posted
No, this is the kind of stuff that is usually heard in sleazy bars and at the tops of water towers.
This is, for the record, the first time I have ever asked for a thread to be deleted, and certainly the most energetic rant I've ever posted. Also the first time I have heard jatraqueros repeat wife-beater jokes. You'll note that I still haven't blown the whistle on any post.
Un-PC jokes can be cleverer than that, can't they?
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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One trend I have noticed in stand-up over the last 10 years is more and more self-referential humor. If you're making fun of yourself, few people will be offended, even if they are very PC.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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But express your dislike, explain why. You don't have to try to censor in order to be heard.
At core, my problem with this thread is that people would prefer not to hear this stuff then try to understand why people who won't ever beat their wives find this stuff funny.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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I recognize there are other targets for humor - such as "nerds".
One key difference comes in matters of life and death. Whether it's a farmer in Saskatchewan who gasses his 12-year-old daughter to death or a whole medical team that presides over the starvation of an infant with Down syndrome, there's a whole different set of consequences happening for people with labels of mental retardation. One of those consequences is to treat their killers with sympathy.
If this thread continues, I'll post some links. Part of me hopes it doesn't. It feels too much like work.
Tonight, btw, is gonna be a short night and an early morning. Gotta talk on a Tampa radio station about a rock group that wants to stage a live suicide. A real one. Fun day to start the day. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Wouldn't a previously announced suicide be illegal in most countries? For some macabre trivia, I have read that in 19th century England attempted suicide was a capital crime! So if you botched the job, the state would finish you off. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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it is a crime to stage this kind of thing in St. Petersburg, which is where the concert and suicide are supposed to take place. Among other stunts the band has done on stage before are things like putting rats in a blender.
The way I see it, it's a logical extension of Mike Wallace doing his ratings grab by showing Kevorkian ending the life of Thomas Youk by lethal injection. When it comes right down to it, how different is what the band intends to do?
Edited to add: I don't think any kind of law against suicide exists in England any more. There aren't any in the U.S., either, but you are pretty likely to be put in mandatory 72 hour psychiatric observation at the least.
I'll see if I have time tonight to find links to stories and post them. Gotta get ready to go home now.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
what ever happend to the good old days when GG Allen was as outragous as one could get? on stage suicide in an undisclosed place but you can watch on the net.... and yet it fits neatly into this thread in a strange way. how far is too far?
That wasn't funny because it had no connection to the former statement OTHER than being an insult.
With the opening joke, there was a connection to the entire premise of the Special Olympics.
It's a JOKE, people.
Sometimes I think that the most ardently PC people have never really had to face much of the adversity that PC wants to protect.
Why do we say African-American? Not all Black folks are from Africa. Not all white folks are from the Caucasus region, so they aren't Caucasian. We say them because they're politically correct.
Humans deal with stress and storm in a couple ways: you either laugh or cry. If I'm stressed or uncomfortable or just went through some harrowing experience, I will joke about it. I joke about it because it's my way of crying.
As Paul pointed out, un-PC jokes can also mark particular foibles among ethnic and religions groups. I laugh long and hard from good Catholic jokes. Why? Because the irony is in some of the truth of the matter. If you can't laugh at yourself, then you take yourself too seriously.
At any rate.
I have an un-PC joke:
Q: Why aren't Episcopalians good at chess? A: They can't tell a bishop from a queen.
An Episcopalian friend told me that, by the way.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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*grabs mack and shakes her to get her attention, starts signing rapidly and with great agitation*
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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You know, I dated a deaf girl, and she would have found that HILARIOUS, about shaking people to scream.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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To be honest, some of these jokes are funny simply because it's forbidden to laugh at them. It is absolutely taboo in polite culture to be other than deadly serious about discrimination or sickness, and humor often thrives by mocking that which is serious.
