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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has concludeed that theSociété Radio-Canada broke certain regulations in its Rules on broadcasting which are a condition for licensing, when it broadcast the program Bye Bye 2008 on the French-language network. What’s more, certain elements of the show went against the Law on broadcasting which demands that programming must be of high quality.
For several years now, Radio Canada’s Bye Bye has not been what it once was. I can still recall certain sketches or jokes which are still remembered fondly by some viewers (bye bye 67, for example), which were hosted by cynics and which could have been considered offensive by some:
An actor dressed as a priest declared in a lugubrious voice: “… and thanks to our Holy Mother Church which gave us two admirable things, the Ogino method and Bingo. The two go very well together, because if the Ogino method doesn’t work, … Bingo!!!”
Of course, on each bye bye there have been sketches on war, on Jews, on Arabs, on politicians, on famous people and their misadventures, on just about every subject that made headlines in the past year, sometimes unleashing the anger of persons targeted and bringing laughs from viewers. Some jokes have been in good taste, others not, but the freedom of the humourists was always paramount. You’ve got to be pretty humourless not to end up laughing at it all, even if it is through clenched teeth.
Of course, on every bye bye, public figures could end up feeling offended, or even be tempted to sue the broadcaster. However, a week later, the snow and sleet storms make us forget everything and we’re onto something else.
More the vicim is high-placed, the more they're likely to take it graciously. Laughter is distinctly human. A politician who was complaining to me one day that I was giving him a hard time declared to me nonetheless: “Speak of me well or speak of me badly, as long as you speak of me!”
But are we henceforth to accept that respectable institutions like the CRTC will be telling us which joke is politically correct and which is not? It’s too bad for those who make a living making us laugh, too bad for our sense of humour, which is sometimes too complacent. All the same, it’s better to laugh at things, and it is not up to institutions to tell me what I should laugh at or not.
Precisely what made me choose this country was the freedom to say or to write things that in the country where I came from might have put me in trouble, or even got me shot by a “stray” bullet, or earned me a beating in a back alley on a moonless night. So please, Konrad Von Finckenstein, a.k.a. chairman of the CRTC, don’t take way our right to laugh at others. This is often the only recourse to which we have any right.
This message was sponsored by an honest politician, who I will not identify so as not to cause him harm!
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