Before watching this I know that Jim Norton is going to be right but be bad at making his points. The comedian they should've had was Louis CK, he's awesome.

Louis CK had a very good point in response to a Jim Norton joke actually. When you perform at a club you're performing in front of a group of people. You don't have time to take a survey and check what these people have been through, or what hotbutton issues they would have problems with. Everyone is different, for example my mom was murdered in a very not nice way, but my friends made jokes about her being dead all my life, it wasn't a big deal to me and I can separate my love for her and my love of a good joke. However I wouldn't expect that for everyone, some people wouldn't be ok with a joke about their mom being dead even if theirs is still alive. I think you can do what you do when you're watching TV, change the channel or remove yourself from that situation. You can face it if you want to and work through issues, and sometimes comedy can really help that by taking you to a dark place and making you laugh there. It's just we're humans, sticky soft disgusting humans.

Ah. Interesting that the commenter above doesn't even bother to hear the other side before weighing in on who "wins."

*quality

Quality again. And more quality.

And I love Louis CK. I have never heard him tell a joke that was anything other than searingly honest and respectful.

Sorry about your loss. Losing your mom so young, in such a terrible way. And your friends seem to be living proof of the formula -- Comedy is Tragedy plus time.

Which speaks to why rape jokes aren't funny. The tragedy is NOW. The threat of violence towards women is on-going -- look at the burgeoning sexual assault crisis in the military. So there is no emotional distance from the events.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by bareboards2.

Well I was mostly only interested in Jim Norton because I'm a fan of his. I've come down on the side of too much freedom of speech is a good thing. I thought everything she said was incredibly valid, however some of it isn't provable. I'm not willing to give the state the power to regulate speech is all. I've heard Jim talk for hours and hours about freedom of speech and comics so I already knew where he was coming from and basically agreed.

That being said Jim is of course biased because his livelyhood is the one being affected. He gets threatened with losing his job on Sirius constantly, and he works with two people who did lose their job once or twice. I totally understand what he's coming from, I'm trying to understand where she's coming from but I think having a penis is blocking me mentally.

The bottom basement point is that this is all good. Not comics, but PEOPLE should understand certain things about the world and them finding out that women don't walk a darkened street feeling safe is illuminating.

Also you like Louis CK but think rape jokes aren't funny? He has like 3 that are great jokes and make you think. How he tells those jokes matter, and apparently he understands it better after having been raised by a mother, having 3 sisters and having 2 daughters.

OH man there have been some dark dark and great jokes that have come out of that. I'm almost glad she was murdered because I got so many great jokes out of it. SEE Still funny.

The tragedy of suicide is now. Bullying is now. Homelessness is now. Rape is now. Etc.. All these horrible things are tragedies now. I think it depends on how close you are to any one of these things. After a girlfriend of mine committed suicide I thought jokes about suicide were inappropriate and not funny. Of course before it had happened it wasn't on my radar and I assume I found humor in them. Same with learning of rape and sexual abuse of friends of mine. Not funny TO ME at that time in my life. However never did I think that rape or suicide jokes should not be told (I just personally didn't want to hear them) regardless of how they upset me. The fact is it's not that the jokes weren't funny, they were just not funny to me, and more then not they still aren't funny to me.

I think I've had this discussion before on quite a few occasions. Nothing is ever off limits to speak about - or rather, it shouldn't be. Jokes can be bad and good, some are harder to pull off than others, rape jokes in particular, because it's such a sensitive issue. Then again, joking "liar liar pants on fire" in a burn ward is hard to pull off too.

@Yogi -- GREAT POST about freedom of speech.

Lindy agrees with you, too. She said so repeatedly. This isn't about censorship. It is about an atmosphere of violence towards women in our society that is considered acceptable, and how these "jokes" can perpetuate it. The power of language -- she even says that -- we don't agree on the power of language, she tells Norton.

As for loving Louis CK -- what I said was I have never heard him say anything that wasn't searingly honest and respectful. When he does a bit on rape, it is worlds apart from Tosh calling on men in a comedy club to rape a woman present in the room. I can't remember the bit(s) Louis has told, but I know that I have heard them and been admiring of his brilliance in tackling a difficult subject. I also do have a sense memory of "whoa, dude! that is going to piss some people off!"

Louis CK is not for everyone. And not everyone fully understands the nuance of his work (I think -- that sounds self aggrandizing, but I do believe it is true.)

@eric579

Someone elsewhere wrote about murder -- how murder is everywhere.

So imagine you are in a dark basement of a comedy club, surrounded by people, some of whom you KNOW are unconvicted and uncaught sociopathic killing-for-fun murderers. Including the comic on the stage. A small percentage of those in the room, absolutely, but you don't know who is who.

And the comic makes a "joke" about those murderers coming for YOU. Not in a general sense. A very specific, you pissed off the comic, so let's target Eric. That guy right there. Who is going to have to walk to his car later. And who is going to drive home and could be followed by one or more of those murderers.

That is the "rape" joke that needs to be excised from our society. And that "rape" joke has been defended and defended and defended as "freedom of speech."

I'm all for freedom of speech. But as long as there are a significant number of men out there who laugh at that "joke", we have a serious problem. When the men in the room don't boo that comic, and instead laugh and then defend that comic, we have a problem.

And that is what this debate is about. Calling on all men to speak up when this kind of rape "joke" goes down.

I think.

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.

@15:50 you can watch her mentally categorize and dismiss Jim Norton as a sexist asshole.

*comedy

Adding video to channels (Comedy) - requested by ant.

She had a fairly sort of haughty and dismissive air about her but I'm not surprised. When you voice your opinion and are told by a few million people that not only is it not valid but that you should be raped for having that opinion you tend to get a bit defensive.

