A nation of blockheads

Watched The Nation last night. Premier on Channel Nine. (Australian TV.)

I watched it primarily to see if my preconceptions of it, based on it's TV advertisements promotions, would hold vaild ground.

The premise of the show seemed to be that it was a parody of a serious news broadcast, which then inverted news content by taking the piss out of serious newsworthy issues. This naturally lead to the conclusion that there was a bit of a culture jamming element to it. It refers to itself as:

News with a Difference.

Mick Molloy swaps his tracky daks for a snappy suit to sit at a desk and let rip with a topical, news-based program - with an edgy difference.

http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/section.aspx?sectionid=5747&sectionname=thenation

I imagined a group of television executives, producers, creative assistances, writers and the like, wracking their collective brains for a winning combination of hit shows, Rove Live with the ABC's The Chaser's War on Everything.

This would mean they could rely on a tried and tested formula, hence determining relative success, (or at least upping the statistical odds of success, and therefore profits,) and all the while pretending to be a contemporary and racy new program.

Er sorry Channel Nine, but you could never culture jam, and it all really looks rather pathetic and sucky-uppy. Why could you never culture jam? Because you've already sold your soul to the establishment, heck you are the establishment. Who else have you got to rebel against? You can hardly incite us to rebel against you now can you? This is why all the targets of your humour were banal and obvious and no real challenge to societal structure, even though they masked themselves as such.

Let's take a look at some of them. This week we had an array of religious leaders to poke fun at. Yawn! All been done before. We had the Dalai Lama, (who's currently in town for a while,) being portrayed as an aggressive and violent rock star persona. Hey, let's make fun of a man who's spent most of his life fighting the moral injustice of Imperialist China invading his homeland. Yeah that should get some laughs!

Yeah sure, religious leaders are often in positions of prominence and power which they abuse, perverting the foundations of their religious belief system to satisfy their own ambitions, or even simply because they try to impose their personal beliefs or lack of understanding of a religious text onto larger social constructs. So come on Mick, surely you guys could have come up with something a little more challenging if you're pupporting to be a news parody show.

There were some quick and forgettable snipes at The Pope, so quick and forgettable that I fail to remember them - (Something about the Pope Mobile.)

And let's not forget the jabs at the predecessor of the recently resigned controversial Mufti, Sheikh Taj el-Din Hamid Hilaly, with the insinuation that the new Mufti will be no improvement on the last. This not only has the potential to send blatant signals of rascism as an acceptable ideology to watching Australians, but easily reinforces the national state of distrust and fear that has ruled the politics of this country lately. Good one Channel Nine, anyone in your exec suite having brunch with John Howard lately? Or maybe you just meet up at the same swinger's night.

While it might be true that the last Mufti was a sexist, arrogant, megalomaniac who loved the notoriety his words afforded him, the actions of the media in using the opportunity to irritate and magnify the widening religious and cultural gap between fellow Australians is not only unwise, but immediately self-serving and a friggin' disgrace.

Then there was an endless parade of Hollywood trollops to scoff and laugh at, including Paris Hilton, naturally enough. But let's face it - the whole world has Paris schadenfreude right now. Religious leaders and celebrities Channel Nine? Tsk, tsk, tsk. When are you going to go after the real Bullies? Like Corporate executives that give themselves pay rises vastly disproportionate to the average Australian wage, and in a world where millions of helpless children die of starvation each year. Or what about the politican who exploits the unfounded fears of his own nation simply to feed his insatiable and endless greed for power and money?

Admittedly there was one skit referring to Guantanamo bay detainees, but this news is hardly challenging or cutting edge anymore. Despite the fact that the whole Guantanamo Bay affair is offensive and an abomination of human rights, now that it's all out in the open, as long as the Australian public are busy watching David Hicks style sagas, then their attention is off
a multitude of other criminal acts being commited by leading Western politicians and secret police organisations. That's my consiparcy theory for the day anyhow.

So Channel Nine, I reckon you should just drop this stupid show and go back to what you do best, confusing and clouding middle-class Australian minds with innane bullshit to stop them thinking about the real social, cultural and political issues at hand. Oh wait - I get it, that's just what you were intending to do with this show in the first place! My mistake.