Cancel culture

The comedian Jimmy Carr has upset a lot of people with the following joke:

“When people talk about the Holocaust they talk about the tragedy of six million lives being lost to the Nazi war machine, but they never mention the thousands of Gypsies killed by the Nazis, because no one wants to talk about the positives.”

I didn’t see Carr tell the joke because I don’t find him funny, never have. That’s probably my problem, not his. I don’t see anything funny about his holocaust joke, either, but then I’ve never found genocide funny. Perhaps I am just a little old fashioned? Later on in this blog, you will be faced with an apparent contradiction.

But having said that, I do feel that in one way Carr was tapping into the public psyche. As I said, I did not see the show in which Carr’s joke appeared but let us be honest: who has not heard a derogatory comment or joke about gypsies, travellers, the Roma community? For a number of reasons, travellers are not welcomed to many areas, not least because of people’s perceptions and then experience of what often accompanies their visits? Is that why, when Carr’s audience heard the joke, the laughed and clapped uproariously?  My guess is that was exactly why.

My feeling was – and I am the last person to complain about being told or even telling a very sick joke – this was a bit too far. But, for all that, I cannot say I would like to see Carr cancelled for telling it, as the likes of Sajid Javid and Nadine Dorries are suggesting he should be. Free speech is such a difficult subject, so much so that I’m not even sure whether I’m right about how I feel. Within reason, people should be able to say what they like, but who defines what is within reason? Which leads me on to something fundamental: are there subjects we should not be able to tell jokes about? Surely there cannot be any kind of joke about the holocaust, right? Wrong.

The comedian David Baddiel, himself a Jew and author of the brilliant Jews Don’t Count, recalls a joke made by the university professor and author Devorah Baum:

“A holocaust survivor goes to heaven, tells God a holocaust joke. God says: that’s not funny. The survivor says: Ah well, I guess you had to be there.”

The joke being, of course, that He wasn’t. It’s probably not laugh-out-loud funny but a knowing, nodding smile joke. So, I would say, you can make a joke of it. Then again, you might not see it as I do.

I won’t boycott Jimmy Carr’s shows because I wouldn’t watch them anyway. But he shouldn’t be cancelled either.