Giving Me The Irrits

This week I are mostly being pissed off by...

OK, so I’ve written about this before, but if the thing one is annoyed by refuses to go away, what choice does one have but to keep on impotently spewing words out into the void in the vain hope that somehow one can exert some kind of influence on the universe?

So, Kitchen Cabinet. It’s back on, and Annabel Crabb is once more going to politicians’ houses, making them dessert, letting them make her dinner, and chatting to them in a relaxed setting. The idea is that this exercise will provide “insights” into the MPs’ characters that in more conventional political interviews we would not be privy to.

Now, as was the case when I wrote about the show year ago, I feel bad about slamming it, because I like Annabel Crabb. I really do. I think she’s a very smart, funny woman and her writing is more worth reading than most who deal with politics in this country. She’s also made quite a few really good TV shows. And in a way, Kitchen Cabinet is one of them. In terms of watchability, it’s great: it’s engaging, it’s interesting, it’s fun.

It’s just that I personally think that it’s a bad thing that it exists.

The first problem is with the premise of the show itself. When you have an interview show about famous people - of which there are many - or people who do an interesting job - far fewer - the show is justified purely on those terms: these are people who we are interested in, and if the show gives them a chance to be interesting on TV, that is good enough reason for it to exist.

But Kitchen Cabinet makes loftier claims. The idea here is that by showing pollies in a different environment to that in which we usually show them, we are becoming better-informed voters, and our democracy and society is enhanced.

This is an assertion I reject. The personal stories of politicians may be interesting in and of themselves, but knowing about them is of no practical use to me, and does not help me make better decisions about how to vote or who to support.

Because what a politician is “really like” is utterly irrelevant to voters. Politicians don’t want us to think this: they are eager for us to fall for the fiction that knowing what they are like on the inside is important. It’s not. All that matters, as far as a voter is concerned, is what a politician has done, is doing or will do. You can be the kindest gentlest most cuddly person on earth, but if your policies are shit, you’re a shit politician and you should be rejected by the country. You can be a rude obnoxious pig in private, but if your political actions are directed towards the betterment of the nation, you should be supported.

Which leads into the second problem, of course: because the above is the case, and because politicians don’t want us to know the above is the case, a show like Kitchen Cabinet isn’t just useless, it’s actually damaging to us, politically speaking.

Because politicians don’t go on Kitchen Cabinet because they want people to know The Real Me. They go on Kitchen Cabinet because they want people to fall for the lie that knowing the Real Me is important, and to trick the electorate into thinking that the person being portrayed in the kitchen whipping up a casserole with Annabel IS the Real Me.

Politicians don’t want to be judged on their policies, or their legislative achievements, or how good a job they do. They want to be judged on their vibes, their personality, whether people reckon they’re a Good Bloke or a Nice Lady. They want us to feel, not to think. And Kitchen Cabinet is a wonderful way for them to transmit the message that feeling, not thinking, is the way to go.

Look! That politician is cooking! Just cutting up the carrots and braising the beef, while having a nice chinwag with lovely Annabel! My goodness, they’re just like us, aren’t they?

That’s what they want you to think: They’re Just Like Us. That’s what politicians always want you to think. And not just that They’re Just Like Us, but that being Just Like Us is desirable.

It’s not, of course. It doesn’t matter one goddamn bit whether a politician is like me, or like you, or like anyone in particular. All that matters is how they do their job. If they make life better for the people they represent, they can live in a solid gold volcano and spend every weekend licking champagne off shaved apes for all I care.

But Kitchen Cabinet is a show specifically designed to send two very clear messages:

1. Politicians are just like us

2. Knowing this is very important

In other words, Kitchen Cabinet is a show designed to help politicians lie to the public. It is a political PR stunt. It is, in a very real sense, a half-hour taxpayer-funded advertisement for the politician featured in any particular episode.

And that’s the problem with it. Annabel Crabb is smart, witty and lovely. But with this show, she is allowing herself to be employed as a marketing representative for the political class.

And that’s not journalism. That’s not even entertainment.

And another thing…

Jokes, what are they?

Here are some jokes:

I used to play poker with a leopard, but I stopped after I found out he was actually a cheetah.

I refuse to date big cats anymore: too many of them are cheetahs.

