Goodbye ladies and gents

I’ve leave this here, you can rip it apart and digress about how I go on but you either fundamentally agree with this or you don’t, it’s as simple as that.
Adieu.

He’s quite right, imho. Fully agree with him.

On point @BarrySanchez

Agree completely

Yep, agree.

I am also in agreement with this.

Please excuse a post containing Ben ‘I’m a massive cunt’ Bradley but thought this may be relevant re revisionism.

I think we covering several different issues here;

  1. Revisionism of history outside of historical context

  2. Whether comedy should be able to shock and offend

  3. How do we define what is offensive, when the sensitivity to this will vary between individuals, cultures, peoples and experiences?

Lets start with issue 1… for me its simple. Do we still celebrate the person/issue as an icon/iconic part of our history? If we do, and its clear that under modern maturity of thinking, we would not be celebrating this if it happened today, we stop celebrating it, and begin sharing the history to ensure all learn from it

If its no longer celebrated, then also lets see if we can use this examples in our eduction to learn from this past and demonstrate what was wrong with it.

So if a country house was built on the proceeds of slavery, we don’t tear it down, we include the full history in the tour.

There is sadly a caveat here. What if there had been statues of Hitler in Berlin? Should they be left to stand as reminder of his sickening history, or do we acknowledge the pain and offence this would cause or the fact it could become a ‘celebration’ for the extremists of today? Is time the only criteria we judge this on, or is it the hideousness of the crime?

Point 2. Comedy. This is tricky as there are different things that offend - calling folks cunts etc, will offend some, but that really is a choice we can make, to attend/watch or not…

Then we have the ‘Basil Fawlty’ principle. It is absolutely clear to anyone with a functioning brain, the joke is on Fawlty, his ridiculous character and his comic ability to dig holes and then just keep digging… but there is a problem. Is Manuel a comic foil/character we sympathise with, bullied by the ridiculous Basil, or a stereotype? should comedy, no matter how funny it all is (and lets be honest it is funny) be able to justify continuation of such stereotypes?

Was Love Thy Neighbour, funny because it highlighted the bigotry and prejudices of the white British suburbanites in the 70s, or a vehicle to laugh at black folks?

The problem I see is not about the intention - which is often far removed from deliberately causing offence (in fact the opposite) - but that there are still sadly a fair number of ignorant fuckwits where such comedy misses the mark and they see it as an endorsement of their own prejudices… those that ‘dont get it’?

Point 3. The most difficult, and sadly instead of looking to understand the implications of what some might find offensive and why others dont, we are often extremely lazy, putting this stuff in the ‘PC gone mad’ or ‘snowflake’ buckets, simply suggesting that those who find something offensive must be daft, stupid and have no right to be offended… In such circumstances do we really have the right to dictate what is and what is not offensive when we have no context of why it might be?

Seems to me that the shit storms around this stem from the fact we don’t like to be told what we should find offensive or not, funny or not. That is fair enough, but is it maybe not more appropriate to at least consider why something is possibly offensive as opposed to dismissing it rapidly as many of us do?

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What I find funny and offensive are particular to me.

I had a colleague that would always use the term Muthafucka. I find that offensive so told him I didnt like him using that if he was speaking to me. After a week of me ignoring him as he was still using it he dropped it and we get along fine now.

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That’s the problem right there; my question would have been “out of interest, what colour was he?” because I’ve never personally encountered a white bloke using that term although I have a black mate from Guyana who routinely does, along with the male members of his family. But I feel reluctant to actually ask the question because asking it could be construed as racist in today’s climate.

It’s a minefield. :thinking:

He was a white Geordie

I shall suggest to my mate Keith that he adopt the greeting “howay, pet” henceforth, in retaliation :smile::smile:

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In true @Barry-Sanchez style, I am only reading the headline and have determined that from now on, Bazza will only be using unisex or disabled loos.

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Tbh I thought he was announcing he was going all non-binary on us

https://nonbinary.miraheze.org/wiki/List_of_nonbinary_identities

I’m a programmer. Everything is binary :wink:

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Except when it’s 0x

Are you going all geeky on us now?

Yeah they wear their superiority on their sleeves, totally forgetting they are simply here to serve. Cunts…every one of them.

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I have to say I’m slightly offended at Jason Manford being described as a comedian. Am I allowed to say that?

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0 in binary, mate :wink:

I’ve never heard him sing, but I agree with her.

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