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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
The Age‘s Melinda Houston:
A couple of years ago, the Chaser boys observed that once Fox News’ Bill Reilly excoriated the French as “peace-mongering cheese monkeys”, news satire suddenly became a whole lot harder.
So did basic research, apparently. Bill Reilly? And peace-mongering cheese monkeys? Not even close, Melinda. Amusingly, later in her piece Houston criticises comedians for being “fundamentally lazy”.
(Via Ian C.)
- Doh!Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 31 at 12:37 PM • permalink
- Maybe she was too busy being chased by a greased Scotsman to do her research properly?Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 31 at 12:38 PM • permalink
- “Purple monkey dishwasher”Posted by withcheese on 2006 07 31 at 12:52 PM • permalink
- WTF?
Is The Age making a run at the Grauniad’s record of clumsy factual errors?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 07 31 at 01:04 PM • permalink
- She probly isnt even aware that the line originally comes from a deaf, lip reading, yellow skinned, red haired, tractor lovin, wolf wrestlin, greased up Scotsman…
Thats soooo last millenium.
Posted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 07 31 at 01:19 PM • permalink
- “Bonjourrr, you cheese eatin’ surrender monkeys.” – WilliePosted by The_Wizard_of_WOZ on 2006 07 31 at 01:23 PM • permalink
- I know this post shouldn’t be taken as a general invitation to bash the French, but . . .
I came across the following from Samuel Pepys’diary(September 30, 1661). In this entry, he is describing a brawl between officials of the Spanish and French embassies in London over the order of precedence at the entrance of the Swedish ambassador. “[I] hear that the Spanish hath got the best of it, and killed three
of the French coach-horses and several men, and is gone through the City next to our King’s coach; at which it is strange to see how all the City did rejoice. And indeed we do naturally all love the Spanish, and hate the French […] So then I went to
the French house, where I observe still, that there is no men in the world of a more insolent spirit where they do well, nor before they begin a matter, and more
abject if they do miscarry, than these people are; for they all look like dead men, and not a word among them, but shake their heads”.
- What’s really sad/funny is that even when newspapers do get the quote right, and the show it came from, they usually attribute it to Bart Simpson.
You know, because Bart is the only character they can identify as being on the show, and he’s known for his one-liners, right? So it must be him.
It’s genuinely painful to watch people try to commentate on pop culture when they spend most of their time clothing themselves in disdain for it.
Posted by Brian Tiemann on 2006 07 31 at 01:31 PM • permalink
- withcheese, thanks for the well-placed but obscure reference. [golf clap]
While Willie never intended his other insults to apply to just the French, they also fit nicely:
* “croquet-playing mint muncher”
* “blouse-wearing poodle walker”Posted by Matt in Denver on 2006 07 31 at 01:53 PM • permalink
- It’s obvious Terry Lane should be put in charge of the Age‘s fact-checking department so this sort of cock-up won’t happen again.Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 31 at 01:54 PM • permalink
- As an antidote to the stunted humour of the Left, I offer you A Charlie Brown Christmas Jihad.Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 07 31 at 06:06 PM • permalink
- More factual errors in this article:
perennially excellent John Clarke and Brian Dawe.
Yes, the Howard bad joke works so well EVERY TIME. Look back at their old work during the Hawke/Keating era and they still spent most of their time attacking the conservative parties. The best of the political comedy shows on ABC was Backburner. Though on the left they had a go at everyone.
Houston must be so proud of herself that she managed to find a way to blame Bush for the North Korean missile crisis:
he reminds us that Bush broke off diplomatic relations with North Korea – diplomatic relations being a condition of the 1999 missile pact that kept North Korea from testing WMDs.
There must have been a lot of backslapping in The Age office when she wrote that.
- When CESM is attributed to a journalist, rather than Groundskeeper Willie, it’s usually Jonah Goldberg who gets the rap. All Jonah did was popularise it. ¡Aii, qué Monos Comequesos que se someten!Posted by David Gillies on 2006 07 31 at 08:03 PM • permalink
- If you’re into really highbrow comedy, the “lost” censored episodes of Ren & Stimpy are now available on DVD.
or as Melinda would have it, Wen & Stumpy: “Sappy! Sappy! Boy! Boy!”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 31 at 08:20 PM • permalink
- @ 11 & 19
The Chaser is great… while I couldn’t watch it constantly, and it has gotten a little repetitive the past few weeks.With regards to the article, it includes stupidity such as
A CNN survey found people who watch Jon Stewart are some of the most politically informed people in the US, although it’s hard to say whether they watch the show because they’re politically savvy, or they become politically savvy through watching the show
Her ‘analysis’ is amusingly woeful, a false dichotomy, just based on assumption and guesswork.
