Interesting review. Thanks Tasmanian Times for sharing this with us. I think Ms Deveny is a little too bawdy for us. Imagine if she performed at Wrest Point. Our Archbishop would be up in arms. Ms Deveny is a Catholic too, or at least she is now an ex one. Lets hope and pray she sees the light and comes back. We are a very forgiving Church.

I am not very religious but I do not like making fun of it or offending people I don’t know. Surely there are funny stories about religion without offending people in high office. The Bindy Irwin remarks she made deserved her to get the sack. Bindy is only a kid and even a comedian should have respect for kids. Some people might laugh at such unwise tweets. I see nothing funny in it I am very broad minded about most things but not when it (dirt) refers to young children. I’m pleased Lyle that the ink came off.

I am impressed that TT has published a review of one of the more popular performances, by Catherine Deveny, at Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival. Well done to the contributor for having got out and done something different, and for having supported this artist. We should have a Comedy Festival in Tassie.

I disagree on one point. I don’t believe God is bullshit. It is clear from the world’s societies store of myths and legends that more advanced entities were certainly real and they played havoc with the innocents and scientifically simplistic inhabitants of this planet throughout the bygone ages. The ‘God/s’ are out there for sure, and it/they are definitely real. The bullshit is in the interpretation of ‘God’ and how rapacious humans have deliberately misinterpreted the concept to serve their own vicious need for power.
 
I am puzzled about the Bible. I sometimes wonder whether it isn’t a map of the future rather than a collection of past events. Or a combination of both. Are we actually standing in Noah’s Ark and making a mess of it?

Boy, I could be here for ages. I have to get ready for work soon, otherwise this could be one of the longest posts in TT history. (Is there such a record, by the way?)

We need iconoclasts such as Catherine Deveny. People have every right to be offended by what she says but, as Andrew Bolt will happily tell you, we live in a pluralist society where freedom of speech should at least be respected, if not actually enshrined in law. (He has to believe this, as he is currently being sued for not having the freedom of his speech respected.)

I often refer to the Bible as the greatest book never written. Like Elisabetta #3, I am also puzzled by it but not for the same reasons. I am puzzled as to why so many people seem to happy to take it literally when clearly much of it is fiction and therefore wide open to interpretation.  It’s very good fiction, don’t get me wrong, and of course it contains some of the finest poetic language in our canon, especially in the King James version; but as a text it is no more significant than the Koran, the Talmud or the Bhagavad Gita in that it sets out parameters for a belief system and places them in a historical context.

I was frankly encouraged when an atheist Prime Minister moved into the lodge, but I don’t know why now; we still have morally ambiguous policies like mandatory detention and a ban on same-sex marriages, which were consolidated under the stewardship of that perpetual God-botherer John Howard (and his dorky twin, KRudd).

How, I would ask, have these leaders reconciled (for example) the detention of refugee children with their religious beliefs? Perhaps because there were votes in doing so—which, surely, cheapens their claim to faith, does it not? Are they not rendered hypocritical by such actions, apparently believing that everything will be fine so long as they can trot off to church on Sunday morning?

People are free to believe what they want. Personally I am currently exploring the practices of Frisbeetarianism; when I die, I hope my soul gets stuck in the top of a tree…as long as it’s not in a monocultural plantation :-)

People, such as Ms Deveny, should also be free to say what they like (although, in her case, it helps if it’s really funny). Occasionally, as with the Irwin tweet, there will be conflict between her actions/comments and broadly instituted social values and in this respect The Age was right to give her the sack; regardless, in Ms Deveny we have another example of the fact that we live in a society where she won’t be stoned (at least not literally) for opening her mouth, and we should be grateful for this.

On that note, the shower beckons.

As an enthusiastic fan of Catherine Deveny, I don’t agree with Cameron about her sacking from The Age.  The editor could have suggested that the nature of her Bindy tweet would have been offensive to Age readers, and warned her not to include similar material in her column.  But she probably knew that anyway.  Her column was discontinued because of something she wrote elsewhere, and that to my mind is reprehensible.

If the real reason for her sacking was the general anti-clerical and anti-conservative nature of her columns, and the tweet was only an excuse, then that is even more reprehensible.

As it is I (and tens of thousands of others) have been denied what was always the weekly highlight of The Age.  Her performances on Q&A have impressed me less, because she’s funnier as a writer than as a performer, and tends to race of at a series of tangents, but I hate the superficiality of that program anyway.  If the ABC replaced it with Catherine being interviewed by Tony Jones for an hour they would be doing us all a favour.

Tim, #5, I’ll take that as a comment. (Had to say it!)

Like Insiders, Q and A is really only worth watching for the biffo. (I cannot BELIEVE I missed the episode where someone threw their shoes at John Howard!) Now that Mr Bolt has abandoned his couch spot on the former, opportunities for this may decline, though I still salivate when Piers Akerman and David Marr are on together. David usually eats him for breakfast.

And anyway, rather than watch Insiders, there’s probably something else I should be doing on a Sunday morning. Buggered if I can remember what it is though.

Deveny is nothing but a talentless women. Picking on the Catholics is easy. Doug Anthony Allstars were much were clever and funnier. If she was such a brave talent, lets see her do Islam and Mohammad in the same manner.

Another review, from Crikey:
Review: Catherine Deveny in God is Bullshit
April 14, 2011 – 10:21 am, by Matt Smith
Catherine Deveny’s show gives atheism a bad name. Atheists aren’t arrogant – they’re just smug, she claims. None more smug than her.
Comedy has the power to unite people, to make them laugh at their commonalities and differences. That’s why I can’t even humour Deveny and say this was a ‘comedy festival’ show. It was an hour of angry, mocking lecturing to an audience that, for the most part, probably already believe everything she said (or in the case of the guy two seats down, had given up trying to find something to laugh at and had fallen asleep instead).
Scattered through the clam fest of an audience were the odd Devenist who laughed frequently and loudly, and I made note of them so I knew who I might have to later pick out in a police line-up. Deveny failed to even remotely reach the heights that Richard Dawkins mounted on the Q and A clip she played, providing a stark contrast between herself and an atheist who can talk about religion intelligently and humourously. The non-religious jokes didn’t work well either, though they are few and far between – the vast majority of the material consisted of “Christians are stupid because they think like <insert (un)funny observation here>.
Deveny promotes her show as ‘back by popular demand’, which means she just couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything new. She claims the show is “moving”, but I couldn’t quite work out how. The closest I can come is agreeing that I wanted to “move” well away from her and her crude attempt at humour.
If you are an atheist and have a serious chip on your shoulder for organised religion, than save yourself the trouble of seeing this show, and channel your energy into something useful. Go to the dentist maybe, it’s less painful.
At the end of God is Bullshit, after leading her herd through a bleating chant that renounced their Christian origins, Deveny pushed a sticker onto departing punters to stick in Bibles in bookshops. I think this review is best ended by paraphrasing that sticker.
Why is this show, full of violence, sexual abuse, hate and intolerance in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival? Happy is he who buys a ticket to anything else instead.

Matt Smith sounds as if he is a friend of the boss from The Age who sacked Cath Deveny. Cath is a likeable rogue. While her tweet about Bindy Irwin was distasteful, surely an apology would have been better. I miss her articles in The Age and they were entertaining and of high quality. Perhaps we could recruit her as a columnist for the Tasmanian Times?