New Zealand TV star quits after antisemitic jibe
David Fane, one of the creators and stars of the popular New Zealand TV show Bro’Town has resigned after commenting during a performance that “Jews were expendable”.
David Fane
The entertainer had admitted to being drunk at the time of the private show in Auckland last Wednesday at which he also lashed out against AIDS sufferers.
Fane has told the New Zealand Herald that he would rather resign than be fired. The paper reports him telling NZPA: “I wanted to announce that I am resigning from my positions in TV and radio effectively immediately. I would rather announce this than face the embarrassment of being fired without having the chance to bow out gracefully.”
At the function, Fane told his audience that “Hitler had a right”, that those afflicted with HIV deserve to be “roasted” and that “Jews were expendable”.
President of the New Zealand Jewish Council, Stephen Goodman, told J-Wire: “I am not aware of Dane making remarks like this before. As soon as the story hit the media we started receiving complaints even though there are not many Holocaust survivors in New Zealand.”
He added: “The comments were made at a private function. It is unclear whether he was there in a personal capacity or as a representative of his employer. If the latter, then we would expect an apology at least from the station.”
Fane has apologised for his outburst but Goodman feels he would benefit from a visit to the Holocaust Centre in Wellington.
Methinks he would benefit for a term in one of the Darfur concentration camps so he gets an idea of what it was like for the Jews. Perhaps he’d learn ( if not brothership, tolerance and humankindness) to button his atrocious drunken lip.
I congratulate the NZ Jewish leadership for their considered restrained response. While there are definitely few actual Holocaust survivors left, being mostly in late age if alive, reliving the horrors on a daily basis as their minds revert to the past, I do think strongly that as Jews and people everywhere, not forgetting the shame and atrocities of the past, and letting these kind of attitudes slide by saying it doesn’t affect us as we are not survivors is a bit glib and devaluing what our ancestors, in our owngeneration, our parents, grandparents, aunties, cousins etc suffered, not just during the Holocaust but for thousands of years smacks of the “keep your head down and hope noone notices us” so often exemplified by the British Jewry.
Stand up and be bloody counted. If we said this sort of stuff about the Polynesian TV Star, we’d be vilified to the full extent of the law.
I’m glad he had the ‘decency’ to save his own ugly face and resign to avoid more embarrassment and humiliation. Give him another beer in the front lines of Darfur and let’s see how bloody embarrassed he feels then.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Until we all, black, white, brown, gentile, jew or people of all faiths recognise that we are all WHANAU in the global community, this kind of bullshit will continue to exist in small, primitive and mostly ignorant minds. I wonder if he has ever met or talked to a Jew?
Tanya Arons