AIBU to find this " Best Gag of the Edinburgh Festival in poor taste?

[speakout]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-49389208

I have seen and read this "joke " repeated several times on TV in the past few days and find it in very poor taste. Newsreaders on TV have been chuckling. Tourette's can be a serious and debilatating condition and sufferers have huge challenges in everyday life. Surely we are a bit more grown up these days than to poke fun at people with a neurological condition?
Is is just me being stuffy?

Interesting to see the reaction on here.

Had this 'joke' been a pun poking fun at fat people MN would have been up in arms at the 'fat shaming'.

Seems it's okay to 'Tourettes shame' people though.

People are continuing to avoid the point. The fact that this joke got a very public mainstream award now means that it is OK to make jokes about people with disabilities, and anyone who is not happy about that is being oversensitive.

Oh god, how po-faced. What a dull, confined world you seem to want to inhabit. What ARE we allowed to make jokes about, according to you?

I have a disability. I couldn’t give a fuck if anyone makes jokes about disabilities and I definitely don’t need anyone patronising me by “protecting” me from potential offence. Anyway, what the fuck is wrong with being offended from time to time?

Anything and everything should be a target for humour. The end.

What ARE we allowed to make jokes about, according to you

And yet a lot of comedians seem to get by without having targets as the butt of their jokes....

And anyone who gets pissed off because they are a member of a group who is the target of yet 'another joke' aimed at people like them is told they are 'over sensitive, it's just a joke, get over it, it's just banter' and people who stand up for others are told they are 'virtue signallers'

In the 70s racist jokes were accepted as fine by the majority does that make them right?

The difference was that in the 70s, racist jokes tended to make black or Asian people as the butt of the joke. We still have racist jokes today, but in the main, the butt of the joke is the racist.

That's happens a lot, people get offended by the subject of the joke (racism, rape, child abuse, the holocaust) but they overlook the content/target of the joke (usually the racist, rapist, abuser or Nazi).

Now nobody is suggesting that it is compulsory to like these jokes, but it's important that people should be free to tell them. Ultimately, if they don't have an audience, the comedian telling them won't get any bookings. Market forces will dictate what humour becomes mainstream. But someone like Ricky Gervais seems to do very well, and he has no boundaries over what subjects are suitable for joking about.

And yet a lot of comedians seem to get by without having targets as the butt of their jokes....

That’s fine for them. So what?

The only people who should be controlling what comedians say are comedians.

The only people who should be controlling what comedians say are comedians

Public reaction tends to control what comedians say as well.

I have no doubt that there are comedians who rely on making minority groups the target of their humour. I have no doubt they have followers. Fortunately we see less of them as mainstream comedians.

I'll let you lot get back to your Bernard Manning and Jim Davison dvds then.

Life, that is absolutely not what a racist joke is and you know it. Racism discriminates against races and that is what the 'comedy' of many comedians in the 70s was about.

Whilst people are prepared to have a laugh and banter about the most vulnerable in our society we will never have acceptance. Sad.

Repeat (for all those who can't see the harm in it) Let's see who can come up with the best child autism joke!?.....

Jilly,the language we use defines us. The language we allow society to use defines said society. Jokes such as these make the bullying of my ds acceptable. If you can’t see that. I respectfully suggest that you have a problem.

Public reaction tends to control what comedians say as well.

Yes of course, that’s the entire point. Let people make the jokes they want to make and let them get a public reaction. Let the market decide what works and what doesn’t. What are you so scared of? I really doubt very much that anyone going around the comedy circuit taking the piss out of disabled people is going to make much headway career-wise. The market will kick their arse.

Some comedy is based on shock value. Some comedy is funny because it’s offensive. Or because it goes somewhere it “shouldn’t”. Comedians try stuff out, get reactions, adapt their material, try it out again. They should be free to do this. Or do you want a situation like Konstantin Kisin recently experienced at SOAS when he was asked (and refused) to sign a contract promising that his jokes would be “respectful and kind” to a long list of supposed victim groups?