Suppose that you're a dinner guest at an older couple's house. The lady of the house, a large if very prim and proper woman, is the sort to put you on your best behavior. While the husband is saying grace, the lady tries to flatulate discreetly but instead burbles out a noise like a St. Bernard trying to play French Horn. What do you do? I can't speak for anyone else, but I would probably be drooling with laughter, however hard I might try to do otherwise. It's far funnier because you must, must, must not laugh.
In modern culture, "non-politically correct" jokes can have the same effect.
Posts: 224 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I had an interesting conversation earlier this year with Greg Fleet, one of the top Australian comedians.
Some guys at a gig I organised were asking him about open mic comedy and how to make an impact. One guy said "I was thinking of making these jokes about fat kids - you know, there're really funny but do you think people might be offended?"
Fleety's response was "Make the jokes about you. People don't get offended when you pay yourself out. That's why Chris Rock can make as many black guy stereotype jokes as he wants. So say, 'When I was at school I was a fat bastard. You can't tell now, but I was. Other kids were always coming up to me and saying...' That way, the audience knows that you're not JUST knocking fat kids."
Personally, I have a pretty nasty sense of humour. I've been involved in a lot of comedy productions (mostly as a technician but I've also written a bit of comedy) and I've seen the full spectrum - from routine "John Edward's Crossing Over" parodies to "abortion convention" and pedeophilia sketches. I tend to draw the line somewhere - right about where someone playing a little boy makes a comment about wanting a priest to molest them, for example... Urgh. But I do think that humour is one of few ways in which we can push boundaries. Humour is accessible and ice-breaking. It often allows us to raise topics or ideas that aren't normally spoken of. Humour relies on the unexpected - often, the unexpected is the breaking of taboo.
Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
My first instinct was, like LadyDove's, to believe that this thread was more a thinly veiled excuse to tell some naughty jokes, with perhaps a little conversation on the side. Part of that, no doubt, has to do with seeing Pat post on saxon's thread around the same time this thread was started. Or at least, that's the impression I gathered.
My apologies if I have misjudged you.
I think a serious conversation would have been better served by having the actual un-PC jokes be absent.
quote:Sometimes I think that the most ardently PC people have never really had to face much of the adversity that PC wants to protect.
I don't agree. But then, I'm generally PC despite the extent to which that has turned into a slur. I am aware of, and have even posted about, extremist abuses in the name of political correctness, but I think a lot of good also has come from increased awareness, and I think some conservative people paint way too broadly in their condemnation of political correctness.
-o-
I think Tristan makes some very good points in the different ways in which both the teller and the audience for a joke factor into the morality of telling it. I think maybe, in an indefinable and theoretical way, it may be OK to tell many of these jokes if both the teller and the listener are free from prejudice toward the group being lampooned, and no each other well enough to know that there will not be misunderstandings as a result of telling the jokes.
I think that may be why I don't feel uncomfortable when people make fun of groups to which they belong: I don't believe that they are based on prejudice, but on laughing at stereotypes. But more than this, it explains why I feel comfortable joking with some of my friends about the group they belong to. As a Latino, I find this to be a pretty common pattern with my Latino friends. With my good friends who are Puerto Rican or Columbian or Mexican, I often make cracks about their group, and they make jokes about mine (Cuban) and we all have a good laugh. But they know me well enough to know it's a joke. I have many Puerto Rican acquaintances who are not as close to me, and I don't feel comfortable making the same comments around them. (It's not just Latinos. I do the same thing with a British friend.)
But you have to be close enough to the person you're joking with to know how your joke will be received. Or, you can be making fun of your own group, in which case you have pretty much instant credibility on not being prejudiced.
