Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Daniel Tosh



Daniel Tosh is a comedian.  Last week, he made a rape joke. It wasn't funny.  A female audience member called him on it ('Rape jokes are never funny').  He responded with a gang-rape joke, directed at the audience member ('Wouldn't it be funny if, like, 5 guys...').

 The interwebs have been having a field day with this, both on the 'rape: so funny' and the 'rape: bad' side of things.  I think the whole discussion makes for interesting reading.  Here is my take on it.  In common with other terrible things, rape can be a legitimate subject matter for jokes.  Turns out, lots of people not only agree, but have gone to the trouble of identifying the features of rape jokes that they (comedians / writers / interested observers) see as influencing whether a particular joke about the subject 'works'.

Kate Harding: Rape Jokes that Work

 Needless to say, Daniel Tosh fails by the standards of all the above linked commentators.

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