@Gilead, your son is not going to suffer because one comedian makes a daft joke about florets. As I said earlier, I have a disability and I grew up in the 70s when bullying was absolutely rife and quite horrendous. Despite this I am still much more interested in just letting people say what they want to say.

the language we use defines is

Fine, then you use language that defines you and let others use language that defines them.

I’m quoting Stephen Fry here but being offended does not give anyone special rights. Being offended is just a whine, and should be treated as such. Being offended has no meaning, purpose or reason to be respected as a phrase. “I’m offended.” So fucking what?

Apart from the fact that you are misquoting Fry, one comedian can make a difference, just as idiots like Trump have made a difference.
Your lived experience is not the only experience. I too grew up with a disability, earlier than you and have spent much of my life fighting for the rights of those of us with differences, I shall continue to do so.

eing offended has no meaning, purpose or reason to be respected as a phrase. “I’m offended.” So fucking what

Because maybe it helps legitimiise the oppression and hate a group faces in society, especially if it's from someone with a large platform

Generally the kind of people who say t"so fucking what" when someone says they are offended by a 'joke;, hat are the kind of people who don't tend to be at the end of such hate and oppression.

I heard it and straight away knew a thread would be started about it.

i like the Brexit one, and the anti depressant one

No one on this thread has actually said they are offended.
Some are suggesting we need a little more sensitivity and compassion for others.

I am not suggesting rules at all, I support free speech.

Imagine a woman walking past a building site being cat called by male workers- shouting derogatory and sexual words at her- ( this has happened to me btw) and being told to " cheer up", all the while the men finding this hilarious.
Their view is that the woman has "no sense of humour" and they are "only joking".

Words matter. Thankfully we are a more grown up society to know that homophobic slurs and racial jokes are unnacceptable- despite most of us being straight and white. We are not the target of these jokes, and only a few decades ago jokes about these minorities were apparently hilarious.

All topics are open for humour of course but when miority groups are being poked fun at or held up for ridicule then these comments are also open to challenge.
Just because something is a "joke" told by a comedian does not give it special rights to be nasty.

This joke aside that Fry saying as written here is cringe/inducing. Who is he to say what a whine is. A man with a public voice who is heard. Sod him.

Fry has as much right to say what he thinks as anyone else. As a gay man with well documented mental health issues, it seems likely that he’d have more occasion to be offended than most. And yet he manages not to be.

Speakout I agree with your post

I leave it to others to say what they feel about this joke but agree with sense of humour examples you list

But Fry is offended. The quote was in a discussion about religion, he went on to say that he found it offensive that a God would allow children to die if awful diseases, of starvation, that wars happen etc. The quote is frequently taken out of context.
As for the joke; it legitimises poking fun at those with disabilities, not offended, rather sad and a tad angry.

Glad the context is there. A shame it’s used as it is.

Yes @Gilead, thank you for proving my point. Fry is offended by injustice, not trivial jokes.

Fry is offended by injustice, not trivial jokes

Admittedly I'm not Stephen Fry (or so you might think) but

(Wed 21-Aug-19 16:19:39) :

Nothing on here could offend me. Homelessness - yes that offends me. Vulnerable women having to run a gauntlet of harrassment and criminal intimidation - that offends me. People being denied opportunities because of accidents of birth, or circumstances. That offends me. Disabled peopled being denied access to benefits they are entitled to offends me.

I did try to make that point too ...

Repeat (for all those who can't see the harm in it) Let's see who can come up with the best child autism joke!?.....

Oh I don't know...44 episodes of Young Sheldon/279 episodes of BBT?
The creators might have stated the character was not created with asd/ocd traits in mind but the actor who plays him Parsons has said that in his opinion, Sheldon "couldn't display more traits" of Asperger's.

I do wish people would stop using the word “offended”. You can think it’s a bad idea that a joke about disability is legitimised by being given a high profile main stream award without being offended by it.