Those who follow me on Twitter constantly tire of my anti-Catherine Deveny comments, so I thought I'd write something here to hopefully serve as The Last Word.
Deveny is a serial pest as several other commentators have pointed out. Her columns in The Age are either genius social engineering (nobody would really believe that...right?) or crass, bullbar-to-the head polemics. She thinks she's terribly clever and surrounds herself with people who think the same thing.
Daniel Burt (@trubnad) who I follow on Twitter is witty and clever. He defended her Anzac Day meltdown with the phrase 'The venom directed at @catherinedeveny only reinforces her importance.' Not only did he write that, Deveny re-tweeted it. This is exactly the sort of egotistical self-promotion she rails against. And that's where I have my greatest beef with her - she's a total hypocrite. It must be worth mentioning that Deveny says Burt is 'A genius...a cross between Woody Allen and Ricky Gervais.' He isn't that, but it's clear they have a strong relationship and he feels bound to defend her. Playing with fire, I reckon. He bleats about A Current Affair calling her an 'alleged' comedian and points out she sold out at the Comedy Festival. Big deal - her act was more an extension of the World Atheist Conference (that still makes me laugh) and if that's any measure of funny, then he must think Tim Allen is hilarious.
Her Anzac Day tweets struck a chord and a nerve with a series of people I follow so I moseyed over to have a look - it was classic Deveney, ill-though-through and completely lacking in compassion. When she sensed she had gone too far, she started playing the guilt card, dragging in survivors of sexual abuse and abusive relationships. She thinks that doing that is a defence. It's not - she still said the other things which were, plainly incorrect. I find Anzac Day a bit dull too - it has been commercialised into a day of beer and two-up rather than a quiet day of reflection on the horrors of war and the thanking of those who felt duty-bound to act in the defence of their country, like my grandfather and great uncle.
The Age chose not to act. And nor should they. Although they pay for this sort of tosh, it wasn't the rubbish they'd paid for.
The Logies tweets were further examples of her unedifying humour, but when she obviously felt she was being outdone by Wil Anderson or not enough people were looking at her, she brought out what she clearly considered was her A game and suggested that she hoped Bindi Irwin got laid (defending this as satire) and that Tasma Walton should not die, referring of course to Australia's Sweetheart (TM) Belinda Emmett.
The Bindi comment probably was attempted satire and all the Professionally Outraged (Neil Mitchell et al) were barking up the wrong tree. The problem was it was utterly tasteless and aimed at a defenceless girl. She has no right of reply and thankfully her mother has stayed out of it. I don't care how irritating you find Bindi (and let's be honest, many of us do) it was deeply unfair. I know some think she was advocating statutory rape of an eleven year old (and it certainly looked that way) but I'm not completely sure she meant it. Her defence was woeful and, I think, completely untrue.
The Tasma Walton comment is rather harder to judge. It wasn't funny, Deveny says she meant every word of it (the comforting bosom of the ABC gave her two goes at defending herself) and claimed privilege because she'd worked with Rove for five years. How can you not see how this would be hurtful?
She says she's full of compassion for people (despite her manipulative involvement of innocent parties in the Anzac Day series) and contributes to Broken Rites from the takings of her dull regurgitation/interpretation of Dawkins' The God Delusion, her pithily-titled God Is Bullshit and That's the Good News. But she completely missed that her 'friend' Rove McManus (someone else who annoys me greatly) would be hurt by this. Deeply, deeply hurt.
You see, the difference between hers and Anderson's tweets, is that he attacked grown-ups who could happily step off the stage and whack him with a mike stand and he'd probably have copped it sweet, because he himself is a grown-up (despite his undergraduate style of humour).
As a vocal critic of Deveny, I was most offended by her hypocrisy and her lack of actual ability - if offends me someone so pedestrian is paid to write for a broadsheet (I hold the same opinion of Devine). Combine all this with phoned-in columns full of made up facts and statistics as well as amateur cage rattling, I would complain loudly on Twitter about her utterly intellectually bereft ranting.
She says she's with Richard Dawkins on the idea that labelling a child with religion is tantamount to child abuse, yet she actively pimps her children on Twitter and in her articles as 'atheists.' The '11 year old atheist.' She sent her 11 year old atheist to a friend's first communion with a Voodoo toy, presumably as a joke. So the child, who was probably too young to understand the hilarity, may have had the toy taken away from him but it would have given Cath a laugh - point of order: giving things to A CHILD is not for your benefit.
She's a rabid class warrior, although not the way she thinks she is - she wrote several columns last year ripping into the working and middle classes' loves of shopping, pornography (a form of entertainment she has a strange philosophical relationship with) and sport. She's all for people doing/believing/thinking what they want as long as they fit in with her monocultural view, the World of Deveny. What she fails to realise is that her red-wine-fuelled rage is inner-Melbourne-North smugness that few people can identify with, even Age readers.
Her contribution to public discourse is deeply dreary - her Q&A performances were cringingly bad, blaming global warming on religion (her reasoning was fundamentally broken), she called Tony Abbott 'flappy eared' (also rolling out the cliched 'keep your rosaries off my ovaries) and claimed to have assaulted John Elliott in the green room at some point. Way to go, Cath - you're setting the bar high.
She said that those who didn't find her funny probably though Hey Hey and the Footy Show are funny. Wrong, Catherine, so very, very wrong and so very, very self-important. You self-importance, in fact, rates up there the people you hate most.
So why did The Age sack her? I don't really know and I am slightly disappointed it wasn't for the reasons she should have been sacked. I think she's mean and heartless (at best, if she does have a heart, it's black) and hasn't progressed her atheist-feminist thinking past the idea that there's no God so she can shag who she wants. It's childish, scrawled out stuff.
It would be deeply worrying if The Age really sacked her for this, but the way she was eulogised by the Editor of The Age was hardly glowing so one wonders if they weren't just waiting for an excuse. If it was for tweeting crap on her own time, I'd almost consider donating to a fund to sue for wrongful dismissal.
At the same time, one has to wonder why her fans are moaning about her freedom of expression was being infringed. No, it wasn't - she said it, she has to wear it. See, again, she thinks she's too 'important' to have to wear the consequences of her actions, much like the people she hates in politics and celebrity.
I think Amy Gray summed her up beautifully here:
http://overstimulated.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/the-problem-with-catherine-deveny/
So, to sum up, this is why she should have been sacked: she's rubbish. She has no discernible abilities as a writer or a thinker. Her comedy work is a deep seam of hate for everyone who disagrees with her way of thinking and her complete lack of understanding of religion, a topic she spends a lot of her time on, is startling. I don't care whether she believes in God or not, she should at least understand why others do and understand their motivations before getting stuck in. She probably doesn't really understand the intricacies of theological thought and finds quick wins by just going after the usual stuff when there is plenty to really go after in a meaningful and challenging way.
I won't miss her. Sadly, given the ABC's undying devotion to her, I don't think I will have the chance...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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