Ron E Bishop and the Curse of the Evil Smut!

A while ago I blogged about a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in the Timaru Herald written by one HH Wilson. The letter started intriguingly by refering to a previous letter in which HH had relayed his theory on how Jesus was from another planet, before segueing into a positive review of Avatar.

The other day I was reading the Timaru Herald again and came across another letter by another Timaruvian religious nutjob. This one bore the show-stopping title "EVIL SMUT" and was penned by one Ron E Bishop (he's even got a religious name!)

Lets see what Ron E has to say…

I chose to go to a comedy show last night to listen to five comedians.

Okay, so far so good…

I was expecting to see some good clean comedy such as Fred Dagg, Billy T James.

Uh-oh. Go into a comedy show with those kind of expectations (ie. assuming that NZ comedy hasn’t changed in 30 years) is just asking for trouble.

What was served up to me for my $40 was the most vulgar, racist, anti-Christian Performance that I ever seen on a public stage.

Sorry Ron, it's gonna take more than forty bucks for them to unfreeze Billy T… and don’t you mean "that I HAVE ever seen on a public stage"? And does this "public stage" differ from the vulgar, racist, anti-Christian performances that you watch in the privacy of your own home?

There were people that left within the first five minutes, it was that bad. As they left the MC said goodbye all you f… Christians and then him and his mates rubbished every religion, every race of people and even our leading politicians.

Wow. That’s just impressive. How did they manage to cram a degrogetory reference to EVERY SINGLE race and religion into one comedy show? Its almost impressive as Ron's grasp of punctuation and sentence structure.

The only reason I sat through it all was to see how bad New Zealand society had become.

Yeah okay, Ron. I bet you told the officer that pulled you over on the way home that you were only speeding to see how dark the night was.

I was not given any warning that it contained coarse and vulgar language or that they would be drinking alcohol on the stage.

The walk-outs in the first five minutes didn’t inspire you?

I asked the promoter of the show for a refund and he refused to give me my money back.

Should have told him that you only stayed to see how bad society was (and that cultural anthropoligists such as yourself are exempt from ticket costs)

The sponsors of the show are TV3, Cadbury Crunchie Bars, More FM, Thrifty Rental Cars, Creative NZ Arts Council on New Zealand.

Hang on, why did you throw this tidbit into the middle of your captivating discourse, Ronnie? I'm guessing its so people can stage some kind of boycott? Rest assured, I'll be eating Whitakers chocolate and listening to ZM in the car that I rented from Avis (after seeing their ad on TV2) on my way to firebomb Creative NZ.

On the way home I was stopped at a police patrol checkpoint…

Hope you told those boys-in-blue about the naughty comedians!

… while the so-called comedians were back at the Theatre Royal drinking. I phoned the police…

Hang on, you phoned them from the CHECKPOINT? I'm confused…

I want their show banned from New Zealand theatres. They are a disgrace to society.

Woah. Hold up, Ronnie. I agree that the Police have no business performing for the theatre-going public, but don’t ban their show!

The sponsors and those involved with the show are equally to blame.

Good thing you told us who they are a few sentences ago…

I'm a Christian who loves to have a beer with family and friends and I enjoy a good yarn in private.

Oh whew! Here I was thinking you were some kind of crazy old crank…

When I see the public being asked to pay for what can only be described as evil smut, someone has to blow the whistle on these people to stop it from spreading.

I sure do hate it when myself, a member of the public, is asked to PAY for something… perhaps Ron would like to see the evil smut-peddlers do it for free?

I hope that someone reading this letter will do something to send these people back to the countries they came from and be made to reimburse all those of us who were decieved.

As a person reading this letter, Ron, I can assure you that "these people" - by which I'm guessing that you're refering to the international comedians - will indeed by travelling back to their home lands at some point. I don’t think your chances of getting your $40 back are good though… you see the people putting on events of this nature do so to MAKE money, as opposed to take people's money, hold on to it for the duration of the show and then give it back.

