To find Jimmy Carr's latest 'joke' really disgusting and pathetic

[runningwilde]

Jimmy Carr has done it again. Nor content with making deeply disrespectful and horrid jokes about soldiers, he has now made a joke about children with Down's Syndrome and the Sunshine Variety coaches that do so much to help these kids and others too.

I used to like him but he goes too far. I really think that some things should not be joked about. Why do some people feel the need to tell
Jokes like that?

Yet, I am also aware of the fact that we can't censor jokes, but I wish some comedians actually set out to make us laugh with properly funny jokes rather than the nasty shit that Jimmy has been peddling again.

"You have to ask yourself at some point whether you you want to become complicit with what they are trying to do, in the knowledge that you are paying to perpetuate a satire that isn't, let's face it, appreciated as satire by a woefully large part of the audience."

And this is apparently one of the reasons why dave chappelle cancelled his show, he thought he saw some white audience members laughing in a malicious manner, and I think that has been a great loss.
fwiw I'd agree with a lot of the points tigerseye makes with regards to JC. but then again I've long been a fan of his and have seen him live before, so I'm more likely to be biased and interpret his act as satirising stereotypes and sociatal boundaries. However I can see why others feel different and loath him.

I agree with that BTP

"The joke isn't laughing at people with DS, simple as."

How? People with DS shouldn't be in a bus with Variety on the side because they all look the same. Who exactly is the butt of this joke if not people with DS? I'd love to hear the oh so important context of this joke that means it's actually not about people with LD's at all

I think the most interesting thing about this thread was to find out the JC didn't get a shag until he was 26.

"I do agree with everything you say TigerseyeMum. I just think it's too subtle for too many of the audience. He should make his satire more overt.

Well, not should, or I am just one of those Frothers that it's easy to take a lofty view of.

Would do well to, rather, if that's his motivation. Because it's way too subtle for some of the unthinking pillocks who have access to it. Who alos pay his wages, so , what does he care?"

Do you Sorry, I thought you were having a go

I agree it may go over many people's heads (last time I saw him a beer festival was on and there were a few tanked up lads present, it was a nightmare but he cut them down pretty quickly).

Maybe it is the area I live in, but the majority of people in the audience seem very nice and thinking and are certainly not 'laughing and pointing'. But yeah, I do worry. I often am the one sitting with my head in my hands going 'Oh god, he said it...he actually said it...' but also laughing because I know why he said it

If I ever found out he actually meant what he said I would denounce him as a cunt of the highest order.

"I am sorry that so many people with SN children feel so marginalised, that society is so hostile. That you look everywhere for evidence that everyone is laughing at your children. I'm sorry that some of you seem distraught that you have children with disabilities."

TigerseyeMum I think if you really had the insight that you claim into parenting a disabled child then you would not have written that. My job is to give my son a good life which includes instilling confidence and providing him with opportunities. There is no room in our lives for self-pity or seeing slights where they don't exist. Sadly, the shouted insults in the street and being dropped by former friends because of my son's dx has still happened without me going looking.

So your main point is: if people with learning diabilities are taunted by people who have been emboldened by their (possibly wrong) reading of JC's jokes that is just tough shit. And I should just sit around nicely waiting for society as a whole to get over being disabilist rather than challenge disabilism whereever I see it.

JC's joke is disabilist - whether he meant it that way or not.

Tigerseye
But don't you see how completely hypocritical that is? To say if you found out that he really meant it, that you would denounce him as a cunt of the highest order?

When the people who take that joke and retell it do believe it.

Why is it ok to tell a joke when it is meant as satire?

Because it is art?

I don't understand your reasoning at all now.

Flora I know that insults get shouted every day. That was not my point. What I actually said (see, now I do feel like I am actually JC) was that you may go looking for evidence that everyone who is laughing at that joke is therefore laughing a your child.

My point was the joke was not an attack on SN children but rather on attitudes and that the people laughing are not the cunts some on here make them out to be.

It would be easy to see that joke as an attack, of course it would. In the context the Daily Mail reported it. So therefore, me laughing at that joke - when I saw him live - means I am laughing at your child. I am not.

My other point was that society is hostile and disabled people are marginalised but that performers can either perpetuate that or reflect that. If JC had stood on stage and said in a conspiratorial kind of way, sly, nudge nudge, wink wink, hey you know 'those DS kids al look the same don't they?' and we had all laughed conspiratorially whilst inardly acknowledging that they did, then yes he would be out of order. But he actually was doing something quite the opposite.

It's distasteful yes - he is not a bastion of good taste - but h is saying something quite honest about society (nt SN kids) when he says it in the context he says it.

"You know, I am sorry that so many people with SN children feel so marginalised, that society is so hostile. That you look everywhere for evidence that everyone is laughing at your children. I'm sorry that some of you seem distraught that you have children with disabilities. I personally know people with SN and disabilities within my family, my circle of friends, and professionaly. I know life can be hideously hard. Blaming a comedian, I'm sorry but that's weak. There are issues - personal and social - at play. Carr and others point these out. I'm sorry you don't get that, but clearly you don't."

jesus where to start with this. Er no I, as a mother of a child with disabilities am not marginalised. My SON, as someone with SLD's is marginalised - not me. Have a google of disability hate crime and see how marginalised many with LD's become.

