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Canadian Comedian Fined $42,000 for Telling a Joke
- overcast 10y agoFrom what I've listened to in the past fifteen years, dealing with Canadian colleagues and their humor. I think this is fair.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoA “joke” which consisted of insulting their disability, I take it? It's hard to have sympathy for such “comedy”.
- anjc 10y agoYou don't have to find it funny. That doesn't make it not a joke.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoMaybe it is a “joke”. So? Absolutely any statement, no matter how provocative or hateful, can be excused on that pretense. So that begs the question: should “jokes” be protected? Why?
- gk1 10y agoBecause it's speech and speech is--or should be--protected.
- zeveb 10y ago> Absolutely any statement, no matter how provocative or hateful, can be excused on that pretense. Yes, that's kinda the point of free speech: the State doesn't get to send men with guns and truncheons to silence people who are merely saying things.
- function_seven 10y ago> So that begs the question: should “jokes” be protected? Why? Because they're expressions of ideas, i.e. speech.
- dghughes 10y agoJerry Seinfeld often speaks of why offensive jokes are needed even though many people may not like them. In the end professional comedians are artists and art can offend. Jerry is more eloquent than I am he can explain it better he often does on his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
- gremlinsinc 10y agoHard to have sympathy yes-- but freedom of speech/expression is still freedom of speech. Regardless of how tasteless it is, and should be protected..
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoNo country in the world has absolute freedom of speech, and with good reason: speech can be harmful. Indeed it is precisely because speech can be powerful that it is protected in the first place. Is this where to draw the line? I'm not sure, but it is not the case that absolutely any “joke” is costitutionally protected free speech.
- function_seven 10y agoThe fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health. It doesn't matter what you or I think about the examples I gave above. It only matters what the government thinks. And if they think any or all of those are harmful concepts, then by using your reasoning any speech invoking those concepts would be controlled by the government. That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed. It's impossible to draw lines on which ideas are allowed to be expressed and those that aren't, without running into this hazard.
- derefr 10y agoThose are all abstract speech and therefore are usually legal everywhere. (They might be "treason" in some places, but that's separate from the issue of whether they're harmful. Treasonous speech is whatever speech a government doesn't like, whereas "non-protected" speech is the set of things its citizens don't care to defend you for saying.) The thing Canada mostly considers illegal is saying something like "hey everybody, you should hate/kill X because they're {Native American, gay, old, disabled, etc.}!" with a specific X that people might then go and kill. It's not even that we don't want to protect that speech as speech; it just seems to lead directly to hate crimes being committed a non-negligible proportion of the time. So we make hate speech itself illegal, to try to stop the hate crimes early.
- zodiakzz 10y agolol. I'd love to see your reaction to some real dark comedy like The League of Gentlemen.
- DanBC 10y agoI'd love to see you point out where League of Gentlemen "punch down" to single out an individual child with a profound condition like Treacher Collins Syndrome.
- koenigdavidmj 10y agoIt was a tasteless joke. And a governments committing disproportionate violence over it is overkill. (To save us the argument, if it's violence when I do it, it's violence when the government does it too. If I take your money, lock you up in a cage, or kill you, these are all violent.)
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoHow is the “comedian”'s repeated public humiliation of a specific disabled kid less violent than him being fined $42k?
- derefr 10y agoWhy is taking money violent? We don't have debtors prisons in the developed world; people who are fined for something and can't pay, just don't pay. Fines, like (most) taxes, are meant to be disincentives, not punishments.
- function_seven 10y agoJust not paying a fine is not an option for most of us. If you don't pay the fine (that you have the means to pay) and take steps to prevent the government from collecting, then the next step is jail.
- zeveb 10y agoIt doesn't matter — a country which punishes such speech is not free. It was in bad taste, but bad taste is not a crime. What is a crime is using violence to take $42,000 from someone merely for saying words.
- greyman 10y agoIn my opinion, bad taste joke would go along the lines "Disabled kid enters a pub and...". But he targeted one specific kid, so apart from being it a joke, it could also be an insult or other offense. (I am not lawyer, though).
- clinta 10y agoShould governments be punishing insulting or giving offense? That's a very scary prospect in my mind. Could we even have meaningful political dialog if, for example, it was illegal to intentionally offend Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? The idea of a right to not be insulted has scary implications.
