Alan Harper's Tash
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I don’t see it as racist. Everyone is fair game for Carr. You know this when buying a ticket to his show.
You could try taking Carr to court if you think you have a case.
Jimmy Carr
- Thread starter bluethrunthru
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You could try taking Carr to court if you think you have a case.
It's objectively racist. Whether it's acceptable or not is in the guise of stand up comedy is a very valid debate either way which we're seeing in this thread, but it is racist.
Also worth pointing out that post war Roma and Sinti people were still persecuted. They were the only group not entitled to any restitution from the German government because they were not accepted as a race. It wasn’t until the late 70s they got the same recognition as other victims.
Even now (or in 2017) Jewish holocaust survivors in Moldova were getting €350 a month as restitution from the German government and their Roma counterparts were getting €15
From reading the reaction from the Roma community, it seems like this is one of the most hurtful aspects of the joke - they feel they are the last acceptable target. Carr wouldn’t have said it about Jews, or Gay people, or the disabled, but joking about Romani being murdered in their hundreds of thousands is still fair game.
In a way, do you not think you are slowly inadvertently proving Jimmy Carr right? At least the bit he claimed it was 'educational'. Yes tasteless and provocative, and perhaps initially got an inappropriate reaction in some parts of the crowd. But if in every discussion happening about the joke someone is highlighting the things you are, maybe there is an awareness coming out of it above just twitter hashtag cliches.
Alan Harper's Tash
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It’s not a hill I’m going to die on. It doesn’t bother me enough.
Shouting racist on social media hasn’t been very useful/successful in the past few years, so doubt this will do much good either.
I agree, it does seem like a weak move, and with Jimmy Carr nothing will come of it like we saw with Alan Davies recently.
But it's still racist. Even Jimmy Carr would admit that.
Does it not depend entirely on the context? Are you excluding satire etc.
No because Jimmy Carr didn’t educate anyone.
Romani and Travellers did when they were explaining how fucking awful the attempted joke was and why it wasn’t OK. You cannot pretend this was Carrs intention, that’s beyond absurd.
Anyway Everyone does now get taught in schools that more than just Jews died in the holocaust, it’s something that is pointedly made in any documentary or news coverage surrounding it, and I can’t talk for past generations but would be very confident Jimmy Carrs private school taught him and he had absorbed it through general culture long before he wrote a joke about it.
Mr Kobayashi
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Racist joke without racist intentions.
There's legitimate grievances re finding it offensive, did anyone other than thin-skinned city fans find AD's joke offensive?
Prestwich_Blue
Well-Known Member
The constant derogatory references to our owners, whether any City fan is offended or not, border on, or are definitely, racist.
This is the crux. The majority of white, christian (whether religious or not) heterosexual, able-bodied people in the UK have rarely, if ever, experienced discrimination, let alone out and out racism. Catholics in Northern Ireland certainly have but very few others I suspect.
Yet they're generally quick to tell people who have that they're being "too sensitive" or "snowflakes". If Romani people found it awful and totally offensive, then it was.
It's been said many times before that the Holocaust didn't start with people being murdered on an industrial scale. It started when the Nazis set the agenda that some people were different and therefore less worthy. That it was OK to demonise. and humiliate them in all sorts of ways. And very few people stood up to that view. Many just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it.
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Yeah except the more you argue it, with such a black and white take on it, the more you strengthen the joke, ironically. Not its basic line, but whats around it.
Sure, it doesn't educate you, you already know it all. But you (and others like you) talking about it rubs off passively, and will circulate and that will be happening right across discussions. Here we are, talking about something that wouldn't have talked about. Pretty much 'that's how you never forget'. Bet there were people who were there on the night laughing at it (for whatever reason btw) revisiting it.
Chicago blue was also seemingly right, it fucking holds a mirror to society. At the start of this thread, it was just a bit of a shit unfunny joke that was tasteless and unnecessary. Now it is full on racist horribly offensive and unforgivable, and should lead to wholsecale changes to how comedy is regulated. Is that not a total abstraction of how we as a society will push our entrenched views to ultimate extremes?