5 ms·

A “joke” which consisted of insulting their disability, I take it? It's hard to have sympathy for such “comedy”.

by TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

anjc 10y ago
You don't have to find it funny. That doesn't make it not a joke.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Maybe 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 ago
    Because 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 ago
    Jerry 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 ago
Hard 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 ago
  No 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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Those 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 ago
lol. I'd love to see your reaction to some real dark comedy like The League of Gentlemen.
- DanBC 10y ago
  I'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 ago
It 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 ago
  How is the “comedian”'s repeated public humiliation of a specific disabled kid less violent than him being fined $42k?
- derefr 10y ago
  Why 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 ago
    Just 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 ago
It 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 ago
  In 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 ago
    Should 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 ago
      A 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.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - 10y ago
mikeash 10y ago
It'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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
    My point is that it has nothing to do with "sympathy." If you think it's harmful, that's a whole other thing.

A “joke” which consisted of insulting their disability, I take it? It's hard to have sympathy for such “comedy”.

anjc 10y ago

You don't have to find it funny. That doesn't make it not a joke.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
Maybe 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 ago
  Because 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 ago
  Jerry 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 ago

Hard 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 ago
No 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Those 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 ago

lol. I'd love to see your reaction to some real dark comedy like The League of Gentlemen.

DanBC 10y ago
I'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 ago

It 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 ago
How is the “comedian”'s repeated public humiliation of a specific disabled kid less violent than him being fined $42k?
derefr 10y ago
Why 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 ago
  Just 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 ago

It 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 ago
In 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 ago
  Should 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 ago
    A 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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

It'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 ago
Yes, 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 ago
  My point is that it has nothing to do with "sympathy." If you think it's harmful, that's a whole other thing.