Rood Eye
Sunday 23rd June 2019 10:40am [Edited]
4,103 posts
Quote: Michael Monkhouse @ 23rd June 2019, 9:31 AM
Check out Jerry Sadowitz. . . . He makes Jimmy Carr look like a Tellytubbie.
Quote: Sitcomfan64 @ 23rd June 2019, 10:20 AM
I've seen Frankie Boyle make far worse
I love Jerry Sadowitz and I love Frankie Boyle and I understand what you guys are saying.
There are different types of offensiveness and when you compare two things that are offensive in different ways, it can be difficult if not impossible to determine which of the two is more offensive.
Leaving Jerry and Frankie aside, however, and speaking generally, I think jokes that come from a place of genuine hatred towards people in any of the BBC's diversity initiative categories or against Jews, Muslims or any other religion might well be deemed significantly more offensive (in a general sense) than Jimmy's dwarf joke.
Perhaps, therefore, instead of describing Jimmy's joke as "offensive", I should say "hurtful". That's not to say the joke isn't offensive: it's to say that offensiveness is too general a term to make clear exactly why I think it's offensive.
Let's talk about pain and hurt.
Make an offensive joke about black people and I'll guarantee you that next door to no black people in the world are going to burst into tears when they hear the joke. They may be disgusted, they may be angry but they won't get their hankies out and start drying their eyes.
The same is true, I believe, about gay people and many other historically oppressed minorities.
Now, if we look at the Jimmy Carr dwarf joke, I agree that most of Jimmy's audience would have accepted it as part of what is usually quite a shocking comedic package but it is my earnest belief that people outside that audience were brought to tears (or close to tears) on seeing that joke in the newspapers or on a website.
I suspect that most of those tearful people were not dwarfs (because dwarfs are, by necessity, built from pretty strong stuff). I suspect that most of those people were the parents, friends and other family members of dwarfs who know from bitter first-hand experience the problems faced by all people of restricted growth on a daily basis throughout their lives. Also, of course, I'm thinking of a well-known family of dwarfs (the father is a celebrity) every one of whom must have been absolutely and utterly mortified to hear themselves and their beloved family members described in the way Jimmy chose to describe them.
That's why I consider Jimmy's joke to be, all things considered, the most offensive I've ever heard.
