The Chaser Report - Someone Stab Sami Shah

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Sami Shah and Charles Firth chat about Morrison's final reprise of the Australian public's attention and wonder if he's the weirdest PM we'll get. Meanwhile, amid the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, Sami concocts a sharp new marketing plan. Plus the uplifting stories of times Sami received death threats. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to a very special Friday edition of The Chaser Report coming from Gatigal Land. It is Friday the 19th of August. I'm Charles Firth and with me today is Sammy Shah. Hello, Charles. Yes, so have you appointed yourself the co-host of this podcast today? Yeah, actually, I killed Dom. I Salman Ruzid Dorm, by which I mean I stabbed him.

And now I've been, I now have taken it with the podcast. That's right. Well, we're going to talk about Scott Morrison. We're going to talk about Salman Rushdie. But first of all, we're going to listen to some ads. Yay! The Chaser Report. Less news.

Less often. If you don't want to get those ads, go to chaser.com.com. You can get rid of the ads. And also, you get bonus episodes. so that's really nice. So, Sammy, what do you want to talk about first? Before, I think before anything else, I do want to talk about the fact that my ratings war on Chaser has backfired.

And now I've got Chaser reports fans coming to my Newsweekly podcast page, leaving reviews saying, love the chaser, Charles and Dome are very funny. That's great. My absolute favorite one is someone's written five stars, Hamish, Andy podcast is the best. How did they get dragged into this? Oh, well, no, this is the way that we both benefit. If we drag Hamish and Andy in, we can just, I mean, even just like one percent of their

ratings, we would like quadruple our ratings. Exactly. Okay. So, anyway. Yeah, what a week it's been. You know what it reminds me of just last week of news? It reminds me of the last four years or seven years. Like, it's basically, because I, like, you know, you and I do new satire podcast.

And literally last week on my podcast, I was talking about how boring it is now to do a new satire podcast with the Albanese government quietly and efficiently just doing their job. And then, like, it's basically like someone was like, oh, okay, fine, here, have a little bit more Morrison. It's a classic old school Morrison. I almost felt happy and grateful for him yesterday at the 21st day at the press conference. All week, I've just been in such a good mood because. It's just easy It's so easy It's not easy under Albanese

No no no it's way harder Under Albanese And you just know Like you know that for the next three years There is not going to be as good a story As this one of the Scotland This is the sort of final reprise And of course he comes on

After his actors already ended For one last bow This is like that scene In a monster movie where they kill the monster and they're all walking away confidently kind of high-fiving each other and then rah, it stands up again

and it was so great and you can see like everyone falls into their old rhythms right to me the media obsesses over the story as if there's no other story in the world Morrison comes out and he goes fuck you bitches I ain't fucking apologising and I was like you know what respect Morrison respect play the game the way you always play

it's like he didn't break character once yesterday not at all he is the I mean just like a top class athlete, you know, you know, like when Ali came out of retirement and then again dominated for a little while, that's what this was yesterday. It is a person at the top of the game reminding us why we love him. I was so happy, honestly. So what, like, do you have a theory about, because everyone's got their own theory about why he did it? He did it because he can't

stop himself. It is, it's like a serial masturbator. You know, the guy on train him just starts pulling on his penis the moment anyone lets him he's modest he can't he has to do weird shit that no one even needs him to do

like everyone is like but you don't have to do this you could have just told people he's like even he doesn't know he has no idea why he kept it a secret he doesn't even know why he did it in the first place

that's the beauty of it this is a man driven purely by compulsion he's like a Batman villain you know like when he went to the church and he's like don't believe in government that was the closest we could ever get to a confession. This was literally like the Joker

carving a smiley face across Gotham City to let Batman know that he did the crime. That is what Morrison is doing. He's going don't trust government. I was government. Don't trust me. Someone save me. Please, from myself. It was the ultimate cry for help and we didn't even hear him.

