Since I enjoyed a piece without making any citations, I’m doing it again – this time while referring to something that I shall not actually link to at all.
It has come to my attention that someone I have followed for a long time has become momentarily famous – and in that moment of fame an analysis of his propensity to share often tasteless, sometimes offensive and (subject dependent) borderline unlawful jokes has come under scrutiny… Something that I would have warned him of, had I known that he was intending to do something that would bring the focus of the commentariat onto his life.
Much comment has been made about his attitude to ‘race’ – and in fact a page of selected jokes from his twitter stream has been created, which – if you didn’t know any better – would appear to support the contention that he is racist.
This misses, of course, the literally hundreds of other offensive jokes he’s passed on in the time I’ve followed him – homophobic, transphobic, misogynist, androgynist, ageist, ableist… well; I trust the point that comes across there is that the jokes are not selected in their offence… Like Henry Higgins from Pygmalion he treats all subjects alike and it would be possible to put together any selection of those jokes to prove a point.
This is not to say that some of the jokes he repeats aren’t intensely uncomfortable for me – certain of the gender-based (as a wider category than merely sexist or homophobic) jokes in particular annoy, irritate or upset me. What I do not do is unfollow, critique or scream blue murder about those jokes – instead I try to analyse why they make me feel the way they do.
Have we really got to the point as a Society that we cannot accept that someone might pass on jokes without actually subscribing to any animosity about the individualised subjects? If it has then we really need to get a sense of humour, and fast – the consequences otherwise are never being able to say anything at all.