In other news, the Chaser is awesome.
(even if even TripleJ describes it as ‘chardonnay socialist humour’)
- Evil Pundit, from the bottom of my infidel heart, thank you.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 07 31 at 09:01 PM • permalink
Houston, Melinda
(birth name: Houston, Melinda Jane)Born: 27 Apr 1965 Queenstown, Tasmania
Gender: FemaleMelinda Houston is a journalist who has lectured part-time in Media Studies at RMIT University…and a restaurant and bar reviewer for the Aged.
From the above I can see at least 8 reasons why this article is the way that it is.Posted by Jay Santos on 2006 07 31 at 09:16 PM • permalink
- The Chaser – purile pre-adolescent humour with predictable University student mindset (and no, there’s not actually a contradiction there).
A waste of electrons.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 31 at 10:07 PM • permalink
- It sounds like Fidel’s got a “bad cold”. Get ready for a MSM b.j.-fest of unparalleled proportions.Posted by andycanuck on 2006 07 31 at 11:28 PM • permalink
- Re Castro: they are already on this in Miami. For those who have never been there, much less grown up there like I did, it is hard to describe the effect Castro’s death will have on the people there. In fact, I can’t imagine it. I almost wish I still lived there, just so I could see what it’s like. Anyway, if anything interesting occurs up here in Disney World (Orlando is 275 miles and light years away from South Florida) I’ll let you know.Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 07 31 at 11:32 PM • permalink
- OT but bad research anyhoo – from the trial of melbourne’s jiwannabehadis
The prosecution alleges that one of the accused, Izzydeen Atik, 26, of Williamstown, was one of the three men who turned up at the Footscray shop.
Mr Schaefer [gun shop owner] told the court one of the three said he wanted a gun to use at the Williamstown rifle range.
Mr Schaefer said he thought it strange because the Williamstown rifle range had been closed for several years, the court heard.
see, they are so downtrodden by us infidels that they can’t afford a current stree directory that would show them what’s what
- So, this Melinda Houstonwehaveaproblem thinks the 7.30 Report’s John Clarke and Brian Dawe are funny does she? Well, she’s right. What a cack! I used to laugh myself sick at their schtick in 1979 when they were doing the same gags, the same tired old double-takes and talking off camera and the same old, same old. What a riot. In 1979.
Same goes for that idiot Mike Carlton – still doin’ the same st-o-o-o-pid gags as 1981. Yecht!
- The Chaser is about as amusing as unanaethesised pile surgery, Dawe and Clark less so; why no mention of the stupediously humour-challenged Glass House? The ABC is infested with pathetic undegraduate revues which wouldn’t raise a titter in a leaky nitrous oxide factory, and has become a sheltered workshop for the terminally jape-deprived. Sadly, there are earnest, cardigan-clad pillocks out there who loudly proclaim their fandom of these turgid wastes of wattage, to reinforce their self-professed sense of finger-on-the-pulse razor edged urban savvy; all it does is reinforce the view of anyone with a semblence of humour and awareness that they’re sad twats who are as hip as displaysia.
Let’s face it- Age readers try to pretend that Leunig is hilarious and reflective of advanced thought. Then again some people regard The Footy Show and breakfast radio’s assorted gibbons as the matterhorn of mirth.Fuck me there’s a lot of deadshits on this planet.
- BTW- if you want to cack your keks at something on the ABC, catch the premiere of their boring, self-indulgent litery wankfest The Book Club tonight at about 10pm (I think).
It should be a hoot, featuring the hatchet-faced Mrs Denton, spectalar scriptwriting failure Ms Fits, commie carrot cuddler Peter Cundall and some gormless git from the Prahran Pravda; they will be applying their collective cultural critique to the dreadful “American Psycho”, which should be funnier than seeing a wayward Hezbollah-launched missile land on Robert Fisk interviewing a representative of Hamas bitching about their lack of media attention and the perfidry of Jewdom.
If the French are Cheese-monkeys, the Hezbollah shooting from within their own suburbs must be “Guerrillas in the Midst’.
