serving.”

Such a topic makes for very dark humour that cuts as close to the bone as you can get. But this is hardly new to The Chaser.

This is the comedy team who, the day after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, ran the front-page headline on their namesake paper: “Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower rises two places in world’s tallest building ranks.”

That is a pretty black way to satirise the media’s nationalistic parochialism. But a deliberately offensive approach to comedy is not restricted to The Chaser.

Two days before the offending sketch went to air, contestants on Channel Ten’s Good News Week were discussing a man who turned his house into a Star Trek replica. Comedian Wil Anderson said this guy gets inspired by Star Trek to remodel his house and everyone reckons it’s cool, “but Joseph Fritzl watches Silence of the Lambs ...”

This tasteless joke referred to the Austrian man who kidnapped and repeatedly raped his own daughter. Any humour it contained depended entirely on the shock value of its over-the-top poor taste.

It predictably drew a combination of audience groans and nervous laughter. Regular panellist Mikey Robbins expressed his approval by saying “I am so buying you a beer after the show”.

It is hard to see how Anderson’s joke was less offensive than The Chaser’s, yet there was no outcry.

GNW’s host Paul McDermott made his name with singing comedy group The Doug Anthony All Stars, which specialised in performing the most offensive humour possible.

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 has driven the current campaign against The Chaser, and the decision to suspend them and review editorial policy, is not really about the “Make a Wish” sketch. Whether the sketch was appropriate or not is beside the point - it has been seized as an opportunity to muzzle a comedy team willing to take on the status quo.

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.