I still remember my first date with my wife: from the moment I saw the elephant dung on her boots, I knew she was a keeper.

Are these great jokes? No. But I will stand by my assertion that they ARE jokes. Even if you didn’t laugh at them, you GOT them. And because of this, all three of the above are a million miles ahead of the joke that was inexplicably named “Joke of the Year” at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

If you’ve not time to click that link, here is the joke (trigger warning: unbelievably bad joke):

“I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.”

The only possible response to this, when presented to a human being as a joke, is:

WHAT?

If I heard this joke from a drunk at a party, I would be so angry I would have to be restrained from throwing a bread roll at their head. Coming from a professional comedian I consider it basically a hate crime.

And yet this won! Joke of the year! In a POLL. People VOTED for that shit.

It’s not even that it’s bad. “Jokes of the year” are almost always bad. The Melbourne Comedy Festival always has a similar competition, and 90% of the contenders are fairly weak puns, because the nature of the competition means that no joke that requires a setup, or that can’t be understood stripped of context, can be included. It’s all just one-liners, and puns are the easiest to understand in an instant, so they dominate. No “joke of the year” is ever anywhere near being the actual best joke of the festival, and we don’t expect it to be.

But we should surely expect it to at least BE a joke, shouldn’t we?

The above line from Lorna Rose Treen isn’t a bad pun: it’s not a pun at all. A zookeeper turned out to be a cheetah? What? What are you TALKING about? What does it MEAN? A zookeeper and a cheetah are not part of the same category. Does Loran Rose Treen think zookeepers are animals that are kept in the zoo?

But it’s not about Lorna Rose Treen. Because this was VOTED the best joke. And the thing to bear in mind is that the voters were given the nominated jokes, out of context, on their own, no supporting information about the comedian in question or about any of the other material in their show. So we can’t say that Lorna Rose won because people just like her personally. And we can’t say that, in the context of the whole show, it was super funny, like if maybe it was part of an extended routine called “Here are some examples of bafflingly stupid non-jokes that a terrible comedian with a plate stuck in their head might say while on meth”.

Nope, that line, on its own, was voted best joke of the fringe.

The other nine in the top ten are of varying quality, but all way ahead of the winner, because they are all actual jokes that have some semblance of coherent meaning.

Simon Evans wrote a very good piece about this, in which he lamented what the abysmal choice said about the decline of the Edinburgh Fringe. Myself, being less emotionally invested in the Fringe per se, am angered at a more basic level: I’m just pissed off at people and the way they think.

To me, the victory of this offensively imbecilic non-joke is a symptom of a depressing tendency in some people to think comedy is something other than the practice of making people laugh. Some people think comedy is there to make socio-political arguments. Some people think comedy is there to reassure people that they are good people. And some people think comedy is there to fill space with words arranged in a certain way, for reasons that these people have never quite understood.

Maybe a bunch of people saw the zookeeper-who-was-a-cheetah joke and thought, hmm, that has the basic shape of a joke, I recognise the words, and I recognise the structure, and one bit of it seems vaguely related to another bit of it, so I guess it’s a good joke?

Or maybe they just saw “cheetah” and thought, hey, that’s a homophone! I guess this must be a good joke, as the teller has identified two words that sound the same but mean different things.

But one thing I am absolutely sure of: nobody saw that joke and laughed, unless it was the hollow, mirthless laughter of the damned recognising that the world is already ashes.

You can tell me you found that joke funny. I will not believe you. You can tell me you think that joke makes sense. I will not believe you.

For the joke is not a joke. It’s just a reminder of how close death is to all of us.

And now, a bit of fun

The Non-Regular List

The Top Ten Hottest Women of 1970s British Sitcoms, Ranked

1. Barbara Good, The Good Life (note: this was not even close: she’s number one by light years)

2. Sybil Fawlty, Fawlty Towers

3. Polly Sherman, Fawlty Towers (note: some will say Polly was hotter than Sybil because in one episode you can see her nipples through her top. They are wrong: Sybil was smoking)

4. Shirley Brahms, Are You Being Served

5. Chrissy, Man About The House

6. Linda Patterson, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

7. Ann Fourmile, George and Mildred

8. Nurse Gladys Emmanuel, Open All Hours

9. Sally Abbott, Bless This House

10. Marjory Frobisher, To The Manor Born