Free speech, for or against?

LadyOnArooftop

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Why are you beating up on Russell Brand? His political views may be all over the place, but as a stand-up comedian, he's top notch. I do like Chris Rock. As for Billy Connolly never being offensive, who can forget the time when ISIS was threatening to behead the hostage Ken Bigley? Billy made a joke wishing they would just get on with it and do it... and they did do it... Not that i'm suggesting that influenced them! Was just a joke in bad taste.
 
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Saphire

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Why are you beating up on Russell Brand? His political views may be all over the place, but as a stand-up comedian, he's top notch. I do like Chris Rock. As for Billy Connolly never being offensive, who can forget the time when ISIS was threatening to behead the hostage Ken Bigley? Billy made a joke wishing they would just get on with it and do it... and they did do it... Not that i'm suggesting that influenced them! Was just a joke in bad taste.
Like we say, humour is very subjective.
I am drawn to people who can be witty naturally, some 'comedians' have set pieces, but when it comes to normal conversation, they are quite dour.
I think John Bishop and Peter Kay are naturally funny, I'm sure other people find them anything but.
 

SamBally

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Where have you been for the last 20 YEARS...Living in a CAVE?.

Never trust a thinning man who grows his hair long at the back.

Sounded more like a sermon to me. I thought he was sh*it, really really sh*it. Could only stomach the first three or four minutes. Rambled on about how "he just doesn't care" before aimlessly repeating why he did care. Claimed the "flocking" of people was destroying "individualism", while his "flock" bought his books and attended his gigs making him an extremely wealthy individual. The same flock who just happened to share his view and of course could afford to attend his gigs and buy his books. A reasonable amount of dosh to a large chunk of the American population back in the 70s and 80s and even 90s.

Son of an Advertising Manager and Nurse. Middle-class "individualism" for people who already had a variety of choice and options in their lives compared to the majority.

AKA pompous bullshit.
 
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How long can something with free in its name exist? Maybe the case isn't so much being for or against free speech but who gets to decide what free speech is? And we know we'll get some people who will be allowed to say something and then someone else will get a ticking off for saying the same thing.

Generally with me liking equality and disliking hypocrites I like to swap words around when someone says something, in Carr's case with his mentioning of Gypsies. If you were to swap the word Gypsies with another race, would people of that race be offended? Do some people believe what he said to be less offensive because he's referring to Gypsies?

Then again, am I bothered about what Carr said about Gypsies as I don't know if Gypsies are offended by the remark? If Gypsies aren't offended then I'm not going to be offended for the hell of it. Is it even offensive if he said it in jest or is he sharring his views on Gypsies? Are his views offensive as they're only his views? Is it right to demand action be taken against someone for what they think? I think most decent people knew their views offended someone then they weren't say them.

I'm all for free speech as I know where it'll lead if we start to censor it, if something someone says offends someone else then people have the freedom of speech to complain and say something offensive about that someone doing the offending. Problem is we only ever seem to hear one side of the story and another side that isn't connected to the story atall. In this case the story is about Carr and Gypsies, why are people that aren't of the Gypsy race complaining when noones asked the Gypsies? Isn't it freedom of speech that allows non-Gypsies to complain? If noones asked a Gypsy then are you protecting the Gypsy people or are you isolating them and their views from the debate which is about them?

I'm happy to have the freedom to say some people are t*ts and leave it at that. I like equality and dislike hypocrites but that doesn't mean I'm going to waste my time on a couple of words that someone may have said in jest and which may or may not have offended people who haven't been asked if it offended them.
 
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Saphire

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Gypsies are obviously offended by the remarks.

An organisation called 'The Travellers Movement', who fight for the rights of ethnic Romany Gypsy, Irish Traveller and Roma equality have said .... “This is truly disturbing and goes way beyond humour. We need all your support in calling this out.”
The group has also asked Netflix to remove the special from its platform.
 

hell2bwith76

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I can't stand either of the above either.
But then I think Billy Connelly was/is hilarious, and I quite like Ricky Gervais's humour.
Some people find them offensive....humour is very subjective.
Years ago Benny Hill humour went down the drain due to Feminists rights .Would that happen today ?/
 
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Saphire

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I was responding to Breakwake, who wondered if Gypsies were offended or not.

I do suspect some people are just looking to be outraged about something they have no connection with, when the group they are actually fighting for don't seem to have any problem with whatever is bothering the permanently fauxraged.:D
 
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Jimmy Carr said:

“When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six 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 talks about that because no one wants to talk about the positives."


Gypsies are calling this offensive, we have people that aren't Gypsies telling the Gypsies to stop being offended.

So I if we swap the word 'Gypsy' for the word 'English' and imagine Jimmy Carr said this as an example:

“When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of six million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of English that were killed by the Nazis.
No one ever talks about that because no one wants to talk about the positives."


I gather English people wouldn't find this offensive and any English people that do find this offensive should be told by other races to stop being offended? Noone going to complain about that? Theres cancel culture and theres expressing sympathy that more of a race weren't killed in a war that killed so many people. Any Gypsy who had family members killed during WWll probably wouldn't be happy that someone is saying that more should have died. WWll is generally something not joked about.
 
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Saphire

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We English tend to laugh at ourselves anyway, plus Carr is English himself, so it doesn't have the same effect as calling out on a minority group.
 
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