What's with the run of paedophile "jokes"? Such things aren't funny, just in extremely questionable taste.
Exit - Thanks for your comment. I've had another look at both the cartoons, and whilst even the mention of paedophilia is a little different from my usual subject matter of postcodes, bath mats and minor embarrassment, I don't think either are particularly tasteless.
There's not really a theme to what I'm doing at the moment - I'm just taking some random one-liners I've never found homes for and trying to adapt them to cartoon form as an exercise.
I think that if you look on somewhere like Sickipedia you'll see lots of jokes where the punchline is along the lines of "I'm really depraved - I like having sex with children" (possibly also with a reference to Madeleine McCann).
I'd never do material like that, here or anywhere, but I do think that society's current response to paedophilia is not off-limits for discussion. Obviously "abusing children" = "very bad", but "hysterical mobs attacking paediatricians" = "something interesting going on worthy of comment".
In #3, I think that the target of the joke is clearly the idiot who lives in the house. He thinks he's clever and is going to have a quiet and cheap Halloween as the local children will now avoid him. However, this will clearly backfire as the townspeople are going to arrive later with burning torches.
#5 maybe just isn't as good in this form. It turns the Cheers theme tune around and looks at what it would be like to have everyone knowing your name not in a friendly bar, but, rightly or wrongly, as a paedophile. I dunno. I lose confidence in my work at the best of times and even I'm currently struggling to make this one work. The terrible drawing doesn't help.
Perhaps they are both rubbish "jokes" anyway. Perhaps they lost even more in trying to translate them from spoken one-liners where the butt of the joke is the teller, into a cartoon where this isn't as clear. I don't do stand-up - hence wanting to adapt them to a different form, but this blog has always just been me trying things out. Sometimes it's rubbish. Sometimes it gets a book deal. And sometimes it's Bathmatwatch.
Causing offence in comedy is clearly a hot topic. I think that Ross & Brand were in the wrong in Sachsgate, but I also like a Frankie Boyle/Jimmy Carr line where you laugh, then find yourself wondering if you should have. And as for the Ricky Gervais "I know this is offensive, but because I know that, it makes it OK", well this comment box just isn't big enough...
So, like Jan Moir, I'm not going to retract. (For the record, this is only my third complaint. I removed a comment I made about Mike Reid shortly after his death, but decided to leave the word 'bummers' in the Noah's Ark 'gay lions' piece, though acknowledged in the comments that whilst 'bumming' was probably retro funny, 'bummers' was possibly a bit offensive.)
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But you've given me something to think about, both for the blog and in general. I don't think I've got anything else along these lines anyway, so please stay with me.
OK, so Mother Teresa goes into this brothel...
I know several paedophiles and not one of them was offended by your jokes, so feel free to carry on.
(I do not know any paedophiles)
(Honestly)
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