You can't be gay in the US

[Fidel_Castronaut]

A comedian here, Jimmy Carr (who I'm not a fan of) once made a joke about disabled servicemen coming home from Iraq being a good thing because it meant the British Paralympics team would almost certainly win on the medals table for 2012.

A lot of people got offended by that, decrying him as making fun of disability and for advocating stereotypes. What those people failed to realise was that he was simply repeating jokes he'd heard being made by disabled servicemen and women who themselves had applied to become part of the British Paralympcs team as part of their rehabiliation.

Thing is, very few comedians actually make a joke about, say, homosexuality as an actual attack on homosexuality. You could view it as a slight against being gay, but I think that would be wrong. Making light of something in such a way is actually a way for society to reflect on it. It's often by making subjects a taboo that we see things becomming more nefarious. By allowing any matter to be discussed we encourage debate and mainstreaming. Just think about homosexuality as a topic of discussion. 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, even today in some parts of the world, even talking about with anything other than negative connotations (with dislike/hate implied) will land you in hot water (Uganda, Saudi, even parts of the US).

It reminds me about this:





Does Jim actually hate lesbians? No, he doesn't. But he's making fun of them in the same way he'd make fun of his mates down the pub because he can, and because it isn't taboo to do it. And it isn't taboo because (at least here in the UK) being a lesbian is no big deal. If you're a lesbian nobody cares that you're a lesbian unless they object to it, and that's a massive change from what was the status quo maybe even 30, 40 years ago or whatever.

If you don't find the humour funny then that's cool. But not finding it funny IMHO is very different to finding it nefarious.