Comedians defending Jerry Sadowitz

[FenlandFuckwit]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-62533592

His latest gig has been cancelled after he told racist jokes and got his dick out. Why are other comedians defending his right to do this? This behaviour is not ok, AIBU to think this is indecent and disgusting behaviour and the venue were correct in cancelling him.

Agree with @HeadNorth on the use of the words “safe/unsafe”. They’re overused in the wrong contexts and have become almost meaningless. The Pleasance is indeed not Kabul.

I used 'Unsafe' upthread, for the first time ever. I suppose I'd have previously used 'found it deeply disturbing, to the point I needed to get away'.

I'm one of the people that find trigger warnings useful. I was a foster carer and was forever caught out by children's programmes that dealt with parental loss, for example. Nothing worse than sitting down to a nice Disney with a fostered child, and being banjaxed by the Bambi scene.

Triggering is a similar word. I experience it as a sense of panic starting.

I don't think the words are the issue, it's the expectation that we can be protected from everything. Survivors have to take an extra layer of vigilance. I don't think there's a way round that.

And we are all survivors of something, at some point.

If you have a lot of people laughing, finding and seemingly agreeing with extreme racism, sexism. mysogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia etc - and you are a member of that community, do you think that might make you worried at all or feeling less safe about society in general?

It's interesting to read the JS was shocked to hear someone applaud and seemingly agree with some of what he was saying as it's a persona.

There are comedians out there who aren't a persona. They actually believe the stuff they are saying and they can fill out venues with people who have similar views to them on racism, sexism, homophobia etc and can target such groups with 'humour' aimed at them and they know they can get laughs and applause from the audience.

That's the power of humour and jokes. You can make a lot of money by targetting minority groups, getting an audience following and ideally get cancelled by a venue so you can get the Daily Mail frothing at cancel culture.

A free and democratic society will have people with a plurality of opinions, some of those opinions will be, hateful, unkind or discriminatory. Free speech means that we are able to express views that fall into these categories - your post seems to be suggesting that views that you don't agree with shouldn't be expressed lest people agree with them.

A free and democratic society will have people with a plurality of opinions, some of those opinions will be, hateful, unkind or discriminatory. Free speech means that we are able to express views that fall into these categories - your post seems to be suggesting that views that you don't agree with shouldn't be expressed lest people agree with them

A venue should be free to decide if they want to host someone with those views.

@cakeorwine Right. Why have you quoted me, though?

If the word “unsafe” is used to describe your feelings about what someone says to you, which words do you use to describe how you feel when you’re in physical danger?

The word’s been emptied of its meaning. I switch off when anyone uses it to describe an emotional reaction and put them in the “snowflake” box in my head.

A venue should be free to decide if they want to host someone with those views.

Yes but the venue had already decided to host Sadowitz and, from what I can gather, absolutely knew what they were getting and had indeed hosted him many times before before.

At the very least, the people who'd bought tickets deserve a better explanation than this.

They are. They were. They booked him in the full knowledge of his act (and you mean act, not views. You don't know his views)

The "free" in free speech does not mean "free from consequence".

That's really at the heart of this. It's the logical destination of the have your cake and eat it society we have decided we want to live in.

That a comedian should have a therapist working on all her shows to ensure (somehow) that they're "safe spaces" would suggest that "safe" doesn't refer to physical danger....where a few bouncers would be more appropriate.

Yes, I find this idea extraordinary, too. “Safe spaces”…jeeeeez. What a tedious, meaningless expression this is.

Plus can you imagine just how epically unfunny that show must be?

I think the key message is, there is no such thing as a safe space. The attempt to create one is futile, dangerous, and possibly counter productive.

The "free" in free speech does not mean "free from consequence"

But what does this mean? Who decides what the consequences are, and when they should be applied?

Well it certainly couldn’t be billed as “comedy”. I’d rather save my money and watch Newsnight at home (although so much of that would be “triggering” too…).

Exactly.
However, I'm sure the blue haired brigade would love it.

I had forgotten I'd seen that show. While I've read more about Kimmings since and understand more about her artistically, it was one of the most uncomfortable things I'd ever seen. (I seemed to be the only one!) I felt stuck in a room I couldn't get out of in a way I never have before or since.

Anyway, not to derail.

I imagine any “comedy” that’s received the approval of a therapist would have an audience spending the whole time nervously glancing around at everyone else to check they all felt “safe”.

My comment was a more general one.

A venue should be allowed to decide who it wants to have and not have.

A venue should be allowed to decide who it wants to have and not have.

Agreed, and their options are to do their homework on the act before booking it or decide not to host them again.

They do. They all do. They know what they are getting when they book, no-one books an act they haven't seen.

So your point is redundant

I'm heartened to see a majority of commenters supporting the right to free speech, regardless of whether or not they personally enjoy or appreciate the speech in question. Censoring the arts is a very frightening step. We are now living in a society where comedians are cancelled, writers are attacked, and private individuals are arrested by the police for 'wrongthink'. It's all part of the same big, scary picture.

A venue should be allowed to decide who it wants to have and not have.

No one forced them to book him. That they then decided that he didn’t align with their values was their fuck-up (by their own account he hadn’t changed his act, they decided they needed to move on from that type of comedy). They should, therefore, compensate him for loss of earnings and apologise to fans who had booked tickets.

What is totally unacceptable is that they then decided to say not only did he not have a place in their venue but that he did not belong at the festival. Trying to police other venues from staging his show is going well beyond deciding not to stage him at their venue.

The Sadowitz incident highlights how stupid and unnecessary cancel culture is. There is no need to cancel performances or to press for a blanket refusal of venues to take bookings.

Comedians, plays, art generally, need an audience. If their performance doesn't get received well enough by enough people, the performer or artist will gradually disappear off the radar. It's a natural process and doesn't need people to be "cancelled" - artists by their nature are self-cancelling if their material doesn't find an appreciative audience.

If there are enough people who enjoy the material to make it worthwhile, then what right does the rest of society have to say they shouldn't enjoy it. People like Bernard Manning disappeared from our screens and from bigger venues because the audience shrank.

Regardless though, I cannot fathom who would book tickets to Jerry Sadowitz without knowing how offensive he is. That's what he does, nothing is off limits. It's not even like the Jimmy Carr gypsy/holocaust joke, in that instance I can see how someone might have watched Carr on a panel show and not been expecting a genocide joke. Sadowitz is rarely on TV, when he was on Channel 5 a couple of decades ago he was as offensive as he could get away with.

She also has a therapist working on all her shows to ensure that they're "safe spaces"

FFS.