- zeveb 10y ago> Could we even have meaningful political dialog if, for example, it was illegal to intentionally offend Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? That's actually exactly what Citizens United was about … a group of people were trying to show a film critical of Mrs. Clinton, and the federal government attempted to punish them for it. That's why there was a big push in 2014 to repeal the First Amendment: politicians wanted to make it illegal to oppose politicians.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoA line has to be drawn. There is no right to not be insulted per se, but persistent abuse and harassment of an individual cannot be allowed.
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- mikeash 10y agoIt's easy to support free speech for things you like. The real test is whether you're able to support it for things you absolutely detest.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoYes, but the fact I don't like something doesn't necessarily mean it's constitutionally protected free speech. Every country in the world imposes limits on speech, because not all speech is harmless. If speech were powerless, it wouldn't be protected in the first place.
- mikeash 10y agoMy point is that it has nothing to do with "sympathy." If you think it's harmful, that's a whole other thing.
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- bcruddy 10y ago"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
- masterjack 10y agoWhich is an American philosophy. Most countries, including Canada, do not treat free speech quite as highly, but instead find it more important to control hate speech (eg: banning Money for Nothing, by Dire Straits)
- bcruddy 10y agoVoltaire was French. Evelyn Beatrice Hall used the quote to sum up his beliefs in the biography she wrote about him. She was English.
- joncrocks 10y agoIndeed, what I think he means is that the US has a constitutional amendment that explicitly addresses the right to free speech, something that other countries may not explicitly codify.
- dghughes 10y agoThen again I find it annoying how media in Canada has become so "Americanized". Censoring product labels with blur, bleeping out the word ass I mean come on even my conservative grandmother said ass. Then there is censoring of any and all nudity which was rare when I was a kid you'd often see bare breasts on TV at 8pm in the evening. Now every damn show has "warning some viewers may be offended by strong language or adult ...blah blah blah.
- dmcginty 10y agoBlurring product labels isn't about censorship; it's usually because shows that go to syndication don't want to violate any promotional clauses. Like, if I'm a television station and one of my primary sponsors is Coca Cola, I probably can't (or at least shouldn't) buy a show that shows a person conspicuously drinking a Pepsi.
- DanBC 10y ago> “If I lose that I’ll just move to Syria or Saudi Arabia, or some other country that respects free speech as much as Canada does,” he said. I would pay to a crow-funding campaign to send him to Syria or Saudi Arabia for a month.
- greyman 10y agoFree speech must be protected, and it is certainly legal to tell a joke about non-identified disabled child. But he was targeting one specific kid, so I am not sure if he didn't infringe upon his human rights. Maybe he really did.
- elthran 10y agoWhich human right would that be? The right not to be made fun of?
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoThe right to dignity, presumably?
- fluxquanta 10y agoIt wasn't just some random child -- it was a public figure. Where do we draw the line?
- greyman 10y agoYes, that's the point, he rather brutally insulted one specific disabled kid. I find it to be different from just telling a joke about a politician, for example. Can you publicly insult someone, by using a form of joke? I don't know, either. But the title sounds as if he just "told a joke" - that's misleading.
- fluxquanta 10y agoRemember Susan Boyle from a few years ago? The talent show star with the great voice who perhaps wasn't the most attractive woman in the world? Hundreds (probably thousands) of comedians have jokes commenting on her perceived ugliness. Was that hate speech? Should they all be punished for it?
- mywittyname 10y agoUnless what he said resulted in direct abuses of the person from other people, I can't think of what he could say about a person that could possibly constitute a human rights violation.
