What do Jimmy Carr and Boris Johnson have in common?
It’s not a joke. In fact it’s very far from funny.
Both men have experienced the hard reality that words have consequences this week.
Jimmy Carr was first up. He’s at the early stages of a comeback tour and has tickets to sell.
And if you were looking to shock people to such an extent that you were in every newspaper the next day because of the crassness and offensiveness of your content, you’d probably start with a “joke” about the Holocaust.
Especially if that “joke” then gave you a right of reply in which you could denounce “cancel culture” and attract an audience of people who like that sort of thing.
Jimmy Carr’s joke was not about the millions of Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust, it was about the Roma people who were killed too.
This detail is important, because it forms part of his defence.
He argues that the joke was educational.
He was spreading the knowledge that Hitler’s hate was broader and deeper than an elementary student may understand.
Thanks for that.
Hitler’s ideology and soldiers also killed thousands of gay people and branded thousands more with pink triangles.
I suspect you already knew that. But I can still spread the word without the need for a stinging punchline that sets a whole marginalised community back.
Traveller movement threatened by Jimmy Carr ‘joke’
I won’t repeat the joke Jimmy Carr made about Roma communities.
Just know it was so serious that it’s left formal representatives of the Traveller Movement consulting with police over whether it constitutes inciting racial hatred.
We've launched a petition to Netflix calling for the removal of the segments of His Dark Material which celebrates the Romani genocide.
Join with us to send @NetflixUK a clear message: #StopTravellerHatehttps://t.co/cuNqYllYPn
— The Traveller Movement (@GypsyTravellerM) February 4, 2022
Meanwhile the Head of Ofcom is committing to review the regulatory framework for online entertainment providers like Netflix, who currently don’t have to follow the same stringent content rules as traditional broadcasters.
The same “joke” rightly and thankfully couldn’t be made in 2022 about people of colour.
Yet somehow the line of acceptability, for some, still extends to another ethnic minority; gypsy and travelling communities.
By making a joke and encouraging people to laugh at it, the comedian is enabling the sentiment that Roma people are lesser, or other.
A joke built on this is racist by definition.
If you’re prepared to laugh at a racist joke and to do so in the company of a big hall, you create a sense of community among the people who laughed with you.
You’ve legitimised it. So the feeling grows and emboldens.
Maybe you’ll crack the same joke at work.
You might go a bit further in the pub, with your closest friends.
Maybe you’ll say something or do something next time you come into contact with someone from that community.
Words matter.
Ugly outcome of Boris Johnson’s Savile barb
Grannies the world over are fond of saying “lies are out the door before the truth has its boots on”.
It’s certainly what the Prime Minister was banking on when he falsely accused of Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile for sex offences during his time as Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales.
It was a pre-meditated one liner. Something all political leaders have in their pockets ahead of duels across the dispatch box.
Preparing for events like PMQs takes a good chunk out of a leader’s – and more likely their staff’s – diary.
We know this line was premeditated because one of the advisers who had warned against its use – Munira Mirza – quit hours after it was deployed because she was so appalled.
It led to a degree of condemnation from Conservatives over the weekend online and in the press, accompanied by a trickle of letters into the 1922 committee which is the mechanism for igniting a leadership challenge in the Conservative Party.
The Prime Minister had probably hoped the world had moved on at the start of the week.
That was until footage emerged on Monday night of Sir Keir Starmer needing a police escort from the door of Portcullis House in Westminster as he was kettled by abusive and aggressive protestors repeating the lies your granny warned you about.
Starmer mob is an ugly echo of previous tragedies
Reports show rumours about Jimmy Savile and the reasons why he wasn’t charged had been circulating in the undergrowth of the internet, where they were amplified by people with connections to the far right.
No.10 says no apology for Boris Johnson’s false claim about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile. And it rejects any link between the claim and protestors targeting Keir Starmer. Not everyone agrees with that. 5 mins. Produced by Mary Fuller & Catherine Karelli. https://t.co/ySTP6iFLn2 pic.twitter.com/Lxbo4F1wT4
— Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) February 8, 2022
When they were repeated by the Prime Minister at the dispatch box they were legitimised for mass consumption, despite being utterly false.
Words have consequences and the consequences of this was to see the leader of the opposition escorted from a braying mob 126 days after Sir David Ames MP was murdered and six years after the murder of Jo Cox MP.
Imagine how scared his kids must be.
All of us have a duty to consider what words we laugh at and what words we’ll use and share.
The more powerful the voice, the greater the responsibility.