It makes perfect sense to me how she was acting, also the fact is she's a blogger she's not used to performing in front of people, Jimmy is. So she needs to maybe have a course or someone nice to pull her aside and tell her that it doesn't matter that Jimmy disagrees with her or the reactions of the audience. What matters is how you make your argument and the people at home will see it and not being negative or mean will help you.

What's the difference between a pile of dead babies and a porche? I don't have a porche in my garage.

Who was the greatest jewish cook? Hitler.

How do you make a chicken roll? Kick it down a hill.

Why couldn't Helen Keller drive a car? Because she was a woman.

4 jokes, each with a punchline of violence or sexism in some way, shape or form. A Holocaust joke, a sexist joke, a dead baby joke, and an animal cruelty joke. All 4 of those are still things that exist "Now". There's still victims of the Holocaust, miscarriages and murdered children happen all the time, and people still kick chickens, and women driving jokes have been around since, well, women started driving.

It's NOT because of the joke that people do these things, it doesn't perpetuate it, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the levity of the issue, and yet we still consider these okay. However, there's apparently ONE thing that is not okay, only because it could possibly make light of the situation. Everything is okay, or nothing is. Dead Children is bad, Animal Cruelty is bad, Sexism is bad, Rape, just as bad as any of those.

I wouldn't go down the road of ranking the bad things, it could get messy. I think how this whole argument started was based on what wasn't a joke but could just be a guy telling a girl in a room that she should be raped. All those jokes you just said are funny, and the jokes Jim was talking about completely surreal and defensible. The furore stemmed from a particular joke and an undercurrent of anger that the issue is being ignored or even shoved aside by saying women deserve to be raped. So it's understandable that people are mad.

Every joke you said was funny to me, and that's the point Make, People, Laugh. It's your job if you're a comic and you're onstage to Make your audience laugh. There's a famous clip somewhere of awesome comic Patrice O'neal who's no longer with us. He was debating rape jokes with a woman on TV and he made her LAUGH at a rape joke. A person who is basically professionally angry about rape, he made her laugh at a rape joke it was soo funny. Now that is a talent and something that I feel is worth protecting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIuPSuYSOY

Actually, I think Jim did a fantastic job. The woman really fell apart after his example of the Joan Rivers set which was brutal. She really missed the point and deflected trying to make it something that it wasn't. His point that most reasonable people don't change their opinions based on a comedy set (just as much as in watching a play or a movie) is something she just didn't get.

That woman is a fucking retard.

See? Who needs a long comment to get that point across? Certainly not me!

Hey, @ponceleon, methinks it is you who missed her point.

Her VERY FIRST COMMENT was this isn't about censorship. It is about something else. And yet Norton just keeps hitting that drum.

SHE GAVE UP because Norton is an idiot who had one thing to say that she agreed with. And you, dear ponce, never understood that two things were going on.

She is sharp and funny. And trying to make a point about something that is falling on stone deaf ears. Including yours.

@Shepppard, could you take the time to read my post about murder jokes rather than rape jokes? See if that doesn't scare you like (some) rape jokes do most women.

And why are women scared about rape jokes like Tosh's?

Because we life in a society that doesn't recognize that there are loads of uncaught and unconvicted kiiling-for-thrill murderers, and the very real danger is not recognized NOR fought back against.

There is nothing wrong with a rape joke in a world where there is no fear of rape. There is no fear of Hitler. There is no fear of piles of dead babies. And men age 17-25 pay much higher insurance rates than anyone else -- and not because they are great drivers.

And until you get that distinction, then this is a parallel discussion. You can go on and on about freedom of speech, that no one is disagreeing with. And others will continue to try to get you to understand that there is something wrong in our society and until it is faced and addressed, the problem will never be solved.

It isn't about banning rape jokes. It is about understanding how the bloody hell you can think certain rape jokes are funny. Because in my murder scenario, I guarantee you, if you were the person singled out by that hypothetical comic, you would NOT be laughing.

Ah. Here is the best comment I have seen, taken from Stranger Blog:

Jim Norton destroys his own side when he mentions that comedy is about speaking truth to power. Rape victims have no power. Making jokes at their expense is not only offensive it is bad comedy. If you want to make good comedy about rape it should start with being at the expense of the rapist(s) and their enablers.

So, yes a joke involving a rape situation could potentially be 'okay' but it certainly is more of a minefield than say... how many Starbucks' are in Seattle.

Rap music is far, far worse than rape jokes for perpetuating violence against women. A rape joke gets told by one person, once. Rap music is used, over and over, like a mantra. Even girls and women singing about bitches not being anything but hoes. Over and over again. Till the words mean nothing and the idea becomes subliminal.

No, I don't mean ALL rap music, but I can't remember the last country and western song talking about a slut that will sit at the ranch with no panties on. Knowing she can say no, but never will.

There's a future we can all wish on our daughters. Mmmhmmm. Yep.

The way Lindy West talks is so off-putting.

http://jezebel.com/if-comedy-has-no-lady-problem-why-am-i-getting-so-many-511214385

Here is what life has been like for Lindy since she dared to have an opinion, express it, and not be alluring and easy for the guys to listen to.

@Yogi!!!!!

http://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke

She has four rape jokes that work in this article. And there is Louis CK!

The problem here is that this debate (in general, not this video specifically) is only between the ideologues, and ideologues are fucking morons. The debate is between "rape jokes are always ok" and "rape jokes are never ok".

The truth is that rape jokes need to be judged on a one-off basis, but anyone who enters this debate with some nuance gets the strawman treatment.