John Safran vs. God

[spiny norman 0]

For all Americans etc, this is an Australian show, featuring John Safran who became famous when he began filming the house of an a current affairs show host and going through his rubbish bin and just downright giving him a taste of his own medicine, before finally the current affairs host pretty much attacked him and then forced his show to be taken off air (and so, of course, every single other channel showed the footage).

 

Anyway, he now has a new television programme, an eight episode series in which he explores different religions of the world. His first programme looked at three: extremist Islam, a cult in Arizona that believes in taking a certain hallucinogen from the Peyote Cactus one gains spiritual insight and understanding and scientology.

 

In his look at extremist Islam, he chose an Australian variety host (Rove McManus), created false evidence about his attacks on Islam and tried to see how easily he could have a fatwa placed against him. Safran went to the UK and gave a leading imam there, hated by most of the muslim world (who has placed fatwas against Tony Blair, John Major and Saldam Rushdie again), that Rove McManus has written a book entitled The Satanic Verses II. He also gave a promotional picture of Rove spraypainting an ad for his show on a wall and claimed it was mosque, convincing the imam enough that Rove deserved a "big fatwa".

 

Safran then went to North America and drank from the liquified form of a peyote cactus, illegal only in the case of religion. One of the members of the cult told him that he didn't become psychic until after he had drank the drug. The ritual was to be out in the desert for twelve hours overnight and, through periodically drinking the peyote, become enlightened. Safran instead felt he was losing his imagination, claiming that the clouds, instead of looking like cars or people just looked like fucking clouds.

 

And finally, he explained the beliefs of scientology and how we are all aliens sent here only for a hydrogen bomb to have been dropped down a volcano, killing us all, though our souls were captured and in the form in which we currently inhabit.

 

It's an amazing television show, and rating quite well. Have any Australians here been watching? Do any foreigners here think it doesn't sound like crap? I've heard in the coming weeks he will try and join the Ku Klux Klan, claiming it is okay as he is only half-Jewish.

 

I'm hooked.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

We don't get this one here, obviously, but it sounds a lot like Penn and Teller's Bullshit, which is one of my favorite shows.

[muzz 0]

I saw it advertised during the Olympics, but I missed the first episode, but my friend highly recommends it.