dim
my television is so dim, but it is still cleverer than jeremy clarkson.
boom boom.
my joke is about as funny as jeremy’s.
how ironic then that kia abdullah (a very tasty bangladeshi author) has been caught up in an ‘insensitivity’ row of another shade. ms abdullah made a ‘joke’ about the death of some british students with double-barrelled names while they were on a gap year trip to thailand. she claimed it was an attempt at ‘classist’ humour.
her ‘joke’ appeared on twitter. quite how people in the public eye forget the ‘social’ part of social media is beyond me, but they do. still she apologised and so that is fine and dandy.
on the radio a friend of the author and someone from the libertarian alliance ‘debated’ the situation. the friend basically said that ms abdullah had made a mistake and that was that. the libertarians began by saying that if ms abdullah had been facing prosecution from the police then they would be defending her, but as she wasn’t they were calling for her to be cast out as a social leper (which seems to be having your cake and eating it). he went on to point out that if this had been a white writer making a similar comment about students who had indian or african names there would have been a large outcry. which seemed odd as he had also claimed that ‘people can find racism in a bus queue’ (it is an analogy that doesn’t really work as often you can find racism in a bus queue, but we’ll gloss over that) so it is ironic how quickly he played the race card. ms abdullah’s friend claimed it had nothing to do with race, but was a poor attempt at humour based on class; in doing so proving that perceived racism is colour blind – it rarely comes in paler shades.
clarkson often defends himself by saying that those who are offended by his jokes don’t have a sense of humour. ms abdullah and her friend defends her by saying it was a mistake. neither of them seems to have been blessed by the comedy gods. perhaps both of them need to count to ten before they put their ‘jokes’ out there in the public arena.
my television is so dim, but it is still cleverer than jeremy clarkson.
boom boom.
my joke is about as funny as jeremy’s.
how ironic then that kia abdullah (a very tasty bangladeshi author) has been caught up in an ‘insensitivity’ row of another shade. ms abdullah made a ‘joke’ about the death of some british students with double-barrelled names while they were on a gap year trip to thailand. she claimed it was an attempt at ‘classist’ humour.
her ‘joke’ appeared on twitter. quite how people in the public eye forget the ‘social’ part of social media is beyond me, but they do. still she apologised and so that is fine and dandy.
on the radio a friend of the author and someone from the libertarian alliance ‘debated’ the situation. the friend basically said that ms abdullah had made a mistake and that was that. the libertarians began by saying that if ms abdullah had been facing prosecution from the police then they would be defending her, but as she wasn’t they were calling for her to be cast out as a social leper (which seems to be having your cake and eating it). he went on to point out that if this had been a white writer making a similar comment about students who had indian or african names there would have been a large outcry. which seemed odd as he had also claimed that ‘people can find racism in a bus queue’ (it is an analogy that doesn’t really work as often you can find racism in a bus queue, but we’ll gloss over that) so it is ironic how quickly he played the race card. ms abdullah’s friend claimed it had nothing to do with race, but was a poor attempt at humour based on class; in doing so proving that perceived racism is colour blind – it rarely comes in paler shades.
clarkson often defends himself by saying that those who are offended by his jokes don’t have a sense of humour. ms abdullah and her friend defends her by saying it was a mistake. neither of them seems to have been blessed by the comedy gods. perhaps both of them need to count to ten before they put their ‘jokes’ out there in the public arena.
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