I still don't really get the joke the Chaser did about Chris Kenny. Sure, they wanted to make a point that he's a stupid right wing polemicist with crazy priorities for starting to talk even on election night about how the new government should de-fund the ABC. But the way they did it seemed rather "meta", didn't it? And, of course, in dubious taste.
But what
has made it funny are three things:
1. the way
Andrew Bolt trolled for sympathy for (I assume) his mate Chris, insisting that he is the subject of a scandalously insulting and offensive photoshop, by
re-posting the picture. Wait, wait, Andrew. If the picture is that bad, aren't you adding to Kenny's grief?
2. The way many at Catallaxy threads urged Kenny to sue for defamation. What, because people might think Kenny really does attempt what is depicted in an obvious photoshop? Gee, those Catallaxy people seem to think even less of Kenny than what I do...
3. The way Chris' own attempted trolling for sympathy (to paraphrase) "this photo will be around the internet forever; it'll be what my kids see when they Google my name" [I trust you've sent a note to Andrew thanking him for further raising it on the Google results list, then Chris], has been
disowned by his own son.
Yes, it's now very funny.
Update: Catallaxy regulars are, predictably, now huffing and puffing that Liam Kenny is the appalling one, even though he acknowledges that the attempted joke was "... crass, to be sure. A cheap shot. A dog act."
Liam makes the point that he happens to find his father's politics deeply objectionable, and the photoshop was a triffling matter compared to the serious offence he finds in right wing punditry. This is an entirely defensible position. Reasonable, in fact.
And it's hilarious, the way it shows up Chris' sympathy troll.
Update 2: I think I have worked out what went wrong with the joke. If they had said after Chris's clip "Well, that's ridiculous - it's not as if the ABC is the network that would show a photo of a right wing pundit doing this -" and then shown it anyway, it would have made more sense. But if I recall correctly, they said "this is the network that shows photos of Chris Kenny, etc."