FITNews wondered the other day, why a press flack for Governor Haley Barbour felt obliged to resign get fired after he told some jokes that went into orbit somewhere between black humor, junior high locker room and insulting:
The problem is this: humor is a matter of context. It's who you're telling the "joke" to. When politicians tell an audience of people they know think just as they do, comparing Mrs Obama to an ape that escaped from the Columbia zoo, or a tavern owner in Georgia who sold teeshirts comparing the President to Curious George, you can bet everyone will laugh. We all select the forums we inhabit.
Trouble is, word gets out. Video gets posted. People who don't think it's funny weigh in.
For politicians, this is an issue.
If Haley Barbour wants to be president, he has to be president of everybody in the US. Seattle liberals just as much as Mississippi bubbas. New York Jews and Michigan Muslims. Gay people and straight people.
There's where the rub comes.
People who want us to make them our leaders ought to aim for our highest possibilities, not our lowest impulses.
Andrew Sullivan has a nice take on this:
In making it, Jack Shafer offers an observation about offense in the age of social media:
What are the insidious jokes at the heart of this scandal?
“Otis Redding posthumously received a gold record for his single, (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay. (Not a big hit in Japan right now.),” Turner joked in his press briefing.
In a separate email, Turner poked fun at former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on the anniversary of her appointment by Bill Clinton.
“It took longer to confirm her gender than to confirm her law license,” he joked.
In other emails, Turner made light of genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s and remarked that a commemorative Bob Marley stamp could also be used as a “tiny rolling paper.”
All in all, pretty funny stuff if you ask us. Sure the timing of the joke about Japan is poor, but other than that what’s the scandal here? Honestly … what is this guy saying that we haven’t heard before on The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live?
The problem is this: humor is a matter of context. It's who you're telling the "joke" to. When politicians tell an audience of people they know think just as they do, comparing Mrs Obama to an ape that escaped from the Columbia zoo, or a tavern owner in Georgia who sold teeshirts comparing the President to Curious George, you can bet everyone will laugh. We all select the forums we inhabit.
Trouble is, word gets out. Video gets posted. People who don't think it's funny weigh in.
For politicians, this is an issue.
If Haley Barbour wants to be president, he has to be president of everybody in the US. Seattle liberals just as much as Mississippi bubbas. New York Jews and Michigan Muslims. Gay people and straight people.
There's where the rub comes.
People who want us to make them our leaders ought to aim for our highest possibilities, not our lowest impulses.
Andrew Sullivan has a nice take on this:
In Defense Of Tasteless Jokes
In making it, Jack Shafer offers an observation about offense in the age of social media:
Gottfried's "mistake," if you want to call it that, was to tell his vile and timely jokes in a venue that he thought was as safe as a dinner party with a friend. Before posting, Gottfried must have thought, Who but a lover of daring comedy would follow me on Twitter? But he was wrong. The new rules have made everybody—including edgy comedians—accountable in the public sphere for the things they says "privately" in social media spaces. (See also the school teacher who gets fired because somebody finds a Facebook page of her chugging from a bottle of vodka.) Would Michael Richards have suffered the same universal shaming if his off-the-wheelsracist attack on a heckler at an L.A. comedy club hadn't been videotaped and posted to the Web?We're all public figures now, whether we like it or not.
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