- RodericDay 10y agoThis headline is very editorialized. This comedian Mike Ward has made this kid the centerpiece of his repertoire for years now, and the ruling has to do with harassment more along the lines of the "Star Wars Kid" variety, where the consistent abuse heaped on him was making him hard to live his life. https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/4wod9b/david_mitchell_on_the_mike_ward_imbroglio/ https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/4wod9b/david_mitc... --- > In context of Jeremy signing for the pope and along Celine Dion. Lets just say it; A kid sang a song, was not much of a performance and was looking kinda funny at the time no one knew about him. It was something that Ward refered to in once, twice...Again and again. Mike ward's bashings can be ruthless and he somehow though that this gag was shocking enough that he made it it his signature basically. >> Have any people commenting on this ever listened to the entire bit? The only bit that people talk about and seems to get translated is the first part where he makes fun of his appearance. Nobody seems to talk about the second half of the bit where he launches into "Fuck, he's still not dead! The little fucker just won't die! [...] I defended you, you need to die now! Fucking heartless asshole, die already[...]" https://youtu.be/zYrsECWQuM8?t=1m40s https://youtu.be/zYrsECWQuM8?t=1m40s I am in no way for this kind of ruling. Nobody has a right to not be offended. But, is someone repeatedly calling for the death of a child acceptable satire/humour? --- Also worth reading: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-comedian-human-rights-tribunal-1.3689465 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-comedian-hu... It's yet another fairly complex ruling being coopted into the "omg the PC police are after us" boogeyman.
- aaron695 10y agoNo 'star wars' kid had his video stolen. Then treated like shit over the internet on mass. Given he didn't ever opt in, pretty awful. The joke here is in the establishment loving him. Not the kid. Its hard. No kid can sign off on what happens to them. But if society is wrong and idolised a kid, can you not fight back, else you hurt the kid?
- pklausler 10y ago"en masse"
- jellicle 10y agoUrgh. What Hacker News doesn't need is more right-wing misogyny cluttering it up. Has nothing to do with technology whatsoever. Flagged. If you are curious about this decision, the CBC has an excellent explanation of it. Read this, and then decide if what happened is a travesty or not. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-comedian-human-rights-tribunal-1.3689465 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-comedian-hu...
- ebfe 10y agoMisogyny?
- phonon 10y agoYeah, it's a travesty. I can't make a joke about you "if it offends your dignity"? That's even more overreaching than when Thailand sends you to prison for "insulting the king". There at least it only prevents you about joking about one person! (OK, and his family...and pets...) http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/08/08/dont-dare-speak-ill-thailands-king/ideas/nexus/ http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/08/08/dont-dare-speak...
- drewcrawford 10y agoI did read it. I do think it is a travesty. It seems unfortunate to me that we can't have a civil debate about important issues without importing baggage like "right-wing misogyny". Perhaps that is a good reason to flag the story, but if so it seems like more of a bug than a feature.
- fluxquanta 10y agoI'm a big comedy fan and found this whole case to be pretty disturbing. It validates the idea that a comedian should be punished, legally, for doing their job and telling a joke. It's not a particularly good joke in this case, but a joke nonetheless. It gives fuel to the social media lynch mobs who take every tweet or comment as an excuse to get comedians (and really, anybody) fired from their jobs (which seems to be happening with increasing frequency -- look no further than the Kurt Metzger mess from this week).
- meira 10y agoTo make a profit bullying people that aren't public should not be considered a job.
- fluxquanta 10y agoThe kid is a public figure, so I'm not sure what you mean there. Public figures are frequent subjects for comedians because of the shared experience between them and the audience. If it was some random disabled kid I doubt anyone would have found it funny, Mike Ward included. And whether you like it or not, it is a job. HN seems to be pretty hip to letting the market dictate whether or not an enterprise should thrive or fail. Don't like what a comedian has to say? Don't support that comedian with your money. If you're at a comedy show and you're so terribly offended, get up quietly, find a manager, ask for your money back. If you're offended watching a comedian on TV, turn the channel. Tell your friends and family you don't like them. These are all ways you can "vote with your dollars". But it's not your (or the government's) responsibility to punish and take away from them for saying something you find to be offensive. At least it shouldn't be, and I find a world where that's okay to be pretty terrifying.
- antisthenes 10y agoThe fact that you so casually dismiss the comedian's right to free speech and his way to make a living simultaneously in one sentence is a little frightening. I'd wager you would have a different perspective if someone came along and prohibited you from making software unless you met someone's asinine set of arbitrary criteria.
- leaveyou 10y agoIn a way, a society is like a living organism. If it's not confronted with enough real problems and threats, its "immune system" finds something anyway and attacks the normal cells. If some people can't find anything sufficiently outrageous recently, then some idiotic jokes will do.
- teh_klev 10y agohttp://www.frankieboyle.com/frankie/free-speech.html http://www.frankieboyle.com/frankie/free-speech.html
- shenanigoat 10y agoWhy is this flagged? HN doesn't like free speech issues? The number of comments tells a different story.