Insulting Irish Jokes

Karl Stefanović wins 'Gold Bogan' award

When the Irish portion of the Queen’s speech was played on Today’s news report, the show’s host, Karl Stefanović provided an audible mock-translation: “My husband is drunk”, which managed to get the newsreader giggling too.

This was reported on ABC’s Media Watch and their main criticism was that Karl was being insulting to the Queen. (It’s possible that they just wanted an excuse to replay the footage of a still-drunk post-Logies Stefanović in 2009).  However, through my linguist eyes, I was more disturbed that it was blatant mocking of another’s language.  Those with some familiarity with Ireland would know that the Irish language has been discriminated against in the past and suffered serious decline and is still a struggling minority language only being acquired as a first language in a small region called the Gaeltacht . Yet Irish language revival is something to be celebrated – Ireland has put a lot of effort into raising the status and usage of Irish so that it is now a symbol of a strong independent nation.  It annoys me that with his award-winning bogan-esque “humour”, Stefanović sideswiped a century of linguistic discrimination and language decline and decades of work of language revival.

It’s part of the bigger picture of what disturbs me about the ‘monolingual mindset’ that is so pervasive in Australia.  With English being so dominant, Australians can regularly dismiss other languages with ease.  But languages aren’t objects of ridicule.  They are an intrinsic part of someone’s identity, of a community’s identity and, in the case of Irish, a nation’s identity.  Karl Stefanović might have made a cheap joke that insulted the Queen, but he also managed to insult the national language of Ireland which in turns reflects badly on everyone else who holds a minority language dear to their heart as a source of pride and identity.

In terms of comedic talent, I question whether any exists in this case: hear a language you don’t understand, then provide an hilarious mock-translation that refers to genitals, sex or if your the host of a G-rated TV show, maybe tone it down a little to something less taboo.  Is that really comedy?  That sounds like something the ‘funny’ (read: annoying) kid in your Grade 9 class does.  Karl Stefanović is that same annoying kid 23 years later at the high school reunion who still thinks he’s the class clown and makes all the same jokes.  That this man won the Gold Logie is a joke.