4 ms·

Truly revolutionary humor, top notch. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and make offending everybody acceptable again, when done for th

Truly revolutionary humor, top notch. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and make offending everybody acceptable again, when done for the proper reasons.

RandomTisk 7y ago
With the morality police drunk with power and so few media conglomerates in control of all advertising dollars, free speech as we once imagined it may be dead.
- cgrealy 7y ago
  Ahh, the old "you can't joke about anything anymore". The laziest excuse for crap comedy ever. Todd Philips- "You can't do edgy comedy anymore! SJW's ruined comedy!" Taika Waititi- "In my next comedy I play Hitler." src: https://twitter.com/NakatomiTim/status/1179121960430776322 https://twitter.com/NakatomiTim/status/1179121960430776322
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Ahh, the old "you can't joke about anything anymore". The laziest excuse for crap comedy ever. You have it backwards. It was always the best comedians who complained about censorship and how you can't joke about things -- people like Lenny Bruce, Richard Prior, George Carlin and anybody who offended the sensibilities and ideologies of their day, either political, moral, puritan, etc. (I'd add Zappa and other non-comedians). And nothing's more crap than the forced PC-oriented comedy, that reads more like a sermon and doesn't take any chances with the audience... >Todd Philips- "You can't do edgy comedy anymore! SJW's ruined comedy!" Taika Waititi- "In my next comedy I play Hitler." How's that a counter-argument? If anything making fun of Hitler and nazism has been the safest and most easily acceptable comedy trope ever since 1939 or so. It only took guts in the US back when Charlie Chaplin did it...
    - crummy 7y ago
      I think the difference is who you're offending. George Carlin on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8yV8xUorQ8&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8yV8xUorQ8&feature=youtu.be
      - coldtea 7y ago
        George Carlin also said this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY It's also not always clear cut who is the real underdog and who the gentrified upper middle class finger-pointing comedian who pretends to be the greater person...
    - cgrealy 7y ago
      Bruce, Prior, Carlin, etc joked about how people in power tried to enforce the status quo. There's a difference between that and people deciding that (for example) Eddie Murphy making fun of LGBTQ people in "Raw" hasn't aged well. As I said in my other comment, you can joke about anything, but it's about a) how funny it is and b) who you're targeting. My problem is that these days the likes of Seinfeld joke about nothing but how you can't joke about anything anymore. Have you watched "comedians in cars getting coffee"? Some of it is great, but some of it is just so tired.
andrepd 7y ago
By all possible measures you are more free to offend people today than you were in Monty Python's time, not less. Remember the whole row when Life of Brian was released (nobody would bat an eye towards such "blasphemy" today), or that the word "masturbation" or swear words were censored.
- vixen99 7y ago
  Historical comparisons are pointless in this area. Given that last year in the UK a man was convicted in a UK court for a joke held to be ‘grossly offensive’ it's evident that if you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find ‘grossly offensive’, then you don’t believe in freedom of speech.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    If you are thinking of the pug giving the nazi salute thing, there are a number of qualifications worth adding to that: - The judge expressed pretty much surprise that the defense did not even try to raise a human rights defense, and that as a result he could not take that into account in his judgement. It came very close to the judge basically telling him that his defense were idiots and that he'd have likely gotten off if they'd argued it was a human rights violation to go after him for this. - The law in question is awful. To the point where the Crown Prosecution Service has drawn up a number of guidelines for prosecution that means very few people actually ends up prosecuted because there are many easy outs. Firstly, what you get prosecuted for is to cause something grossly offensive to be published to someone likely to take offense electronically, not for telling an offensive joke. There are exemptions that protects broadcasters quite substantially. These two factors exclude most potential cases. The CPS guidelines also takes into account, and advises against prosecution, if the poster of the material takes it down or otherwise acts to limit distribution, and apologize, once made aware it has caused offense. - He was not prosecuted for making a simple joke. He was prosecuted for bookending a video with the joke wherein the bulk of the video itself is him repeating 'gas the jews' and 'sieg heil' over and over dozens of times interspersed with Hitlers speeches. The intent of the law is to stop hate speech. The reason he got into trouble is because it was not at all obvious that the intent of his "joke video" was to make a joke and not to use a mildly funny joke as an excuse to get away with spreading hate speech. The intent of the law would be entirely gutted if you could just insert a slightly jokey context around a bunch of hate speech and claim it was just a tasteless joke (we can certainly argue whether stopping that hate speech is justified). You'll note that none of the "reporting" on it that reproduces enough of the video to show the joke have faced prosecution, because it takes that very specific small amount of bookending of a lengthy section of hate speech without any kind of contextualizing to emphasise the joke aspect to step over the line. This makes it very different from "just" making offensive jokes. An example there is that complaints about Jo Brand recently suggesting the people throwing milkshakes at far right politicians might try acid instead went nowhere because she contextualized it in a way that made it very clear she did not actually want anyone to go out and do it or take it seriously. And she didn't repeat "throw acid at Farage" over and over in the middle of it. - The person in question did not take it down after he was made aware. After it blew up, he conducted interviews where he explicitly expressed that he understood that it had been grossly offensive. He basically admitted to the offense in the media, at great length, giving the judge pretty much no choice. Despite the above, he got close to the mildest reaction possible, with a small fine. To reiterate: The law in question is awful, but the "nazi pug" affair is a horrible demonstration of why. > then you don’t believe in freedom of speech. It is not binary. No country on the planet allows unabridged freedom of speech. Including the US. Because everyone recognizes that speech have effects, and some of those effects have significant implications that causes very direct harm. Other times the problem is not the speech, but how and where it is conducted - speech that is fine in private may be seen very differently if you shout it in someones face. As such a lot of restrictions on speech are not restrictions on you actually saying what you want, but trying to strike a balance to prevent the way you express yourself to cause unreasonable harms to others. Now, I agree that the UK doesn't get the balance right on that. But I also do not believe anyone who claim to want to restrictions on speech, because in my experience that just means they have not thought through the consequences. In practice, once you start walking through examples, I've yet to meet someone who will not get to a point where they agree some things should be limited. They may try to suggest it's not actually a restriction on speech, though. But most regulation of speech is not about what you can say, but about how and where you can say it, in recognition that what is "just speech" to one person can be an outright assault or serious harassment or incitement to violence to another.
egypturnash 7y ago
Oh come on, there’s tons of stuff in Python that’s funny without resorting to it being “white dudes spewing slurs and stereotypes and getting nervous laughter for being bad”. There’s also a certain amount of xenophobia, (internalized) homophobia, and the generalized othering/objectification of women that comes from any cast that is all males. That’s aged badly. But some of it’s only gotten better with age, the tinny/woody sketch for instance is totally different now that I cant stop seeing the servants standing in a row behind these rich inbred morons arguing over something goofy and idiotic. I saw “Holy Grail” recently and it really aged well.

