A Nazi, A Comedian And A Gypsy Walk Into A Bar
No, I don't have a punchline for this. All I know is that free speech still extends to jokes you don't like by comedians you don't find funny.
Comedian Jimmy Carr is in hot water with the Very Online crowd thanks to a joke in his latest Netflix comedy special, His Dark Material (a play on the controversial YA fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman).1
The wagging of fingers has begun. The shock. The dismay and outrage. The clutching of pearls oh so earnestly. The hot takes and Op/Eds and petitions.
We get headlines like the one below: “Comedy has limits – and Jimmy Carr may have reached them with his ‘joke’ about Gypsies”
The Independent’s editorial includes the tagline: “Even the staunchest defenders of free speech must recognise that some attempts at humour are beyond the pale.”
Carr’s joke is, indeed, shocking and tasteless. But that’s the style of humor this comedian employs. It’s what makes these things funny rather than “hateful” or “harmful.”
Here’s the joke if you want to watch it (Carr’s delivery is half of what makes it funny so I recommend watching rather than merely reading the transcript below).
And here’s the transcript:
“When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine, but they never mention the thousands of gypsies who were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that . . . because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
The humorless scolds of the world think this qualifies as hate speech. Some have suggested the police investigate Carr. Others, like our friends at the Independent or The Guardian, would sure love to see more government regulation of what they find unfunny (which, increasingly in this day and age, is just about everything).
Carr actually goes into the reasons why this is a good joke, which is pretty funny in its own right.
“First, fucking funny, well done mate,” he says, counting off.
“Second, edgy—edgy as all hell—it’s a joke about the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history, and people say ‘Never forget’ well this is how I remember. I keep bringing it up.”
Laughs all around.
“Third reason that’s a good joke is there is an educational quality. Like, everyone in the room knows six million Jewish people lost their lives to the Nazis during World War 2. But a lot of people don’t know, cause it’s not really taught in our schools, that the Nazis also killed—in the thousands—Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.”