Now, joking about a group to which neither you nor your audience belong is different. If you can joke with a friend about his or her group, the audacity of it, coupled with your relationship with the audience, makes it clearer that you are joking. (Along with the presumption that you can take as well as you dish out.) It's not unlike the gentle ways in which we sometimes poke fun at each other as individuals. Two straight guys telling each other jokes about gay guys seems a lot touchier to me. I'm much less likely to see anything good-natured in this. Same goes if you are telling jokes to an audience whose composition you don't know enough about. Like, say, readers of an online forum. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Oh, that reminds me. There are some things that I am personally incapable of finding humor in, such as rape.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I think you can't change people's actions or attitudes if you begin with the premise that they are morally decrepit. I think you have more success if you grant that they are not racists, murderes, abusers, etc., and then calmly explain why you think their actions are inappropriate.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Two straight guys telling each other jokes about gay guys seems a lot touchier to me. I'm much less likely to see anything good-natured in this.
That puts in a nutshell one of the reasons I have a very hard time with jokes that devalue people with mental retardation - neither the teller nor the audience belongs to that group. I also think it's wrong to lump it with the "Helen Keller" joke, which, regardless of whether or not you find it funny, does not make a statement about her worth or about the worth of deaf people in general.
To be honest, I could be all wet on this. As it happens, I'll be co-presenting with the president of a national self-advocacy group of people with mental retardation. It will be at a statewide conference in North Carolina toward the end of October. I'm thinking I'll share the joke with him and ask for his reaction, explaining I want to share it with others.
posted
I don't have access to his psych chart (or anyone else's, these days), but in order to be a full-fledged member of Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered (there are also nondisabled advisory members), he would have had a mental retardation at some point in his life and still may.
Mild mental retardation covers a wide range of abilities - including the ability to articulate one's positions on things and how one feels about jokes aimed at oneself.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Like Mack, I fail utterly to see how the Special Games joke is the same as the death "joke". There is no correlation between death and being mentally or physically handicapped. There is, however, a correlation between those things and the Special Games. Just thought I'd point that out in case you were intending to open things up with the death "joke" which I don't think anyone in their right mind would find particularly funny.
Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
PS- Icarus, I hope that query about language wasn't something I evoked. While terminology changes over time (like it has with Blacks, who used to be "colored" and "negro"), I don't tend proselytize over that. Besides, what I tell someone about acceptable or current language could be contradicted by somebody else and really cause confusion and frustration.
More concerned with the broader conceptual strokes. Most of the time. Sometimes the devil really is in the details.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The Special Olympics joke wasn't really all that funny. Not because it's offensive, but because it's just plain true. Being true doesn't really make it funny, it just makes you think, "Yeah, it really would suck to be retarded." Whoop-de-doo, I knew that before I heard the joke.
Personally, though, I think it's possible for a joke-teller and his or her audience to experience a joke that invokes a stereotype, and LAUGH AT THE STEREOTYPE, rather than strengthening it. In fact, some jokes (like the women-with-black-eyes series) are much less funny without the irony of knowing that punching a woman in the eye is a horrible thing to do.
However, the one joke that seems REALLY REALLY inappropriate to me on this thread is the one about the astronauts. Making fun of a class of people is one thing. Making fun of the actual deaths of specific people with families and friends is just wrong.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Or was that a caveat to say "well, even if he does find it funny that may be because he's mildly retarded and can't understand that's being insulted and that he should feel offended"?
posted
Sometimes I think that when we have finally achieved the true egalitarian society we will know because we will be able to tell because people will once again be able to laugh at racist/sexist/non-PC jokes.
Consider for example blond jokes or lawyer jokes. Most people can laugh at these jokes despite their insensitivity, because there aren't millions of blonds and lawyers living below the poverty level. Blonds rarely get pistol whipped or beaten to death just because someone hates blonds. Lawyers aren't twice as likely to end up on death row. Our society doesn't have a history of commiting real injustices against blonds and lawyers. No matter how many blond jokes we tell, people are still bleaching their hair. No matter how many lawyer jokes we tell, people are still lining up to get into law school.
As long as their are people out there who remember being denied their basic human rights because of their skin color, their gender, their sexual preference, or their disabilities, certain jokes rub salt in wounds. Telling them isn't a matter of PC, it is tactless and even cruel.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
My grandmother lives in an eternity of not knowing when she's being teased.
