So a gay, blind suicide bomber walks into a bar . . .Rod Liddle
At last – legislation is about to be passed which will make homophobic jokes illegal. It has been a long time coming. I haven’t found jokes about homosexuals funny for at least two decades, so either way I win.
First it means that Little Britain’s fabulously boring high-campery might be against the law, which will see David Walliams and Matt Lucas incarcerated for the rest of their natural lives, despite the fact that either one or both of them definitely bat for the other side, an irony which they can mull over while sewing those mailbags.
Retrospective legislation should ensure that the terminally unfunny Larry Grayson is disinterred and arraigned too, along with John Inman, the mincing half-wit Melvyn Hayes from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Dick Emery, Stanley Baxter, Frankie Howerd, Julian Clary and, one hopes, Graham Norton as well.
Actually, I wonder if Graham really is a purveyor of homophobic humour. It’s a difficult call. It’s true that when he appears on television I suddenly hate homosexuals, just as when Ruby Wax is on TV I suddenly hate all Americans. However, the problem may reside with me rather than Graham, I suppose. Either way I think he should be banged up for safety’s sake. Oooh, missus! Banged up! Yes please! Etc, ad infinitum.
The other great thing is that jokes about homosexuals will immediately become funny again, because they are now contraband, samizdat and against the law. Those same boring old jokes about not bending down in the shower, being good at interior design, liking Judy Garland and so on, will now make one prick up one’s ears (ooh, get you, dearie! But not the ears, surely). And these days we need more things to laugh at.
For years I found racist jokes extremely boring – but they became funny when it was apparent that the act of telling them could (a) lose you your job and (b) bring the Old Bill down on you with a charge of inciting racial hatred. Now, as a consequence, I find almost all racist jokes hilarious, especially ones about Muslims and particularly if they are cartoons which feature Allah or Muhammad or fat ladies in burqas saying to one another: “Does my bomb look big in this?”
However, I don’t find them quite as funny as I find jokes about physical or mental disabilities – they are the real howlers these days. And that’s because the disability lobby has become so preternaturally sensitive, so disposed towards pouncing on anything which might be construed as disablist. Consequently, these days, all you have to do is say “and guess what . . . he only had one arm!” and I fall about laughing.
When my colleague Jeremy Clarkson described Gordon Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot” I smiled briefly; but when the professional race monkeys and anti-disablist monkeys got on his case I suddenly found it all killingly funny. “How dare he imply that having one eye, or being Scottish, is an insult?” these terrible people ranted, and with every rant Jeremy’s comment became truly funny. Oh, I thought, in the end – strap up my sides, I can’t stand it. Such wonderful pomposity, a real gift to the comedian. Such hilarious hypersensitivity.
Jokes are almost never funny per se, when they are stripped of their social context (if they ever could be). The stuff that makes us laugh is never neutral; it involves poking that part of us which, for most of the time, remains unpoked. The part of us which civilised behaviour insists should remain below the surface. That’s why Ricky Gervais is so funny; he gets this point – he understands the latent humour of social embarrassment, of saying things which you are simply not supposed to say. The mentally handicapped kid in the restaurant, the black actor confronted by a golliwog.
It is the breaching of the social convention which is really funny, not the supposed slighting of black, disabled or homosexual people. It is the potential for naughtiness, which exists in all of us (yeah, okay, except maybe Patricia Hewitt). Bring on the legislation and bring on those ***** jokes.
+ In the case of that admirable Nottingham postmaster, Deva Kumarasiri, who refuses to serve people unless they speak English, we have heard comment from almost everyone in the known universe, except, of course, from the Post Office. There was just a short and terrified sentence along the lines of “everyone should be served in a post office” and then total radio silence.
The Post Office is in an invidious position, strung between two poles of the most fatuous political correctness, and so all it can do is squirm. If only Kumarasiri were of white British origin, rather than Sri Lankan British origin, it could happily sack him, implying that he is racist. White people who think immigrants should learn English are racist, aren’t they? Kumarasiri also has a Union Jack hanging outside his house and outside his post office. Do you think he would be allowed to get away with that sort of imperialist, oppressive behaviour if he were white? Not a chance.
timesonline