Truly revolutionary humor, top notch. I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back the other way and make offending everybody acceptable again, when done for the proper reasons.

RandomTisk 7y ago

With the morality police drunk with power and so few media conglomerates in control of all advertising dollars, free speech as we once imagined it may be dead.

cgrealy 7y ago
Ahh, the old "you can't joke about anything anymore". The laziest excuse for crap comedy ever. Todd Philips- "You can't do edgy comedy anymore! SJW's ruined comedy!" Taika Waititi- "In my next comedy I play Hitler." src: https://twitter.com/NakatomiTim/status/1179121960430776322 https://twitter.com/NakatomiTim/status/1179121960430776322
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Ahh, the old "you can't joke about anything anymore". The laziest excuse for crap comedy ever. You have it backwards. It was always the best comedians who complained about censorship and how you can't joke about things -- people like Lenny Bruce, Richard Prior, George Carlin and anybody who offended the sensibilities and ideologies of their day, either political, moral, puritan, etc. (I'd add Zappa and other non-comedians). And nothing's more crap than the forced PC-oriented comedy, that reads more like a sermon and doesn't take any chances with the audience... >Todd Philips- "You can't do edgy comedy anymore! SJW's ruined comedy!" Taika Waititi- "In my next comedy I play Hitler." How's that a counter-argument? If anything making fun of Hitler and nazism has been the safest and most easily acceptable comedy trope ever since 1939 or so. It only took guts in the US back when Charlie Chaplin did it...
  - crummy 7y ago
    I think the difference is who you're offending. George Carlin on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8yV8xUorQ8&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8yV8xUorQ8&feature=youtu.be
    - coldtea 7y ago
      George Carlin also said this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY It's also not always clear cut who is the real underdog and who the gentrified upper middle class finger-pointing comedian who pretends to be the greater person...
  - cgrealy 7y ago
    Bruce, Prior, Carlin, etc joked about how people in power tried to enforce the status quo. There's a difference between that and people deciding that (for example) Eddie Murphy making fun of LGBTQ people in "Raw" hasn't aged well. As I said in my other comment, you can joke about anything, but it's about a) how funny it is and b) who you're targeting. My problem is that these days the likes of Seinfeld joke about nothing but how you can't joke about anything anymore. Have you watched "comedians in cars getting coffee"? Some of it is great, but some of it is just so tired.

