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.

I think people who have empathy should be able to think of a time when someone has laughed or mocked their child.

My DS1 is a NT 10 year old. This morning he fell over in the playground, Tripped over his own feet and all his peers were laughing at him. I felt mortified for him.

I can imagine lots of people have had incidents like that. Now imagine that that happens to your DC all the time - people pointing and laughing. Not just children, but adults too.

I don't find him particularly funny, or Frankie Boyle on the whole. Its just not my sense of humour, same as chubby.

Im not offended by jokes, find them tasteless at times, stupid at best. I work with people with disabilities and some of them watch Frankie Boyle and find him hilarious. Its a bit of an awkward moment watching him with them and then not knowing if its ok to laugh or not.

If someone offends me, I just dont watch them again. End of.

The major difference between JC's 'joke' and the RG/WD stuff is the invitation to laugh at or with.

Personally I find RG as funny as a wet Wednesday in Warrington, but I understand that in this situation the actor Warwick Davis is working with him to invite people to see the behaviour that is offered towards him, and in doing so join him in laughing.

Whereas JC seems to think that anyone with a need to use the sunshine coaches is worthy of laughing at.

And that puts him in my big book of tossers.

I'd happily endorse a big book of utter wankers, containing anyone who laughs at a disabled child. To me, what's even worse than mocking disabled children though, is mocking an individual disabled child - the infamous Harvey Price 'joke' that Frankie Boyle made. How him making that 'joke' and it being broadcast are not both criminal offences is beyond me. We have libel and defamation laws to protect adults, and yet an individual disabled child has no defence against vile personal attacks like Frankie Boyle's?!!? The man is utter scum.

A lot of disabled people work with RG. I think maybe they are in the best position to judge if his brand of comedy is offensive.

There should be a difference between comedy and bullying - at least as far as people who are paid to be funny are concerned. A joke which basically comes down to 'people with disabilities are stupid/look funny' is a. nasty and b. pathetic coming from someone whose job it is to write jokes. Dressing it up as 'irony' doesn't make it any better, especially when the person telling the joke is well-off, white, male and middle class. There are very funny things to say about disability and Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle would have the technical skills to work at least some of them out, if they could be bothered. But it's far easier to go for 'ooh, don't people with X look weird' and pretend you are being oh-so-challenging.

Boyle has a problem with alcohol, apparently, which might go some way to explaining why he's a tosser.

Actually I think as the mother of a disabled child I am well placed to decide if jokes about disabled children are offensive.

My OH can take care of the 'are jokes about black people offensive'

My dog can sort out the 'are jokes about small yappy dogs offensive'

I will deal with the 'are desperate show offs who will take the piss out of children who have are unable to defend themselves and are being put at risk because of the stupid wankers who make money out of mocking them?'

i couldn't care less who works with RG, or what they deem to be offensive. the fact that they are working means they have a "voice"
the people RG and his ilk target don't.
so their families have to stand up for them and get told they are taking offense over nothing.

but hey if you don't have a child who has had the piss ripped out of them because they are disabled or they have a disabled sibling. you wouldn't have seen the tears.

I think it's probably not so much the joke in itself that is the problem, it's the way it gives everyone licence to laugh at the people involved.
One joke heard on the tv - people who don't live with the situation daily can imagine that they would be able to deal with that if they DID have a child with disability.
But what they won't be able to imagine is the daily grind of living with those attitudes from the people around - starting from when they're so little and carrying on for years and years. You might think you could handle it and not be "so uptight and stuffy" and maybe for a few weeks, months, possibly even years you might be able to handle it.
But eventually the grind will get to you. You will be sick of seeing your child crying because some cunt has passed a disablist comment at them or pointed and laughed for the nth time - it will just wear you down and you too will be sick of jokes like this that perpetuate the "ok-ness" of those attitudes.

And if it doesn't - then you have no compassion or humanity.

We should call this big book 'wankerpedia'.

Dh says he Carr on tour so this will be a publicity stunt. Tosser. I agree that no subject should particulary be off limits for humour, but this is not remotely humourous, it's cruel and relies on prejudice.

smallwhitecat - dish the dirt!

Agree with you about most people being ok swc. I have no problem at all at people laughing along with us when ds1 does something funny. He does a lot of funny stuff. Just have problems with people pointing and laughing AT him.

Carr's joke here really reminds me of teenagers pulling faces and laughing at 'the special kids' - as some of the less bright would put it.

If someone finds that funny, I find them pretty ignorant and repulsive.

Can i add the National Deaf Childrens Society to the list of things he has cracked disgusting jokes about!!!
I really really dislike him!!!

He also has a new DVD to plug, so all this might just be a horrible way of flogging a few.

Mrs DeVere - thanku foe posting and I hope all the people who think it is ok to have jokes about children with Down's Syndrome and other disabilities think twice now

Whitecat - I am not surprised JC is creepy

He is a twat too!

Must be kind of fucking awful to be him.

imo that makes him even worse,
but they are all ugly people and so are the people who lol at their bad "jokes"

I hate comedians who justify their humour by saying that everything should be acceptable to make jokes about. Jokes are one thing, but taking the piss out of people because of their disability is just as unacceptable as taking the piss out of someone because of the colour of their skin or where they were born. It is wrong because it makes attitudes and words like this become acceptable in the wider population and makes people see these people as "less than" human, as unacceptable. The words we use DO matter and it may sound extreme, but when words like "mong" and "window licker" and attitudes like "they all look the same" become common place, you start to see a rise in hate-crime. Just think of the case of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter who was hounded to the point of life being unbearable by being bullied day after day by people who hated her and her daughter because of her disability. People are always going to be horrible to each other, but when mainstream comedians start doing it, and it become part of our everyday language again, we're going backwards and not forwards. I'm saying this as a parent of a SN child, who's been called a retard, amongst other things. Believe me, language hurts, and it matters.

Actually, if you think about it, supposing the bus was for an organisation that worked with young black people. Wouldn't it be considered to be incredibly racist if a comedian joked that "variety" was the wrong word because "they all look the same" It would never be tolerated.
But replace black children with disabled children and suddenly we have posters saying "Just don't watch it if you don't like it"
Why is that?