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“It's not a stereotype if it's always true.”


― Daniel Tosh

Too bad Daniel Tosh doesn't have a callsign like Batman. I mean, wouldn't it be funny if that guy got raped by, like, five guys right now?

Yeah I agree with Lindy on most everything, except her citations. I understand that there exists a "Trigger" that is something that's real. However there is no scientific evidence that jokes perpetuate a culture of rape. I've heard about Rape Culture a lot and I can understand where the ideas come from, like if you constantly hear only bad things about the black community what will you assume when you encounter a black person. That stuff is all very interesting and deserves to be studied, but it's not set in stone, there's simply not enough evidence for it and proper education can over come it.

I've been raised by TV, I love the show Cops when I was a kid, what I saw was violent black people. When I was conscious enough to actually THINK though I didn't come down on the side that black people are inherently violent and are responsible for their own plight. I looked at the facts, what causes the ghettos in America and what we are doing to help people take control of their lives. Basically we've been kicking them in the face since they tried to get their freedom, we've made being black a crime and have incarcerated them in large outdoor prisons.

So I agree that these things like Rape Culture have validity, what Lindy's point was is that they're facts and unimpeachable facts. I don't agree, but I certainly am ok with her calling Daniel Tosh a fucking dick for telling just a really ignorant and stupid joke.

So what I like about this debate more than anything is that it happened. That this is something people can watch and talk about on their own, and discuss with other people. It takes a lot of hard work to build up a mental defense against the onslaught of bullshit we all face everyday, you can more easily do it while commiserating with other people.

I agree with you whole heartedly, Louis CK has thought very long and hard about a lot of things and he's responsible. Daniel Tosh was on stage at a club, relatively young comic who got shitty with a girl and had a very stupid reaction. A lot of people went after him and a lot of others defended him, but it wasn't smart it was a yelling match back and forth which doesn't help anything. This conversation helped everybody on videosift because we're both soo smart bareboards.

>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Shepppard:
This wasn't a web redemption, it was some other thing.. a web star profile thing. She didn't do anything stupid that needed redeeming.

I think it's the Tosh who needed redeeming. After the rape "joke" it was time he learned that there are proper ways to put one's foot in one's mouth!


I SEE what you did there...

>> ^Shepppard:

This wasn't a web redemption, it was some other thing.. a web star profile thing. She didn't do anything stupid that needed redeeming.


I think it's the Tosh who needed redeeming. After the rape "joke" it was time he learned that there are proper ways to put one's foot in one's mouth!

That's a terrible joke and in bad taste. Like Daniel Tosh, though, he has the right to say it and everything (to me at least,) is open game for comedians.

You just don't have to stick around and listen to them. Personally, I would have heckled that one though.

>> ^Payback:

Looks a bit like Daniel Tosh.


was totally going to say it looks like Daniel Tosh green screened himself into this one.

Looks a bit like Daniel Tosh.

I'm just going to give my opinion here, mostly because George Carlin is my hero, and because I'm interested in the topic:

Regarding things being offensive:
There isn't any topic known anywhere to human kind that won't offend someone. Whether it's daisies or pancakes or pinwheels someone, somewhere, can be offended by it. I guarantee it. This is just my opinion, but I don't think that anyone has the right to 'not be offended.'

Regarding comedians:
People mostly don't seem to realize the importance of humor in all of our lives. Comedians play a very important role in the collective human community that cannot be replaced. They help us deal with parts of ourselves that would otherwise be unacceptable for us to even sometimes think about. Just like the court jester who might otherwise get himself beheaded if he were a normal person suggesting the king was fat. Almost all humor, successful or not, makes people feel uncomfortable. The very best humor makes people really uncomfortable. Laughter itself is a response to these same situations and events that we just have a little-bit of a hard time dealing with. I think this is why comedians, while onstage, are given a free pass. Even their televised specials get edited for content, but the only time a comedian gets kicked off stage in a club is when no one is laughing. What they're saying implies a lot more about the people laughing than it does about the comedian. Follow me?

And it's important to remember that most comedians are artists who are immersed in their material. Most have specific routines that are worked out over and over again, tweeking the tone and meter until they become almost meaningless to the comedians themselves. This is why you rarely see experienced comedians laughing at their own jokes, they've just heard them too many times. And even when they are performing improvisationally, like Tosh was during the event in question, they aren't saying things that they think are funny, specifically, they are saying things that they think the audience will find funny. It may seem like a small distinction, but it can make a big difference in understanding why some jokes are made. Some comedians have a style based on saying shocking, offensive things, and it's they're job. They are paid to make an audience laugh, and whether you like him or not, Tosh gets paid.

