As long as it isn’t racist…
Talk about double standards. There are just some things in life that you aren’t meant to say. You can’t be racist is a major one. It’s wrong to discriminate someone because of the colour of their skin. But if they’re fat it’s not a problem, it’s not rude or mean; it’s funny. Same goes for homophobic jokes, perfectly allowable. Perhaps not in the explicit form, but how many TV shows these days have the stereotypical camp guy, with the invariable jokes that entail. It seems to be part of the British comedy institution to take the piss out of homosexuals. It’s considered perfectly good humour to sit their and laugh at jokes about gay people and fat people, but if a joke was made about a black person…
Now obviously I’m not encouraging you all to go out and make racist jokes to balance it out, far from it. Quite the opposite in fact, we shouldn’t allow this kind of double standard in society, laughing at one segment of people but not at others? Even if they are so fat they have that hilarious fat man waddle when they walk…
November 29th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Ya, totally. Also I hate the double standard in the individual races references to themselves. I mean races uses the derogatory words about them selves but you use them to refer to them man be ready for a fight.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am
As far as I’m concerned, you can take the piss out of everyone or you can take the piss out of no one. If you place a principle of ‘not offending people’ out there, it demands that you make it reach each and every label we assign. (male, female, black, white, hispanic, asian, christian, muslim, jew, dead baby…) The list goes on.
But overall, there’s just no way you can enforce some standard of who you can or cannot ‘offend’ anyway, it’s a simple freedom to be able to make humourous generalisations about a group of people (even if they are largely baseless and crude). It might be illogical, even a mark of stupidity to some, but it is a natural thing to have preconceptions about things you know little about- or that you have limited and selective evidence about. Or if you’re just mucking around to begin with… Who the hell is going to regulate your freedom of expression with that shit?
One thing I dislike about the whole issue of discrimination is that it’s so hypocritical these days. Anyone who commits an act or says something that could be construed as racist/sexist and so on is shouted down so aggressively and is so thoroughly villified. Being racist is a social stigma, so much so that it is used to justify hatred itself. The ‘haters’ have become the ‘hated’. So what principle is being endorced by the noble anti-discrimination movement exactly? Perhaps I’m taking some specifics too far, but it’s something that bothers me about the zeitgeist in my area of the world.
Anyhow, nice comic. I just discovered Apathetic Rant a while ago, and you rock.
November 30th, 2007 at 12:38 am
haha, yeah my overall philosophy on this double standard principle is that I am not racist, even though half the comments that leave my mouth are in fact extremely racist when taken out of context, but I make fun of everyone equally. Black, white, chinese, crippled, lame, VA vets, mechanics, doctors, if your living… or dead… shoot if you had once breathed life I’m given right to slandder you mercilessly.
December 1st, 2007 at 12:44 am
I was playing counterstrike the other day and some guy got kicked because of a racist comment he made…I inquired if I could make a fat joke and I could indeed make one.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:31 am
If I say something offensive, and someone calls me on it I’ll acknowledge what I said it wrong and leave it at that. I find it’s the easiest way of getting people off your back. I don’t understand racism. I can admit that TYPES of people piss me off (for example: unethical people) but I don’t really generalize people.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:31 am
Whoops, I mean I don’t generalize people by their race
December 1st, 2007 at 3:38 pm
The main thing that pisses me off is the double standards of religions. A teacher got jailed (will possibly be killed) for calling a teddy bear “Mohammad” yet how many Muslim men are called Mohammad??
Also the church of manchester was recently featured in a computer game, uproar ensued, yet because of the publicity the game gave it, its tourists/money intake have shot up, the lawsuit was dropped “in the spirit of forgiveness” apparently.
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
You know whats funny: Fat gay Black people!
December 9th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
OK, so I am Fat. I am fat because I eat too much and excersize too little. I have a choice about this and make the wrong choice on a daily basis. If you care to make fun of me for this, it is your perogative and if it is funny you should continue. Making jokes about things people are not in control of is mean, if it bothers them.
December 11th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Another annoying thing, is if someone whose white makes a somewhat racist comment towards someone whose brown, or black, it’s this huge hate crime. It’s big and bad, but people who are brown and black can be just as racist towards those who are white, but it’s totally ok. Every racist comment should be looked at the same way. Not differently, depending on the race.
December 11th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
So what kind of discrimination is it when you make fun of people of the same race but just from a different country? Like the sheep jokes between Aus and NZ, for example
December 12th, 2007 at 5:07 am
Umm, playful jokes I guess?
December 12th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
http://hardvice.livejournal.com/157411.html
I personally think everyone should read that and then shut the fuck up about “political correctness”.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
When you mentioned how British comedy seems to like to give homosexuals a hard time, I couldn’t stop thinking about Monty Python. Ya know, that one skit where the air captain or whoever is dictating a letter and someone mentions that such and so is gay and such and so bursts into the room wearing a feather boa and acting real fruity and the air captain says “Such and so, are you a poof?” and such and so responds in a fruity voice “Don’t be so silly!” and prances off. Then they mention someone else is gay and someone else is gay, so they call the other guy and he comes into the room looking perfectly normal in his normal uniform. The captain asks him if he’s a poof and he responds with something like “Why yes, I should say so.” So the air captain shoots him.
I have nothing against homosexuals. My high school drama teacher was gay and he was awesome. He had a great sense of humor about it, too. He told some of the best gay jokes I ever heard, and you knew it was ok to laugh at them because he was telling them and laughing along too. Point in case, gay people are just like normal people, only with different sexual preferences. ‘Nuff said! :)
December 26th, 2007 at 5:48 am
-Grant-
I agree with you. It’s kind of like a guy saying that we should kill all religious people. Do you really want to leave 3/4 of the Earth unpopulated and have only like 2 people per square mile. Who would make life easy for you? And if colored people don’t want to be called racial names, DON’T USE THEM YOURSELVES! I myself am Hispanic and don’t understand why my friends will call me a “dirty Mexican” when they only just realised that I am a Mexican, but I have known them for 5 years. why do they just turn on me?
December 26th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Cuz people suck?
December 26th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
… now, why didn’t I think of that… &%@#!!! WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT!!!
December 26th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Let’s face it. People can’t help having something to poke at someone. They’re all just waiting for SOMETHING. Anything really. People are taunting, teasing… oh god. All I can really think of is poopyheads…
June 19th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Okay, first of all, I’m a white, American, straight man who’s not even remotely racist, or sexist, or any-kind-of-phobe, but I’ll sure as hell laugh at the most “offensive” jokes ever told. Why? Because humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; what’s funny to one person may not be funny to another, for a variety of reasons…but I’ll be damned if I let some politically-correct cock-stain tell me what I can and can’t laugh at. Don’t like gay jokes? Fine, don’t laugh at them. Don’t like Jewish jokes? Same solution. The amazing thing about this solution is that it works for ALL kinds of jokes…much moreso than getting your panties in a twist about how “offensive” that joke might be. People need to lighten up a little bit. Yes, racism is bad, homophobia is bad, rape is bad, a whole slew of things are bad…but that doesn’t mean that a joke told about can’t be funny. Example; jokes about handicapped people are “offensive,” right? Well, since I was a kid, my dad has told me some of the most insensitive, offensive, and hilarious jokes about blind people. Seriously, he’s got a million of ‘em. To me, the biggest punchline of all is the fact that my dad is BLIND. If he can have a laugh at a blind-joke, who the fuck am I (or anyone else with functioning eyes) to deem it offensive?