![George Barbier (1922). Rawpixel.](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Untitled-design-63.png)
The Absurdity of Being Earnest
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big Quadrant welcome to our headline act—comedian Cameron James!
Cameron happens to be an Australian comedian, which means his relationship with the sound of laughter is possibly a little strained. As is widely known, our local comic sources some years ago replaced jokes with studiously inoffensive tribal recognition indicators (sourdough bread is a constant) and various manifestations of woke.
You’ll recall that in 2019 Barry Humphries’s name was stripped from the annual Melbourne Comedy Festival’s award for the funniest performer, ostensibly because Humphries—the world’s best-known man in a dress—had offended the transwhatever community. This slur against the creator of Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson provided an unintended historical echo.
Back in the 1980s, Humphries noted that Moomba, the Aboriginal name of a then-popular Melbourne carnival, supposedly translated as: “Let’s get together and have fun.” The…
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