And the particular incident and joke:
This whole thing was brought up by a woman who was at a show and heard something she didn't like. She retorted back from the audience that rape isn't funny. To which Tosh retorted back that it would be funny if the woman was "raped by like five guys." Now, according to the woman, that made her actually fear for her safety and she got up and left. I'm not going to debate her sanity, if she really felt threatened, then that's terrible and I feel bad for her. But there are a few things that need to be pointed out here:

1: Tosh didn't threaten anyone. Had he said: "you five guys over there should rape this woman," it would not only be offensive to many people, but it also could have been perceived as a legitimate threat that, maybe, could have been pursued legally.

2: Hecklers are always dealt with harshly. And so should they be. Complain all you want about a person outside of a show but when you go to a comedy club, you have agreed that it's that person's time to talk. And so has everyone else who paid money to listen to them, not you. They're up there making a living, succeeding or failing at the expense of their own ass, not yours. It should be noted here that the woman said she left the room to the laughter of the entire audience.

3: You do not have the right to not be offended, especially if you are at a fucking comedy club. There was a pretty famous incident with Joan Rivers when she was joking about deaf people on stage, and a man in the audience stood up and started yelling at her because his daughter was deaf and he didn't find her jokes funny. Well, Joan Rivers responded that her own mother was deaf, and that she'd had to deal with that on her own terms. Comedy was something that helped her deal with that (because comedy is a useful tool) and if he didn't like it, he could go fuck himself. And that's the thing, you never know people's story. The girl at Tosh's show couldn't know Tosh's experience with rape, just like he couldn't know hers. And if you don't think people who've experienced a major tragedy can joke about the horrible events in their lives, I invite you to go watch some Bob Saget material. Humor is subjective. Saying you don't think something should be allowed because it's not funny, is exactly the same as saying something shouldn't be allowed because you don't think it's funny. Whatever it is, you can bet that someone out there finds it funny, even if it's nonsense.

Rape jokes are hardly ever funny. Even Carlin's few never got much of a laugh. But jokes are thoughts, and I'd really rather people stop trying to police thoughts. If someone finds a joke threatening, then deal with the threat, not the joke. And if someone finds a joke offensive, well...

Comedian Bill Burr made a great analogy the other day. Oddly enough he was not referring to the Daniel Tosh incident as this was a few days before that incident took place.

What he said was: "Watching an old woman falling down the stairs would be a HORRIBLE thing to see. Yet if you watched it happen in a Will Ferrell movie (or something) it would be hilarious"



His point being, it is possible (some say necessary) to laugh at the dark side of life and humanity.



Gilbert Gottfried also chimed in on this same topic in his editorial about the Daniel Tosh incident:



"have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing."

>> ^EMPIRE:

I hate this whole rape-is-terrible-so-let-make-no-jokes-about-it. It's really annoying, insulting, and fucking stupid.
Yes, rape is terrible. So are many other things used for comedic effect: murder, racism, etc.
No one is allowed to demand SHIT from comedy. Take it or leave it.
Making a joke about something bad does not mean you condone it, in the slightest.


indeed! thinking too that it is more about the audience taking themselves too seriously than it is about the comedian.
usually the non-thought process goes something like this: "how dare you! my friend was raped 20 yrs ago, and you bastards put a pube on my coke can when i was in junior high. and i'm special"

This. Frankly the most offensive part of the story was that someone actually paid to see Daniel Tosh.

But also
* Dane Cook was mentioned without anyone calling for him to be beheaded publicly.
* No-one mentioned Reginald D Hunters hilarious routine on the subject.

>> ^kymbos:

I think the problem was that his joke was shit. It wasn't clever, thought-provoking, intellectually challenging. It was boring and lazy and unimaginative

>> ^kymbos:

I think The Onion responded best:
"Embroiled in controversy following comments he made during a recent performance at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, comedian Daniel Tosh chuckled this afternoon while being violently raped by a group of men in a Hollywood alley. “You have to admit, this is pretty hilarious,” said the teary-eyed 37-year-old, his bloodied face slamming against a brick wall as he was brutally and repeatedly penetrated against his will for the 53rd straight minute. “Sure, I’ll be forever tormented by images of my attackers tearing off my pants and holding a knife against my throat as they viciously tear into my rectum, but c’mon, you gotta have a sense of humor about this sort of thing.” As of press time, sources said a disheveled Tosh checked into a nearby treatment center, where he quietly smirked after being diagnosed with HIV."



Now THAT is a funny rape joke.