On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 11:13 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 10:51 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > > My philosophy would be to make jokes about Rick > > (we-hang-federal-officials-high-in-Texas) Perry right up until the point > > that he posts an order on his website for his followers to shoot you. > > Oddly enough, if you track how the jokes get told, comics will > sometimes tell a joke about an extremist Muslim (as Letterman did), > but they would not dare tell jokes about Muslims in general. Can't say > the same about extreme Christians. All Christians get lumped together. > I am apparently no different than Perry or Bachman or Palin -- we are > all evolution hating rednecks who think the sun revolves around the > earth. The difference is, the extremist Christian whack-jobs who would > make threats are immediately reduced to collective punch-lines (they > all drive beat up trucks, date their sisters, and sound like Foghorn > Leghorn). Seems a bit of a double-standard that we can discount one > faith based on a few jackasses, but another faith gets a free pass. > Where are the jokes about the king of the house of Saud having the > f-ing balls to tell another country's leader that he is being too > violent, when his people will behead a woman for winking? Nope. Can't > tell jokes about that, but we can joke about Christian beliefs being > fairy tales (silly Christians think dinosaurs and people lived > together -- that the Flintstones is a documentary). > > Sorry. I'll stop. I'm actually agitated about something else entirely; > this is just another minor piece of annoyance. > No need to apologize, I think this is a valid point for discussion (though the original post in this thread was about the consequences of making fun of Islamic terrorists, not regular Muslims). I'm not sure I agree with you, but I will think about it a bit. I guess examples of jokes about non-extreme Christians being told on late night television do not readily come to mind, so my immediate reaction is not to see the double-standard you suggest. Probably the double-standard I could see is that the Islamic extremists are more likely to be advocating direct violence (like terrorism, or fatwas, or honor killings) while Christian extremists are less likely to advocate this, but more likely to advocate what might be called indirect violence (like homophobia, misogyny or censorship). While the so-called indirect violence is still extremely harmful, and has clearly led to pain, injury and premature death, I guess Christian extremists could have a legitimate gripe about so frequently getting lumped into the same parallel as Islamic extremists, who (at least in the modern era) are more likely to advocate direct violence. I live in a small, extremely conservative Christian community, and am usually pretty tuned into mentions of religion in general and Christianity in particular in the media, but I can't think of many jokes about what might be called moderate or "regular" Christians. Of course I don't watch Bill Mahr, but my impression is that he makes fun of all religious believers, not just Christians. And, if more politically oriented shows are included, I think you would find fairly frequent examples of jokes about the kind of Saudi hypocrisy you allude to on both the TDS and TCR. If you can think of a recent example of a late night joke making fun of Christians who are not evolution-hating, or LGBT-hating, or climate change-hating or something like that, I would be interested in hearing about it. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