We're all about like, are you okay day? That is a man who was not okay and we didn't hear his cry for help. Fucking bullshit. I'm coming, Morrison. I'm coming, baby. But it's so weird because, like, before him, it was so clear that Tony Abbott was always going to be the weirdest pro-minister we've ever had. Like, you know, a guy who ate an onion and knighted a prince and shirt-fronted Putin and, like, it was, and appointed himself minister of women.

Like, he was so weird. It was like, no, well, that's the weirdness. You know, like, loose unit out of the way. But then like literally He was too weird So you reckon Tony Abbott's still Weirder than Scott Morrison Yes

Because Abbott is not He's not on the scale Scott Morrison is Is the uncanny valley You know when like When you look at something And you're like That's human

It's not a human But it's not But it is Yeah But Abbott is That's just a whole other thing We're like That's another entity

From another dimension There's no He's got angles That don't exist In our dimension Like that's a different thing happening. There's got nothing to do with the humanity. And then we, and then that's why we went with Malcolm Turnbull after that, because Turnbull was the opposite of, of Morris, of, sorry, of Abbott.

Because Turnbull was, look at me, I'm wearing a leather coat. That's how wild I am. And everyone's like, oh my God, he's got a personality. He wears a leather coat now. And then we were like, oh, no, he doesn't have personality. That was all his personality was the coat. But Morrison was like, I'm like you, but a little bit squidier. And then he just, Like, he can't help himself. He is genuinely just, if he wasn't prime minister, think about, like, he would have been on a train just in an overcoat and nothing else just masturbating.

And we're lucky that we were able to give this man something to do to occupy his hands. Because no other country would, would they? No other profession would, no other country would. It's only in politics. I mean, this is a man who got booted out of marketing. I know. No one gets put it out of marketing. Marketing is where the dregs of society.

That's where you ain't that. Yeah, exactly. No, there was even a moment yesterday when they were writing, like, oh, they had a news story on the ABC front page about the Morrison thing. And someone had gotten a statement from Barnaby Joyce. And so Barnaby Joyce is picked. And I was like, look, and I was like, what a cast of characters we had. We were so spoiled.

We didn't even appreciate it. We had Scott Morrison. We had Barnaby Joyce. We had Christian Porter. We had like a whole basically. a rogue's gallery of villains, not even like cool ones, like Batman's. I'm talking like the flashes villains, like Captain Boomerang and Mr. Freeze and idiots like that.

We had all of them and we never once valued them. And now just beige cardboard cutouts for human beings in parliament. They're just doing their job. They're doing it well. They're doing it efficiently. You might not agree with them, but you can't ever say that they're interesting. And no one never accused them of being interesting. And damn it, it sucks.

Yeah. You know, yeah. It's sort of, I suppose it'll be what it's like when the Marvel Cinematic Universe stops doing movies anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because we hate them now, but then when they start, we'll be like, oh, I sort of miss going to those stupid movies. Yeah, there's a beautiful, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, of like two brothers who hated each other. And they, and they spent their whole lives hating each other. and then when one brother died,

the other brother wept openly at the funeral. And everyone was like, why are you crying? You hated him your whole life. And he goes, I'm crying because now I have no one left to hate. That has been us with Morrison. Oh, this was like a hit. This was a hit in Los. You know what I feel like?

He did this for us. This was his. Yes. This was his little. akin to Jesus taking on humanity's sins. This was Morrison saying, you know what? One last time, just to ease you into this new world that you're in, I will be shitty.

So this is like when Jesus, you know, came out of the cave, they couldn't find him, and he was wandering around saying goodbye to everyone. Oh, is that what happened? I don't know the details of the Jesus parables. I didn't know that he came out of the cave and then went on a tour. I had no idea. I think so.

Didn't he go and see all the disciples? I thought he just ascended to heaven. He just ascended to heaven. Oh yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe that was the Sunday school version of it. I haven't read the Bible. Bible in, well, I've never read the Bible. Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure one of our listeners

can fact check us on whether Jesus then went on her stop. I thought he sort of wandered around. Like there was apparitions of him all over the place and that's how they knew he was alive. Well, it's all scientifically accurate, so it must be true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Well, I think that's Scott Morris And the other big event

That of course wasn't covered in Australia at all At all, yeah Because It had to do, because it had to do with books And those frighten us Yeah, that's right, exactly Have they made a movie yet? No, all right, I'm not watching.