My hat is off to you, Barrie. That was brilliant.
=^D
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 08 01 at 12:41 AM • permalink
- I neglected to mention that I read a gushing review of this horror in The Canberra Times, which revealed that the ubiquitous Ms Hardy, along with being a dreadful actress, even worse author and purveyor of commie clobber that makes a Che’ t-shirt look groovy is also a go-go dancer; I had no idea that there were clubs that catered for the blind.
(Her CV for the article was obviously lifter straight from her PR blurb on the ABC site; the show also features ‘60s throwback,former squeeze of loud, obnoxious Kiwi buckethead Derryn Hinch and born-again luvvie Jacki Weaver– perhaps the even more neuronally-challenged Mrs Peter Fitzsimons was otherwise occupied.
- I used to like The Chaser when it was simply a newspaper, but the TV show is not something I can bother with much. Pity, two of the team, Chris & Craig, currently host a program on JJJ on Sunday afternoons that can be funny.
I also agree the John Clarke/Brian Dawe sketches have been a little weak recently.
The Jon Stewart Daily Show can be funny, as opposed to the schlock Bill O’Reilly serves up which is so appalling it is funny. In, keeping with The Simpsons theme, as Milhouse once said “I fear to watch, yet I cannot look away”
- I did think the Chaser fellow sending the Leunig cartoon in to the Iranian Anti-Semite Cartoon Competition was effing funny! If I was one of their targets I would raise that immediately and see what reaction they gave. That of course assumes that I would have the presence of mind to react quickly enough in one of their ambush situations.
- I also agree the John Clarke/Brian Dawe sketches have been a little weak recently.
Recently??? I suppose in galapagos turtle years, a decade or two can just whizz by.
As to the two Chaser twerps who continue to infest the yoof network, the most pompous and least amusing of the entire ensemble- I thought they were originally hired to make the pair of mouth-breaters doing the breakfast shift on JJJ appear coherent and professional. John Safran’s the only funny thing there’s been on that rating-free zone for at least ten years- station manager Linda Bracken seems to have had a humourectomy, and her brain replaced with some clockwork leftist platitude generator (or perhaps she’s genetically predisposed to luvvidom, like so many of her ilk on the public tit).
I can’t for the life of me think of the last funny thing on the ABC that caused more than a mild snort of derision- at least Poms get an occasional gem for the extorted licence fees that feed the BBC behemoth- we get Red Kezza, smirky Tony Jones and dadft gameshows with no fucking prizes hosted by halfwits who’d be flat out attracting a heckle at a standup gig full of tourettes sufferers.
- Hey, I like Peter Berner on the Einstein factor….Posted by Quentin George on 2006 08 01 at 02:23 AM • permalink
- Speaking of the Chaser and JJJ, does anyone recall the show “Restoring the Balance” that used to run in Subday arvos, with two of the Chaser “kids” pretending to be what they thought were stock conservative characters in order to send up and satirise comnservative attitudes.
The show failed because neither Chaser chap had any idea about conservatives and conservatism in contempory Australia, they seemed to think that your average right winger is a sort of [Australian] grammar school boy c 1965. Maybe they listened to a lot of Barry Humphries when they were young, although perhaps they should have listened to even more.
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2006 08 01 at 02:35 AM • permalink
- An Hour with Hungover Habib would rate its tits off.Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 08 01 at 03:12 AM • permalink
- I’ve no idea what this “Chaser” thing our Aussie friends are talking about is, but change a few names and they could be describing the wretched, smug, phony, wrist-slittingly unfunny “A Prairie Home Companion.”
(for said Aussie friends – it’s a radio “humor” show on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio written and hosted by self-satisfied left-wing bullshit-ladler Garrison Keillor. His self-congratulation is rivalled only by that of his aren’t-we-clever-for-laughing audience of Volvo-driving Bo-Bos.)
[take that, Habib.]
Speaking of the Chaser and JJJ, does anyone recall the show “Restoring the Balance” that used to run in Subday arvos, with two of the Chaser “kids” pretending to be what they thought were stock conservative characters in order to send up and satirise comnservative attitudes.
Gack. Sounds like the Colbert Report, whose one joke got stale quick. But the howler monkeys in his studio audience seem to enjoy it.
