The man in the spotlight is Anglo-Irish comedian and teevee presenter Jimmy Carr. I’d never heard of him until recently but he’s a big deal across the pond. He’s even had three Netflix standup specials. The most recent one, My Dark Material, has gotten him in serious trouble. And that is why Jimmy Carr is malaka of the week.
Carr specializes in edgy comedy of the variety that that the Brits call “near-the-knuckle.” I often find such comedy funny but only if it involves kicking up instead of kicking down. Once again, the Brits have their own term for it, “punching down.” I may have to steal that. I’m feeling punchy this morning.
Carr has been in hot water many times before. Three years ago, he said that “dwarfs are abortions that made it.” I am not making this up.
That provoked a stinging rebuke from Erin Pritchard an academic who lectures in disability and education and lives with dwarfism:
In a 2010 report about the lives of people with dwarfism in the UK it was found that 63% of people with dwarfism felt unsafe when out in public. Many people with dwarfism have told me how they have had children laugh or throw stones at them or been on the receiving end of sexual harassment – apparently it is funny to ask a woman with dwarfism for a blowjob or to tell her that your penis bigger than her – or have even been physically picked up by strangers.
But that’s all dwarfism seems to be to most people: ‘a joke’. It’s a joke that has been going on for centuries and still exists as a joke where any another minority group would not be. It’s a joke that has worn too thin for most people with dwarfism, who have to endure the same jokes day in, day out, such as being asked ‘where our six little friends are’.
That’s the epitome of punching/kicking down. But Malaka Jimmy was undaunted and continued telling tasteless jokes. It’s just a joke is his refrain. Sound familiar? It’s what Trump aides say every time the Impeached Insult Comedian slurs a group of people.
Jimmy Carr is still kicking/punching down. This time, with a steel-toed boot of a joke or is that brass-knuckles? I could go either way.
“When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis.
“No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.”
The slurs begin in the set-up. The Roma people consider Gypsy a slur. I’m a firm believer that ethnic groups are entitled to go by whatever name they prefer. Besides, most ethnic humor is tired and dated unless it’s used by a member of the group.
Jokes about Holocaust victims are never funny. This joke is like kicking the audience in the balls. It’s only funny to the kicker, not the kickee.
I say that as someone who recently wrote this:
There are those who believe that Hitler’s crimes are so immense that he should never be mocked or parodied. Along with Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, and Mel Brooks I beg to differ. Satire and humor reveals and exposes evil. You bring the evildoers down a peg with mockery.
Mocking Hitler, Himmler or Goering is the epitome of punching up. It’s the comedic equivalent of a sock to the jaw. Malaka Jimmy may this find his abhorrent joke funny, but I do not. What does he know? He thinks dwarf jokes are funny.
Carr’s horrid joke has united the Conservative and Labour parties in condemnation. Instead of punching one another, they’re united in kicking around Jimmy Carr.
As for the comedian himself, Malaka Jimmy is unrepentant:
During a gig in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, he told his audience ‘The joke that ends my career is already out there’.
A woman in the audience heckled Carr by saying, ‘Are we going to talk about the Holocaust?’ the Mirror reported.
Carr replied: ‘We are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing.”
The cancel culture shoe just dropped. It’s the catch-all excuse for people who say bigoted things in public. This puts Jimmy Carr in the same company with Holocaust deniers, Q-Anon creeps, and Donald Trump Junior. Not company that anyone should want to keep. And that is why Jimmy Carr is malaka of the week.
Since Jimmy Carr is finding the spotlight too hot, the last word goes to The Electric Flag:
Re: jokes about holocaust —
From a local, recent weekly contest for favorite tweets, I’d say this applies to comparisons and jokes:
• Times when you should compare yourself to a Holocaust victim: 1) You are a Holocaust victim. That’s it. That’s the list. — @PalmerReport
Carr’s comedic stylings are sarcastic in nature, with a deadpan delivery — listen to a whole routine of his. His bits often are tasteless but that is his style. His line “no one ever wants to talk about the positives” was obviously sarcastic. Sarcasm assumes that the audience understands that the speaker flatly disagrees with the statement that the speaker made; Carr actually was implying that the mass murder of the Roma was horrendous. The line also was a jab at the people (e.g, Marge Schott) who spout verbiage about how Hitler did a lot of good things but “went too far”. His use of the term “Gypsy” rather than “Roma” is just a foot fault, although it might be the English usage.
A sarcastic comedian delivering a sarcastic line in his comedy show full of sarcastic bits is a very different situation from a politician making a racist statement in a political speech or a musician making a drunken rant about immigrants during a concert.
The furor is being generated by people who don’t comprehend sarcasm and want to get on their high horse.
I watched most of My Dark Stylings. I thought some of it was funny. I understand sarcasm. I stand by my opinion.