Perhaps, Mr Bishop, you could try going to a McDonalds, buying a Big Mac, eating it then asking for your money back. You could argue that you only finished it to see how bad the state of NZ's beef industry has become.

More Than Words?

NB: In the aim of making this blog post at least remotely family-friendly, all expletives have been replaced by Pokemon names

A couple of months back I saw Kick Ass - a film notable for its post-modern deconstruction of superhero conventions, and even more notable for this line:

Okay you *Charmanders*, lets see what you can do now"

... being unleashed by an 11 year old girl (who has just slaughtered a whole gaggle of henchmen).

The controversy surrounding this particular line reminded me of something I read a while ago about how the BBC had okayed the word *"Charmander"* for broadcast television depending on its context (eg. it would not be acceptable for a wife-beating drunk to scream "You stupid *Charmander*! I'll Kill you!" as he beat his wife to a pulp, but it would be okay for the same character to say to his drinking buddies "Yeah, that Smitty, he's a good *Charmander* - helped me fix the truck, he did").

This also got me wondering how the C-word, and other expletives, are regarded by New Zealand watchdogs - more importantly, was there a ranked LIST that catalogues the most offensive words, preferably in order of offensive-ness. Twelve seconds of googling later and I had my list on-screen.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has released the hilariously titled report "What not to Swear: The Acceptability of Words in Broadcasting" with a whopping 44 pages of analysis into the degrees of offence caused by different words in different contexts. There is also a handy list that ranks the naughty words from most-to-least offensive.

This list is interesting - unsurprisingly, *Charmander* takes out the top spot, followed closely by the derogetory racist term *Nidorina* and *Mother Fearow*. Interestingly, there are four derivations for the *Fearow* root word (the other three being *Jesus Fearowing Christ*, *Get Fearowed* and *Fearow Off*) ranking higher than the actual word itself (which is at #8)

Another surprise is the ranking of the vulgar scatological term for feces, *Squirtle* which is at number 25 (out of 31) and well below words such as the names of deities (namely, the Father and the Son - which I assume refers to their names used in vain) and not-really-offensive-but-more-colloquial terms such as *Pidgey* (urine), *Pidgey Off* and *Bulbasaur* (a female dog) at numbers 18, 21 and 19.

The report, which was compiled as a result of a survey conducted amongst a wide group of diverse groups, made the following broad generalisations:

When comparing different demographic groups, it is evident that, in general:
• Males tend to be more accepting of words than females
• Younger respondents tend to be more accepting than older respondents
• Those that state they have no religion tend to be more accepting than those of
religious belief.
• Those of New Zealand European ethnicity are generally more accepting than
those in the Ma¯ori, Pacific Island and Asian ethnic groups.

Nothing too shocking with these findings on the whole - but the survey participant's real time-to-shine comes later in the report, where they are asked to write the words and terms that they personally find offensive (and which are copied verbatim) that include poorly-spelt pearlers such as:

deuch bag
dork
general sexual inuendo used on radio is disgusting
Ginga
Honky, Hairyback, Redneck, Grognard, Nerd, Buttmunch,
toerag, Porch monkey, User, American, cheesebucket
RACIST REMARKS BY MAORI SCANDAL MONGERING
ELABERATING TO CREATE SENSATIONALISM (calm down, dude!)
John Key
“Brian Tamaki” Anything Paul Henry Says

The whole report, and condensed ranking list, makes for interesting reading if you're at all interested in censorship or broadcasting standards. It was surprising to me to see how some of the words ranked on the list, and no doubt would have compiled a completely different offence-ranking if I was asked to do so.

I do believe it is difficult to classify all of these words (apart from a couple of key offenders) as inherently "bad" words, as a lot of them are completely dependent on context (for example, the word *Arcanine* - the vulgar term for one's anus - would probably not sit well on Shortland Street, but is completely appropriate on Rescue Me, a drama about the troubled lives of FDNY firefighters).

I feel that the best way (but perhaps not the ideal) is to regulate complaints based on their merits on a case-by-case basis (which is what the BSA currently does) and for television producers to perform self-censorship and look at the context of potentially offensive material in the first instance.