My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty calls for police probe into comedian's 'disgusting' gag.

[SamBally]

Well-known woke snowflake, Irish Traveller Paddy Doherty, former bare-knuckle fighter and still hard as nails into his 60s and who has no formal education at all has commented on the Jimmy "fake laugh" Carr controversy.

Paddy said the 'disgusting' joke was an insult to the 1.5million gypsies exterminated in death camps and called for police to probe Carr's joke about gypsies killed in the Holocaust.

He told the Sunday Mirror yesterday: 'He should be investigated by the police. That wasn't a joke. He's talking about mass murder being a positive – would he be allowed to say this about black people killed by the Ku Klux Klan?

'There's a level you don't go to. More than a million of my people were killed.



Or children murdered by pedophiles... Or women battered and murdered by men... Or Fred West's victims... Or five-year-old boys who fall down 100-foot wells and lose their lives...

What I found to be truly abhorrent and extremely sinister was the audience instantly clapping like seals and cheering like demented lemons.

One of the most already disadvantaged and marginalized minority groups in Britain today.

All while the tories have introduced draconian legislation that will all but kill traveller and gypsy culture...

Well said Paddy you are a shining beacon in the fight for equality and against the prejudice and discrimination committed by the same people who wail like stuck pigs when they pretend that theirs are under threat.

 

[TwoWhalesInAPool]

Well-known woke snowflake, Irish Traveller Paddy Doherty, former bare-knuckle fighter and still hard as nails into his 60s and who has no formal education at all has commented on the Jimmy "fake laugh" Carr controversy.

Paddy said the 'disgusting' joke was an insult to the 1.5million gypsies exterminated in death camps and called for police to probe Carr's joke about gypsies killed in the Holocaust.

He told the Sunday Mirror yesterday: 'He should be investigated by the police. That wasn't a joke. He's talking about mass murder being a positive – would he be allowed to say this about black people killed by the Ku Klux Klan?

'There's a level you don't go to. More than a million of my people were killed.



Or children murdered by pedophiles... Or women battered and murdered by men... Or Fred West's victims... Or five-year-old boys who fall down 100-foot wells and lose their lives...

What I found to be truly abhorrent and extremely sinister was the audience instantly clapping like seals and cheering like demented lemons.

One of the most already disadvantaged and marginalized minority groups in Britain today.

All while the tories have introduced draconian legislation that will all but kill traveller and gypsy culture...

Well said Paddy you are a shining beacon in the fight for equality and against the prejudice and discrimination committed by the same people who wail like stuck pigs when they pretend that theirs are under threat.

 

[SamBally]

Of course, had it been a Muslim comedian, in front of a Muslim audience, further dehumanizing the child victims of a tiny minority of Muslims in child grooming gangs, the hang em high brigade, the "patriotic" hard-right would be raging, frothing at the mouth, and DEMANDING something was done about it and we would never hear the end of it.


While they defend the tax-avoiding multi-millionaire Jimmy Carr who has NEVER been one of them or who himself thinks he isn't one of them.

 

[SamBally]

Stand-up comedians often exploit our unconscious biases to deliver effective punchlines through the use of “paraprosdokians” – a figure of speech that allows a speaker to play with expectations, to introduce new meanings by tapping into our tendency to form quick judgements and biases.

In producing meaning, the paraprosdokian goes beyond our expectations of language, with the joke resolving only when we find the right framework in which to interpret it. Then there’s a “click”, a realisation of an incongruity and a sudden shift in perspective.

Often comedy resorts to evoking a gendered or racial stereotype when a punchline is delivered. If done carefully, against our own social group, or against a group that is rightfully abhorred such as racists, it can be effective, but in other circumstances, it can have significant social consequences.

Jimmy Carr's "joke" about the Romani communities is not being done ironically or to create incongruity, or even to nudge people into acknowledging their own biases and prejudices. Instead, it is making a punchline out of a marginalised group. Not only that, but it is also using a devastatingly tragic event in our global history as a source of humour, while also pitting one minority group against another.

If I had to say it politely for the purposes of this article, I would call it disparagement or “hostile” humour, which on the one hand gives the message that it is OK to be prejudiced against a marginalised and oppressed group, while also trying to cloak this prejudice in flippant comedy – don’t take offence because it was only a joke.

In making the target person or the group that this person holds membership of feel small and inferior or ridiculous, a comedian is not only displaying their own ingrained prejudices but also, in a roundabout way, enjoying belittling them. This is grounded in the feeling of superiority that they can gain from highlighting the misfortune of others.




Dr Pragya Agarwal behavioural and data scientist.