Who said we're distraught we have children with an LD? I don't think anyone has said that. DS1 is certainly the best thing that ever happened to us (Distraught? Confused about that one and where that came from. A stereotype? Poor little people with their disabled children oh they must be such saints when not being distraught).

Nope life isn't hideously hard thanks. Been to the beach today, surfing next week, am struggling to find the hard in it let alone the hideously.

Blaming a comedian for what? Certainly not all the ills in society. I think anyone who picks on those with LD's is pretty low. From the twat in the car park who can't work out that LD's mean someone will behave differently right up to JC. I don't blame either for all ills, but I reserve the right to think they're twats. Luckily ds1 i s a fab filter and so twats are rather peripheral to our life. I don't think it particularly helps when people in the public eye forget to engage their brain before opening their mouth and I feel I owe it to my son to complain on his behalf (he can't after all).

My keyboard is giving up the ghost from typing essays about a poxy joke.

'My point was the joke was not an attack on SN children but rather on attitudes and that the people laughing are not the cunts some on here make them out to be.'

I'm sorry. I do think anyone who laughs art that joke is a cunt. Am I not allowed to think that? If not why not? How strange. Do I have to like people who find jokes about people with LD's funny? I don't.

precisely because it's satire it's ok in my book and different from those who say it believing the content.It's taking the piss out of stereotypes and the people who believe in them.
I don't think that the joke joke is particularly funny but nor do i think it is disablist, i think it's a joke based on disablism (is that the correct term).
In the same way that brass-eyes paedogeddon episode were not paedophillic jokes (i.e. jokes either promoting paedophilia or suggesting shild abuse is funny in and of itself) they were jokes based on paedophilia and the medias and societies attitude towards it.
But once again comedy is subjective, for me the intent is everything. Although as Ricky Gervais said when JC was suing Jim Davidson " if it's possible for Jim Davidson to use your jokes you may not want to admit they're yours."

I would also like to lob into this thread that elderly people (especially mentally infirm) are also mocked, reviled and stereotyped by some popular comedians, in a way that would be unacceptable if directed towards black people or homosexuals.

That reflects and encourages a society which dehumanises and discards the very old

"Although as Ricky Gervais said when JC was suing Jim Davidson " if it's possible for Jim Davidson to use your jokes you may not want to admit they're yours."

Well he certainly has a point. Perhaps that should be the acid test of a joke's suitability? If JD can use it, best left.

Where do I see that the joke was satire?

Can anyone tell me that?

What part of that joke is satire? Or do I have to hear the whole performance to see that?

"You know, I am sorry that so many people with SN children feel so marginalised, that society is so hostile. That you look everywhere for evidence that everyone is laughing at your children. I'm sorry that some of you seem distraught that you have children with disabilities. I personally know people with SN and disabilities within my family, my circle of friends, and professionaly. I know life can be hideously hard. Blaming a comedian, I'm sorry but that's weak. There are issues - personal and social - at play. Carr and others point these out. I'm sorry you don't get that, but clearly you don't."

that has to be the most stupid ill thought out post I have seen.

distraught??

angry yes, that shitheads think it is ok to laugh and make jokes at the expense of vulnerable people.

Oh MMeLindor - you said the same what I have been wondering. I am struggling to see the context in which it becomes satire.

Maybe it was satire in the way that RG moving the wheelchair in The Office was? Although that was rather more obvious because David Brent had already been built up as a crass twerp.

Yes it was a patronising crock of shit

The paragraph that sevenfold quoted I mean

I do get your point and largely agree with your reasoning. What I don't agree with is that Carr shouldn't be held responsible because sections of his audience haven't understood the subtlety of his motivation. It doesn't take a great imaginative leap to forsee that material which ostensibly holds a mirror up in order to shock will, in some quarters, have the effect of legitimising the subject (NB not necessarily butt) of the routine as a target for persecution. Notions about intent and intellectualisation of humour don't hold much currency when kids like my son are feeling the effect.

"Who said we're distraught we have children with an LD? I don't think anyone has said that. DS1 is certainly the best thing that ever happened to us (Distraught? Confused about that one and where that came from. A stereotype? Poor little people with their disabled children oh they must be such saints when not being distraught)."

I am not trawling back through the thread but someone posted something along the lines of 'I hope you don't have to experience having a disabled child and then having them abused in the street'.

I take offence at that. I am not one of those people that sees disabled children and tut and shake my head and say 'oh what a shame'. I think that peope come in many many diferent forms and welcome that. We have had conversations recently about children without disabilities because of our situation. I personally would love the chance to have a child whether down syndrome, with disabilities or any other child. Sadly it is unlikely but if I do have a child there would be a high chance of having one with DS or autism.

I don't need to google hate crime thanks, I am well aware of it. Er, that was the point.

MdeLindt, in answer to your post, I believe that comedy is based on trust. I trust JC to not actually mean what he superficially seems to mean. I interpret in the way I think he means it. I can't help that others choose to interpret in a different way, and neither can he.

And Latedeveloper, the joke was about disabilism, in its full, correct form. Or do you mean the joke related in the Daily Mail? Two different things.

I am not answerable for JC or Boyle or anyone, you know. I am merely defending my right to make a point that differs from the mainstream.

good point saintly. The point is, that we aren't meant to look up to David Brent. I think that JCs persona is such that we are meant to think he's rather clever.