Dame Edna Punisher

 Barry Humphries has died. The circle of life is complete as a million opinions bloom, however only two of them matter. He was a transphobe. That matters. That’s the truth. We know it’s the truth because he went to the trouble of saying it out loud. The other opinion is more of a question and it shows us that in the hands of a true punisher, even a question can be wrong. “Can we stop pretending he was funny?” The tryhard energy is so debilitating, it’s like Kryptonite for people who actually like people. I only mention this at all because I have a question of my own: are comedians the only people who are struck off the register if they do something bad? If a doctor is struck off the register, no one is saying, “And also, he wasn’t a real doctor.” Okay, this is a bad example, let’s move on, you judgemental bastards.

The day of my Nanna’s funeral was very warm, and I said, “It’s a lot hotter where she’s going.” She used to lock my dad in a cupboard, an experience so traumatising that I suffer from claustrophobia. At the wake I overstepped the mark when I said, “So I said, It’s a lot hotter where she’s going.”” The first time was spontaneous and full of natural joy at being alive when a punisher is dead, the second time was an epic case of dumping some excess tryhard energy into a naturally occurring conversation. This is how punishers use the internet and it’s why activists whose main battleground is the online space end up having to block everyone who isn’t also a punisher.

Imagine being a punisher. You have to say things like, “I never enjoyed the funny guy. Not once.” Put that shit on Tinder and you will get swiped out of existence. Maybe people need to think about their opinions as being on some sort of community building spectrum, where everything from making friends who can show you how to behave like a human to- actually that’s the only bit that matters.

Of course Barry Humphries hasn’t been struck off the register, it’s just that I’m a comedian and a mad lefty and the other night I saw a right wing standup comedian who was hilarious. I told him he was hilarious and he told me he was a full right winger now, which was not hilarious. The weird bit of it is- and this will be impossible for punishers to understand- when I think back to his standup comedy, it’s still hilarious. My mad lefty brain hasn’t rewritten the memory. I guess that’s what it’s like to not be burdened with the punisher urge to feel in charge of reality.

I said to the right wing guy that I don’t reckon right wingers believe their own bullshit, which felt very cool, but he said lefties are just wrong, which is like, okay, with that energy he doesn’t even need beliefs does he? Meanwhile we apparently need precise instructions to know when it’s okay to laugh. Well, not “we”- and not that I’m saying there’s no we- it’s just that yesterday I went past the site of the anarchist clubhouse and saw that it’s for sale. Because punishers took our clubhouse, because even the meeting there to find a way to save that place was dominated by punishers. Now that’s comedy.