Ooh it's taken me ages to catch up.
Firstly Whatmeworry can I point everyone to this: "It's that's being man-ist and that's OK cos it's OK to hate men."
What's that got to do with the thread? AZ does that give you a better idea as to why I don't bother to engage with that poster?
Second: what everyone else is saying really, I did find it quite amusing that one poster went on about freedom of speech and then directed everyone who didn't find JC amusing, to not watch it and not start a thread about it. Ahem.
Last: this misguided stuff about JC examining audience reactions and pushing boundaries, would be all very well, if the battle had already been largely won. It's very similar to the defence of mainstream porn- Nuts, Zoo etc., claimed that as women are all equal now, we could afford to snigger at their bodies in a knowing, winking way and go back to wanking over pictures of them divorced from their humanity. The prob being, that we're not bloody equal now, I was going to post a long list of why we're not, but that feels like a de-railment so I won't, I'll just content myself with assuming that the people here who are awake, will know that women are not yet on an even playing-field. In that climate, it simply isn't valid to say that we can afford to start ironically objectifying women again, because there is nothign ironic about the violence and discrimination to which we are still subject and there is nothing ironic about the violence and discrimination to which people with SN and other disabilities are subjected. This sort of humour being acceptable, rests on the premise that whichever marginalised group you're talking about, has actually already won the battle to be considered full human beings and now have all the same opportunities and treatment in society as mainstream, middle class, white, heterosexual men. And that patently ain't true.
This idea that comedians don't have a duty of care about how other people take their jokes, is one I find pretty amoral and a bit stupid tbh. Really good comedians like Stewart Lee, don't take that view - they know that as moral, sentient beings, members of society, people with brains and hearts, they have as much responsibility as everyone else in society, to consider the impact of their words in the context of the society in which they are delivering those words. Comedians (or anyone else) who take the view that once the words are out of their mouths, they cease to be responsible for them are simply being lazy and irresponsible. That doesn't mean that Carr et al are responsible for the actions of anyone else, just in case some of the weak-headed accuse me of thinking that; of course not, they are only responsible for their own behaviour, not for anyone else's. What they are responsible for, is considering how their words will be received and whether their act is part of the problem, however well meaning, or part of the solution.
I don't know, some of what has been said has persuaded me that maybe JC is just a well-meaning dullard rather than an out and out cunt. I just think that if you are going to do comedy like this, you actually need to do it better than he and Frankie Boyle do it, because it does have the weakness right at the core of it, that the persecution that the groups they target is still a live issue and if you aren't as clever as you think you are, you will fuck it up. And that IMO is the prob with JC - he just over-estimates his own ability. You need to be really razor sharp to do what Tigerseye describes and frankly, JC is simply not good enough for that.