andrepd 7y ago

By all possible measures you are more free to offend people today than you were in Monty Python's time, not less. Remember the whole row when Life of Brian was released (nobody would bat an eye towards such "blasphemy" today), or that the word "masturbation" or swear words were censored.

vixen99 7y ago
Historical comparisons are pointless in this area. Given that last year in the UK a man was convicted in a UK court for a joke held to be ‘grossly offensive’ it's evident that if you don’t believe in a person’s right to say things that you might find ‘grossly offensive’, then you don’t believe in freedom of speech.
- vidarh 7y ago
  If you are thinking of the pug giving the nazi salute thing, there are a number of qualifications worth adding to that: - The judge expressed pretty much surprise that the defense did not even try to raise a human rights defense, and that as a result he could not take that into account in his judgement. It came very close to the judge basically telling him that his defense were idiots and that he'd have likely gotten off if they'd argued it was a human rights violation to go after him for this. - The law in question is awful. To the point where the Crown Prosecution Service has drawn up a number of guidelines for prosecution that means very few people actually ends up prosecuted because there are many easy outs. Firstly, what you get prosecuted for is to cause something grossly offensive to be published to someone likely to take offense electronically, not for telling an offensive joke. There are exemptions that protects broadcasters quite substantially. These two factors exclude most potential cases. The CPS guidelines also takes into account, and advises against prosecution, if the poster of the material takes it down or otherwise acts to limit distribution, and apologize, once made aware it has caused offense. - He was not prosecuted for making a simple joke. He was prosecuted for bookending a video with the joke wherein the bulk of the video itself is him repeating 'gas the jews' and 'sieg heil' over and over dozens of times interspersed with Hitlers speeches. The intent of the law is to stop hate speech. The reason he got into trouble is because it was not at all obvious that the intent of his "joke video" was to make a joke and not to use a mildly funny joke as an excuse to get away with spreading hate speech. The intent of the law would be entirely gutted if you could just insert a slightly jokey context around a bunch of hate speech and claim it was just a tasteless joke (we can certainly argue whether stopping that hate speech is justified). You'll note that none of the "reporting" on it that reproduces enough of the video to show the joke have faced prosecution, because it takes that very specific small amount of bookending of a lengthy section of hate speech without any kind of contextualizing to emphasise the joke aspect to step over the line. This makes it very different from "just" making offensive jokes. An example there is that complaints about Jo Brand recently suggesting the people throwing milkshakes at far right politicians might try acid instead went nowhere because she contextualized it in a way that made it very clear she did not actually want anyone to go out and do it or take it seriously. And she didn't repeat "throw acid at Farage" over and over in the middle of it. - The person in question did not take it down after he was made aware. After it blew up, he conducted interviews where he explicitly expressed that he understood that it had been grossly offensive. He basically admitted to the offense in the media, at great length, giving the judge pretty much no choice. Despite the above, he got close to the mildest reaction possible, with a small fine. To reiterate: The law in question is awful, but the "nazi pug" affair is a horrible demonstration of why. > then you don’t believe in freedom of speech. It is not binary. No country on the planet allows unabridged freedom of speech. Including the US. Because everyone recognizes that speech have effects, and some of those effects have significant implications that causes very direct harm. Other times the problem is not the speech, but how and where it is conducted - speech that is fine in private may be seen very differently if you shout it in someones face. As such a lot of restrictions on speech are not restrictions on you actually saying what you want, but trying to strike a balance to prevent the way you express yourself to cause unreasonable harms to others. Now, I agree that the UK doesn't get the balance right on that. But I also do not believe anyone who claim to want to restrictions on speech, because in my experience that just means they have not thought through the consequences. In practice, once you start walking through examples, I've yet to meet someone who will not get to a point where they agree some things should be limited. They may try to suggest it's not actually a restriction on speech, though. But most regulation of speech is not about what you can say, but about how and where you can say it, in recognition that what is "just speech" to one person can be an outright assault or serious harassment or incitement to violence to another.

egypturnash 7y ago

Oh come on, there’s tons of stuff in Python that’s funny without resorting to it being “white dudes spewing slurs and stereotypes and getting nervous laughter for being bad”. There’s also a certain amount of xenophobia, (internalized) homophobia, and the generalized othering/objectification of women that comes from any cast that is all males. That’s aged badly. But some of it’s only gotten better with age, the tinny/woody sketch for instance is totally different now that I cant stop seeing the servants standing in a row behind these rich inbred morons arguing over something goofy and idiotic. I saw “Holy Grail” recently and it really aged well.