Interesting Links for 05-02-2022

[andrewducker]

Russia and China line up against U.S. in "no limits" partnership

(tags:USA Russia China )

Is there anything Boris Johnson will tell the truth about (fake fur edition)

(tags:bears materials lies BorisJohnson army )

Hilariously Renamed Dungeons & Dragons Monsters

(tags:names dungeonsanddragons funny )

Why Jimmy Carr's joke about genocide and travellers is unacceptable

(tags:jokes genocide roma racism )

Comments

[cmcmck]

Having both Jewish and Romani ancestry, he gets me twice over! :o

[nancylebov]

The Jimmy Carr joke is really vile. I hope he gets into a lot more trouble than Whoopi Goldberg.

Jimmy Carr

[danieldwilliam]

I think the best case that can be made for Jimmy Carr's joke about the Holocaust and the Devouring is that the target of the joke are the people laughing at it as a way of highlighting the different approaches to anti-Semitism on the one hand and anti-Traveller prejudice on the other.

We have become quite mannered in our response to anti-Semitism in general and to the Holocaust in particular. Anti-Semitism is generally considered a "bad thing". The Holocaust as an act of great, perhaps unique, evil. It is obviously not always the case that anti-Semitism was considered bad. The government of Germany 1933-1945 were proudly anti-Semitic, as were the collaborating regimes in Occupied Europe but see also The Jews Relieft Act 1856, Keir Hardie and John Burns' remarks on the causes of the Boer War, The British Brothers' League, the Aliens Act 1905, the Pogroms in Eastern Europe after the First World War and European history passim in general. Many people in the past have built political capital by asserting that Jews are a problem and promising to solve that problem.

That has changed. Whilst there is still a lot of anti-Semitism around in Britain it is more obscure. It is more in the form of anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic canards, some confusion about the situation in Palastine and a body of private discrimination, prejudice and otherness. Mostly.

Very few people in 21st Century Britain would bare-facedly advance an openly anti-Semitic policy. Very few people would publically admit to being anti-Jewish and if they did so they would not expect to be applauded, at least not by the BBC. They would expect to be disapproved of. And there are many, many potent figures in culture, politics and business who would publically disapprove of them and who would point out all the many ways anti-Semitism still runs through our culture and politics and that anti-Semitism should stop.

Compare this with Douglas Ross MP MSP or Pritti Patel who is promoting the legislation mentioned in your link.

Actively harrassing the Traveller community is seen as a "good thing". A vote winner. Sadly, it probably is a vote winner.

And so I think turns the best case for Carr's joke is that is asks the question "why are *you* laughing at *this*?"

It was a method that the Doug Anthony All-Stars used to use a lot at their cleverist and most pointed - if I keep dialling up this sentiment at what point will you decide that it is no longer funny, and why?

So the Carr joke (in it's best case) is this - "Here is a bad thing that happened to Jewish people and to Jewishness. We all agree it's a bad thing don't we? At least in public we do. And we'll all shake our heads at how awful it was and be glad that we're not the sort of people who would do that to another human being, right? Right? I mean, we're the good guys, right?

Same thing happened to these other people at the same time but *you* don't consider them to be fully human, so you think it's funny that they were gassed.

Who is the arsehole laughing along with genocide now? Still you."

Whether this was Carr's intention, I don't know.
Whether, if it were Carr's intention, it was successful - Twitter suggests it was at best too subtle - as does the fact that it's taken me an hour and many hundred words to start to explain what might be going on.
Whether, even if it were Carr's intention, it was a wise, humane and low-risk exercise in overly subtle satire which had no prospect of going horribly wrong in any way least of all a way that damaged both the Jewish and Romani communities - well, I will conclude with Scalzi's remarks, that the failure state of funny is arsehole.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[danieldwilliam]

Of course, the worst-case intepretation of Carr's joke is that it was deliberately, nastily and transparantly racist.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[andrewducker]

I think that if he'd meant it like that then he would have actually followed it up with "And now you're laughing at genocide" and made it abundantly clear that was what they were doing, and that it wasn't okay.

Alas he either meant it or felt both that his audience would be fine with it and was happy to joke about it as if he meant it.

(I'm fine with comedy going to dark places, but it needs to occasionally make it clear which side it's on if it isn't going to come across as just a bunch of racist jokes.)

Re: Jimmy Carr

[calimac]

I wonder if anybody else here has heard what Carr did say after/around the joke. (The full(?) 2-minute context is here.) He thinks he's found an "edgy" (his word) way of being educational, publicizing the lesser-known fact that other groups besides Jews were targeted by the Holocaust. But that forces one to respond with Daniel's citation of Scalzi's rule, that the failure state of funny is arsehole.

Clearly Carr was not racist in the sense of actually favoring the extermination of the Romani - it wouldn't have been a joke if he were. The sense in which it's racist is in complete lack of consideration of the feelings of the people he's joking about - note that he uses the term "gypsies". Sensitivity to the nomenclature wouldn't fit with this coarse idea of humor.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[andrewducker]

Thank you for the video.

The Jehovah's Witness bit is rather good.

But he never walks back the "good news" bit about Travelers, and he doesn't get people to examine why they find it funny. So it doesn't stop it coming across as the kind of joke that someone who really did want to wipe them out would tell.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[calimac]

No, it isn't the kind of joke someone who really did want to wipe them out would tell, because if they said it, it wouldn't be as a joke. But you're right that Carr fails to examine why people find it funny (which at least a significant fraction of his audience did, judging from the laughter). He was just trying to defend the social purpose of telling it, but it's interesting that nobody responding to it that I've seen has taken that tack, or even replied to that part of Carr's statement, which they probably never heard, just the joke itself.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[andrewducker]

I'd heard the bit about making sure people remember third-hand, but yeah most of the outrage is definitely going to come from people who haven't heard any context.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[danieldwilliam]

I'm not sure that a joke like that works as the introduction to an educational public service announcement.

And I think the joke can only work with the shock value of the inappropriate nomenclature.

So I think it's at best a failed attempt.

And I think your point about the racism of the insensitive language is well made.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[danieldwilliam]

I think you are correct. The lack of the sort of follow up you suggest is telling.

And in contrast to a section of his stand up I have seen on anti-vaxers where he implies he is an anti-vaxers an in effect invites people to out themselves, then calls them a moron.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[ninetydegrees]

The way he responded to criticism is pretty damning.

Re: Jimmy Carr

[danieldwilliam]

I have seen his response. What's he said?

Re: Jimmy Carr

[ninetydegrees]

According to the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/04/jimmy-carr-condemned-for-joke-about-gypsies-in-netflix-special

Re: Jimmy Carr

[andrewducker]

Oh dear, what did he say?

Re: Jimmy Carr

[ninetydegrees]

According to the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/feb/04/jimmy-carr-condemned-for-joke-about-gypsies-in-netflix-special

Re: Jimmy Carr

[andrewducker]

Ah. That's all from the show (there's a link in a comment from Calimac above).