Books and Muslims A real We need to start a new podcast called books and Muslims The most unpopular podcast in Australia Yeah, there was the attack on Salman Rushdie. Here's the crazy thing.

So I had in 2018 or 17, I had been invited to an atheist conference that was going to happen in Australia, in Melbourne, and the World Humanist Society or whatever had putting it together. And it was going to be Salman Rushdie and myself, because I had just come out with my book, Islamic Republic of Australia. Which was almost as good as midnight's children. I mean, some people will argue there's a midnight children of our generation and by some people I mean me and that's pretty much the only person to argue that and even I'm not convinced by the argument

I'll be honest but we were supposed to be on a pan and it's going to be my dream come true because I was going to get all my like I've got all his books I was going to get them all signed by him I was going to be an annoying fan I was going to ask him how someone who looks like him

is able to have sex with someone who looks like Parma Lakshmi all of these things and then they cancelled the entire event because Because between him and me, there were so many death threats that Victoria police was like, please don't do this. We cannot provide no security to stop them.

Because this at the time when I was getting crazy death threats. Oh, you were getting crazy dead threats because, you know, you were on the radio and radio is a white pit. No, no, because that was separate threats I was getting. That was another time. No, this was because in my book, Islamic Republic of Australia, I talked about being an ex-Muslim and like leaving Islam. And then that kind of word of that got its way to Pakistan

And they don't like ex-Muslims And so I kind of got a lot of flack for that But I miss out the chance to meet him And I was really excited Yeah So wait a minute Did he come to Australia Nope

They cancelled his ticket They cancelled the entire event Before he could even leave To come here Don't you think Like if you're putting on an event With Why don't we get to

Like Muslim too But isn't that Isn't that the whole reason To put on the event? I know, like, that's what I thought. But also, I think basically people forget, like, even he's clearly forgotten, which is why there wasn't any security around him, like, that the threat is still out there.

But isn't it also just that he sort of decided that he needed to live his life? Yeah. He was in hiding for, I mean, for our younger listeners, we should probably give a bit of context. Books are a thing that, yeah, have, you take wooden bark and you flatten it to roller press And then using ink on that you write words. And it's not a thing that exists on TikTok, but yes. It's a bit, yeah, it's a bit like TikTok, except that you, instead of swiping up, you sort of, you swipe sideways to move between the different pages. That's right.

And it has less bots on it. But depending on the book, actually, it might have a lot of bots, actually. But, yeah, so Salman Ridgzi wrote a book. He wrote a book on Midnight's Children, which was his. He says his first book. Actually, it's a second book. He wrote a book before that, which he pulled out of publication

because he's too embarrassed by it. But Midnight's Children was his first official book, and it won the Booker of Bookers. It's in every major list of the most influential books of the 20th century. I think it's one of the best books ever written. And then he wrote another book after that called Satanic Verses. And a lot of Muslims with poor reading comprehension

assume that it's a book that is blasphemous in content. and then retaliated by demanding his death. And then the Ayatollah of Iran, at the time was Ayatullah Khomeini, a few months before he died, declared a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. And so basically there were protests and riots and people died all over the world, including translators, publishers, book events, things like that. There were bombings. There was fire. There's people stabbed to death, all these things. And he had to go in hiding for 20 years.

he changed his name to I think Joseph Anton which was the name of his autobiography as well and yeah he exists to this day but he just got stabbed a few days ago yeah right gosh

I don't know how much of like that's the interesting thing because I saw social media recently a bunch of like Australian intellectual commentators and stuff were saying none of them have read Midnight's children

and I was always wondering like whether that had any splash in Australia at all like his writing well it's interesting because i was at a family dinner and i was the only person who hadn't read midnight's children and i felt very embarrassed so obviously well certainly amongst my family it uh yeah so i think although everyone agreed that um satanic verses wasn't nearly as good as midnight's children so yeah and i just had to nod knowingly going oh yes well in those situations do you do you copped your ignorance or do you just

pretend not along and pretend. No, no one noticed. No, I just, I just nod along and pretend that I... Yeah, sir, so you put a Morrison. I'm the only person in my entire extended family who, like, I'm the first person, for many, many generations in my entire extended family that didn't get first class on at university. So, like, I got a truly shameful.

