That joke isn’t funny anymore

If you find Jimmy Carr laughing at gang rape hilarious, then maybe you should turn the telly off, pick up a book and batter yourself on the face with it till your eyeballs fall into your lap

Posted by Graham Martin on December 9, 2011. Filed under Graham Martin,Opinion. Posted with the tags:Rogue Reporter
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Jimmy Carr

You may not know this, though you may have guessed, but I am pretty well known as a bit of a thicko.

Ask the cognoscenti about this and the cognoscenti reply, as one and in sorrow but without dissent: “thicker than a whale omelette”.

There are better educated onions out there and there are queer sticky things that live in dead trees that can beat me at University Challenge, where my idea of competing is to shout “Vaughan Williams” during music rounds and “Turner” at every other question in the hope that I get lucky.

Incidentally, this normally bags me a couple of points, even though my knowledge of these people extends to a vague notion that the former may have composed the theme tune to Eastenders and the fairly certain conviction that the latter was Hooch’s partner in that film.

And what a good film it was.

Can never remember who was the bloke and who was the dog though. I don’t think the film makers did enough to make it clear. More exposition needed there, I’d say.

So, intellectual titan I am not, but I am aware of this and where there is even the dullest spark of sentience, there is hope. I do what many do in my position: I try to read books. Or rather, I plan to read books.

I’ve got a pretty impressive planned reading list. Honestly, you’d think I was quite the brainbox if you saw it.

But something always gets in the way. Yes, there’s children. I actually did manage to finish one or two books before I somehow cashed in my biological chips, but like many parents, I’m either too tired or too drunk to make much headway through the pages these days.

There’s something more insidious lurking in my house though, stopping me reading books, something even more insidious than a child. And it’s in your house too.

Yes, there it is, in the corner of your living room, and it’s tuned to Abnormal Animal Genitals With Ross Kemp.

The telly. It’s got you by the face and you can’t move. Ross Kemp’s just furrowed his brows with a concern that (who knows) may conceal arousal whilst an alleged scientist pokes the willy of a sedated Dik-Dik with a biro and, like Ross, you can’t look away.

Now, I’m not down on the telly, it’s maybe our greatest achievement as a species and will remain such till Ginsters’ pie boffins invent a Cornish pastie that doesn’t go soggy in the microwave, though I suspect we may have to wait till socialism raises humanity to a higher plane and completes our mastery of science till we resolve that one.

No, I’m not down on the telly. In fact, I’m all for it. And it can be educational. There are many landmark series which have both entertained and expanded minds – one need only cite Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent Of Man, Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, David Attenborough’s Life On Earth and Tim Wonnacott’s Bargain Hunt and you get the idea.

But mostly it’s shite. And I don’t really have a problem with that either. I can sit through endless episodes of How They Made It: Giant Mechanical Post-Apocalyptic Spiders or When Goalkeepers Shit Themselves and I don’t feel it’s doing me, or society, much harm, even if it’s stopping me reading books.

Comb back through the above though, if you can bear it, and you’ll notice the word ‘insidious’. There is, I believe, real insidiousness afoot, something which represents an assault on cherished human values like solidarity and compassion.

Now, I’m not going to go on about Top Gear here. That was always a right wing, Cupids-style glory-hole, a tedious hour of three men laughing at famine.

I’m talking about your so-called ‘edgy’ comedians, the likes of Jimmy Carr, Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais, the lazy playground nihilists, the ones whose ‘dark’ humour is so out there and extreme and challenging that they can’t stop getting their ugly mugs on the telly, like the true outsiders they are.

They’re insidious because their reactionary agendas are dressed in idiotic anti­establishment ribbons, but they challenge nothing other than the right of the vulnerable to defence and, in effect, they shore up capitalism’s prevailing ideology of cruelty.

And suddenly, if you don’t find jokes about Down’s Syndrome kids funny, you’re either not ‘getting it’ or are a fusty Whitehousean moraliser.

On the left, we’ve often been accused of being humourless, and to combat that I cite Squalidarity ppbs and the phrase ‘deep entryism’.

But really, if you find Jimmy Carr laughing at gang rape hilarious, then maybe you should turn the telly off, pick up a book and batter yourself on the face with it till your eyeballs fall into your lap.

Thick I may be, but at least I’m not a complete prick.