- #57 get back on the meds
the abc had a mildly amusing unzud thing called 7 periods with mr gormsby on late at night a while back. took the piss out of lefty schoolteachers big time. bought the dvd because the green guide pinkos frothed about it’s political incorrectness & puerile humour, & that can’t be bad
agree about habib – sam kekovich without the pinko element. they wouldn’t dare run the habib show though, the snivelling scumbags
- #50 Habib: just saw the promo for the Book Club on ABC featuring Mrs Denton herself. What piece of ghastly middlebrow self consciousness, smirking about how she and her circle of mates are actually going to talk about a book that you can’t even buy in some parts of Australia unless it’s in a sealed wrapper, wow!!
So many of these bourgie lefty women seem never to have outgrown the mentality of school prefects.
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2006 08 01 at 05:23 AM • permalink
- Dave S @ #62
Hey! I used to listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” occasionally when I lived in the USA & Canada in the late 1980s. At least I’m pretty sure I did – can’t imagine it being broadcast here any other time.
I used to like the melodic tone of the speak’s voice and I’m afraid I didn’t tweak to any phony humour. Mea culpa – I was new to Nth America and young & ignorant (now I’m just an ignorant middle aged dweeb).
What was the name of the town it was set in? Lake Wobegone?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 08 01 at 06:26 AM • permalink
- … The Chaser is nothing like A Prairie Home Companion.
The Chaser is anything but subtle, phoney and smug. Its slapstick university-revue type humour; stunts in public at any-one’s expense. Like: rush up to Politician-who’s-obviously-a-racist and present them with a giant hammer, so they can belt the black chap they’s kindly dragged along. That kind of thing.
Fortunately the little darlings are in a bit of strife at the moment, when a ‘mock bigot’ stunt was a bit too real and the Boys in Blue arrested one of them & he’s been charged. Needless to say, ABC Management approved the idiotic stunt.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 08 01 at 06:32 AM • permalink
- You all are wasting your breath. Habib is a comic genius who writes whenever the spirit moves him. He has declined to confirm whether he runs his own blog, or whether he has published anything in the dead tree media. At least, he never responded to my questions concerning same (which is indisputably his right, of course). I suppose we’ll just have to look upon him as the equivalent of the wildly popular uncle who drops in at irregular intervals, fresh from some dangerous, yet hilarious adventure in the less-traveled parts of the world, laden with shrunken heads, tomahawks, jade dragons and other gifts for his large and adoring family.
they will be applying their collective cultural critique to the dreadful “American Psycho”
Which was published when? Are the copra schooners taking longer to get the mail downunder because of global warning or something?
Call me when they discover The Da Vinci Code in 2015…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 01 at 10:24 AM • permalink
- Just a thought… is it possible Melinda altered the quote on purpose because as a good lefty she couldn’t bring herself to associate the French with surrender?Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 01 at 10:27 AM • permalink
- Oh dear, Jay Santos, try as I might I can’t get to eight unless I include “female”.
Since I’m not a regular Simpson’s viewer, I’ve always pictured Scotty on the horn with Capt. Kirk: Aye, Captain, these Klingons be cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
LOL, Evil Pundit.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 01 at 12:25 PM • permalink
- Kyda S:
1. Queenstown, Tasmania
2. a “journalist”
3. lectured part-time
4. Media Studies
5. RMIT University
6. restaurant reviewer
7. bar reviewer
8. “for the Aged.”I think those should meet Jay’s requirements.
Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 08 01 at 04:08 PM • permalink
- “the perennially excellent John Clarke and Brian Dawe.”
Just perennial. This pair are another example of the amazing loyalty of the ABC to the most ‘politically-reliable’ ones.
They occasionally do a good one on Blimp Beazley, but fail to use the wealth of material created by the Dems, the Greens and that cadaverous Midnight Oil guy.
- v. v. close J.M.
I separated Queenstown and Tasmania though for innumerable reasons.
Posted by Jay Santos on 2006 08 01 at 11:41 PM • permalink
- #58, #59, and #63
Tony Moclair and Julian Schiller were the real life hosts of “Restoring the Balance” (characters were Young Liberal Stirling Addison and Young National Tom Thomlinson)
In real life, Tony and Julian are now doing very well on Nova 91.9 in Adelaide. They formerly appeared on 3RRR and MMM as The Crud, and also as themselves on JJJ.In a religious discussion on JJJ one day, they left me dumbfounded and laughing when Tony asked “What is your favourite post-Reformation religion?” Julian responded “It would have to be Calvinism”
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