TV program The Chaser’s War on Everything has been “suspended” for two weeks following a skit in which they advertised a fake charity, the “Make-a-Realistic-Wish Foundation”, obviously based on the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
It maddens me that they actually suspended the program for this reason. The Chasers are hilarious. Their skit could only possibly have offended oversensitive dolts who probably shouldn’t be watching comedies anyway. Do all these complainants seriously think the skit aimed at marginalising the Make-a-Wish Foundation? Do they think that giving kids pencil cases and sticks instead of their wishes was being offered as a serious suggestion?
The skit was not meant to be taken seriously. Most of its skits are not meant to be taken seriously. In the very same episode they tricked five impressionable Americans into eating “hay” (it looked more like grass), telling them a diet fit for elephants was a diet fit for humans. In the very same episode one of them set up in front of Buckingham Palace and offered all its various rooms for rent, incurring a disgusted reaction from the British police. And yet this skit about the “Make-a-Realistic-Wish Foundation” was considered more objectionable than tricking others into eating grass and provoking the British police? Really?
The idea of the “Make-a-Realistic Wish Foundation” was not, I’m sure, to propose the real foundation’s replacement. In fact their skit seemed more about lampooning the hypothetical “realistic” charity. You know, like where the girl says she wants to meet Zac Efron, and Andrew Hansen is like, “We can’t do that, but here, have a stick.” Very few people, if anyone, would say that presenting a dying girl with a stick is reasonable. They were mocking any train of thought which might suggest that this was reasonable, not the opposite.
All those people offended have the right to complain to the ABC, of course, but the ABC should not have responded like this. No, ABC, you have not “let down the community”. You’ve let down a bunch of whiners who’ve never heard of turning OFF the TV if they don’t like its content. They insist on having its content censored from everyone else too, because if a few people are offended the whole community must be protected! And you, ABC, have encouraged this demanding, overbearing train of thought through your surrender to these whiners. Good job.