Why?
She has a completely different sense of humor than the rest of her entire family. We all have my grandfather's dry wit.
We aren't sure where my grandmother's sense of humor is. She has one, but keeps it well hidden. She's a very smart woman, but never gets a joke.
However, watching my grandmother get pissed at all of us because she isn't in on a joke makes it MORE funny. Not because gramma doesn't understand, but because at this point, it's all rehearsed.
I dunno. PC-ness can go way too far. Some of the stuff, are people that it's pushed for even asked? Has anyone seen or read the world according to garp?
With the PC movement, I think of the Ellen James and the Ellen Jamesians. The original victim hated the crusade that her victimization caused.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Or was that a caveat to say "well, even if he does find it funny that may be because he's mildly retarded and can't understand that's being insulted and that he should feel offended"?
E.G., I'm not sure what this comment was referring to - one of my posts or some other. If this guy thinks the joke is funny and OK, I'll report it - he is a better judge of it as I am. Even if he reacts to it in a way that disagrees with my own reaction.
I'm really bewildered by the deconstruction of my own little contribution re: "What is worse than death?" Folks, it wasn't meant to be funny. However, it's the logical end of a long line of things people say "being retarded" is worse than.
Do you really believe that a punchline that essentially says it sucks to be "mentally retarded" is funny as long as it has the right lead-in????
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I sort of agree, Rabbit, and I sort of don't. What about black guys making jokes about black culture and black people? I'm thinking Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy and even Bill Cosby back in the day. Or, even disabilities. We had a famous comedian over here called "Steady Eddie" who had cerebal palsy and made all these jokes about people with cerebal palsy.
Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
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quote:Mild mental retardation covers a wide range of abilities - including the ability to articulate one's positions on things and how one feels about jokes aimed at oneself.
And was simply intended to be flippant.
Ok, so you're bewildered by what you see as being an obvious extension of the special games joke to the death one. So, why is it that you can't understand why others are bewildered by YOUR attack on their humour? They say, "but wait - it's not the same at all" and you say "how on earth can you say that?" Then you both kinda go "huh?". Others don't say that extension. I don't. Kind of like saying "child murderer" is a logical extension of not being "anit-abortion". It is for some but not for most people.
Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
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quote:Kind of like saying "child murderer" is a logical extension of not being "anit-abortion". It is for some but not for most people.
But I didn't say that. It seems that at least my first post on the topic was worded poorly enough so that people jumped to that conclusion.
But I maintain that "humor" that depends on demeaning, dehumanizing, devaluing or objectifying people with mental retardation really has the same underlying rationale as more serious offenses against that group of people.
It's also personal. The doctor who delivered me expected the brain damage I experienced through his use of forceps to result in severe mental retardation. His recommendation to my parents was that nothing special be done to keep my alive. Fortunately, my parents are stubborn people who don't deal well with authority.
And, getting to Mac's question about being mentally disabled - I'm already part of the way there. Most of what I deal with is in the coordination/neuromotor area. As a result, for example, I'll have to get up at least an hour and a half before the radio show tomorrow to make sure my speech is reliable. I have to put limitations on my driving these days. I had to have my partner cancel plans for a meeting downtown (she doesn't drive any more) since it would have involved having me drive for at least 90 minutes after having been up 16 hours. I used to be able to do that. Now I am not sure I can do it safely.
I think about the possibllity of developing other types of mental and/or intellectual disabilities because I am probably more at risk than most people for early development of motor and cognitive losses. I suspect, but cannot know for sure, since there aren't more than a handful of people my age with hydrocephalus, that I may show neurological signs of aging sooner than most.
I can't say I look forward to it - who like change that involves increased difficulty in living your life? But it doesn't really bother me and it doesn't scare me. My intellect isn't the only thing I value about me. And I have known many people over the years with significant limitations in mental ability whose company I enjoyed.
That really is where I'm at on mental disabilities. I know it's not exactly a dominant perspective.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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