I got a two-one and basically, people don't even talk to me. at family parties anymore because I'm sort of I'm the thicker. They're like you need to talk slowly to him. He's very slow. And even my mom said well like if you don't get a first class

on us you really should get a third because at least you only scrape through because you're doing other interesting things. Like getting a two one is the worst. Yeah. See I was a terrible student my whole life. Like absolutely atrocious. People think I was a good student

because I wore glasses for a while, but I actually was quite terrible. But yes, you can fake it till you make it. But you then wrote a novel that's basically as good as Minna's Children. Yeah, I mean, sure, I'll take that from you who have not read Midnight's Children or all my novel. No, I have read, I've read Islamic Republic. It was not really a memoir. Oh, that's right. Yeah, you did that.

I remember. I think that's when we hung out properly. I think that's the first time I met you was after I read Islamic Republic of Australia. I think you must have been on your book to it, yes. It would have been around 2007. So probably instead of doing the Salman Rushdie event, you probably got interviewed by name. Pretty much.

Just as likely to end up getting stabbed, but, you know, it didn't happen. One of those sliding doors moments. Yeah. And you got the bad universe. No, no. I mean, hey, it's the universe I didn't get stabbed in. So I don't know if that's going to be.

Although his books, like, satanic verses is at the top. the charts right now after the stabbing and i could do with the sales boost is all i'm saying and i suppose the key is to just get stabbed somewhere not too bad like because he's going to lose sight in one eye yeah yeah yeah i don't want that i don't want that if you could get one of the interns like ask locklin or someone to just practice like a light stabbing yes you know just for me with my sales that's all you know before we go can you give us one good death threat story from your past Where was your best death threats?

Was it in Australia or in Pakistan? See, when I was in Pakistan, the death threats were, they were more like straightforward. They were like, you know, here's a bullet in your mailbox. So here's a, you know, just a warning. Like, they weren't really, there was a flair to them. There's no artistry to them. When I was, where the Islamic Republic came out, one of the ones I used to get regularly was someone would Photoshop me being beheaded and increasingly like,

realistic ways of photoshopping, like really detailed Photoshop. I was really, like, it was really impressively well done. And I always, like, wondered about that overlap between graphic designers with a background in the Adobe suite and ISIS. You know, like, what is it that combines the two? But clearly, it was someone, ISIS funds are going into the Adobe suite, which is expensive. We know it's $200 something a year, unless you get an educational version, which I don't know if ISIS counted as an educational enterprise, given the university.

University of Melbourne these days, sometimes I wonder whether they might, though. Well, they've got training camps, surely the training camps in Afghanistan. Yeah, they'd be able to get a discount or something. You're right, absolutely. And, yeah, and just really detailed Photoshop. You know, like there was blood spurt, things like that. Some of them were really quite impressive. Like, I wasn't threatened by them.

I was just awed by them. And what would you do? Did you forward them onto the police? Yeah, yeah. There was at the time we had Vicpole was involved, so I'd forward them on to the them and they'd be like, cool. What do you do? Good Photoshop job.

Can you hire him to do our posters for us for the next fundraiser? Like, you know, they don't know. What the hell are they going to do? They're like, I don't know. Don't write a book, you fucking idiot. No one reads them anyway. So, Mish, that was wonderful. What are you doing on the weekend?

What are you doing on the weekend? I am, yeah, basically just promoting myself on the socials. where all of us hustlers do and, you know, praying for the end of the world. Sammy Schart, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the ACAS creator network. Catch you on Monday.

Bye.