I agree, our culture is barbaric, and getting more so. We're already discarding our culture's core pillar, that citizens have the right to believe in any religion they want....or none. I fully expect atheists to be the next targeted group, we're easy, a small (by comparison) group with little political power, and we're distrusted by the right, but not supported fully by the left, and we're an acceptable target for ridicule and distrust by almost all religious people. I ain't goin to no camp.

We (Americans) hold our prejudice tightly, and are worried about anyone different from ourselves, seemingly ignorant of the fact that we are (almost) al immigrants, and that our nation is built on the idea that different cultures together are stronger than any one.
We let Irish in while the IRA called for death to Brittan and tried to give it to them, without any extra vetting. What's different about these people....hmmmm? A different culture that, in your words, is barbaric? I guess you have an incredibly short memory, because until the mid 90's, terroristic barbarism was mostly reserved for Christians, yet no one suggested halting Christian immigration or extra vetting. Historically, Christian culture is far more barbaric and anti-intellectual.

@transmorpher

you seem a smart sort.
so i am curious how you reconcile your own biases and prejudices that the rest of us struggle with on a constant basis?

humans,taken as a whole,are pretty fucking dumb and tend to adhere to social constructs that appeals to our inherent tribalism.this is why we are so easily manipulated by:nationalistic pride,religion and yes..racism.

this is why i found this video so delicious.
overt racism is something that is so transparent that we can all recognize and despise its deplorable and divisive nature.

but we all struggle with our own biases,and prejudices,and this video reveals that ugly truth in such a glorious fashion,because it exposes our hypocrisy and reveals and uncomfortable truth about our own prejudices.

it is funny,because it is true.
uncomfortably true.

so your comment came across as sanctimonious moralizing to me,but i want to give you the benefit of the doubt and ask how YOU reconciled your own,very human... prejudices.

because i struggle with mine on a daily basis.

It seems odd to suggest people take life lessons from a person that intentionally ended their life.

I totally disagree. Irony is a useful tool to force people to self examine their own thoughts and beliefs, find flaws, and hopefully work to improve. It seems the voiceover guy is conflating irony and cynicism.
Even cynicism has it's usefulness. We need cynics to critically examine our prejudices, debunk them when appropriate, and set us straight. If we didn't have people who were cynical, we would all just accept whatever we're told without anyone ever checking to see if it's true (a HUGE problem with people today).

He also compares being sincere with being cynical. They are not opposites by any means. One can be sincerely cynical.

I find the ending confusing. Again, he takes a life lesson from DFW about how to be "human", "be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo prone and generally pathetic"....since that mindset led to him commit suicide, it seems to be terrible advice to end on.

@ChaosEngine
agreed.
context matters and i think being a decent human being plays a large role in that dynamic.

people tend to attempt to break down complex ideas and/or ideologies into more easily digestible morsels.this "twitter speak",in my opinion,is largely responsible for the decay of human interactions.

we all are biased.
we all hold prejudices,and preconceptions based on our learned experiences.
which are subjective.

we see the world through the lens of our own subjectivity and even the most open minded and non-judgemental person,when trying to sympathize/empathize with another person, will use their own subjective understandings in order to understand that person.

this tactic,which we all employ,will almost always fall short of true understanding.

so we rely on words,metaphors,allegory etc etc in order to communicate fairly complex emotions and experiences.

what brendon o'neill is pointing out,is that when we start to restrict words as acceptable and unacceptable,we infantilize our interactions.

words are inert.
they are simply symbols representing a thing,action or emotion.
it is WE who apply the deeper meanings by way of our subjective lens.

i am not trying to make something simple complicated,but bear with me.
a rock will always be a rock,but a cunt has a totally different meaning here in the states than in britain.(love you brits,and cunt is a brilliant word).

the problems of culture,region,nationality or race all play a role in not only how we communicate but how that communication is received ...and interpreted.

so misunderstandings can happen quite easily,and then when we consider that the persons intent is by far the greatest metric to judge the veracity of the words being spoken,and just how difficult it is to discern that intent....this is where nuance and context play such a major role,but we need to have as many tools in our language box to express oftentimes very difficult concepts,multi-layered emotions and complicated ideologies.

and,unfortunately,there are attempts to legislate speech.

of course well intentioned,and reasonable sounding,but like any legislation dealing with the subjective nature of humans,has the possibility of abuse.

case in point:http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/

a new canadian addendum to their human rights statute.on the surface this is a fairly benign addition to canadas already existing human rights laws,but there is the possibility of abuse.

a psychology professor from university of toronto was critical of this new addendum,and has created a flurry of controversy in regards to his criticism.

which you can check out here:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/301661-this-canadian-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

now he was protested,received death threats,there was even violence and a new internet star was born affectionately labeled "smugglypuff".

see:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugglypuff

i agree that free speech cannot be viewed with an absolutist mindset.absolutist thinking leads to stagnation and a self-righteous fundamentalism,so we NEED the free flow of ideas...even BAD ideas..even offensive and racist..because this brings all those feelings/thoughts/ideologies into the market of ideas to be either absorbed or ridiculed and ultimately ostracized for the shit philosophy they represent.

i WANT to know who the racists are.
i want to know who is bigoted or prejudiced.
i want to know who is holding on to stupid ideas,or promoting fascism dressed up as nationalistic pride.

and the only way to shine a light on these horrendous and detrimental ideas is to allow those who hold them openly state who and what they are...so we can criticize/challenge and in some cases..ridicule.

we should be free to say whatever we wish,but we are not free from challenge or criticism.
we can say whatever pops into our pretty little head,but we are not free from consequences.
we are also not free from offense.

i know this is long,and i hope you stayed with me,and if you did,thanks man.i know i tend to ramble.

but we can use the banning of gorillaman as a small microcosm of what we are talking about here.

i felt that we,as a community,could take gorilla to task for his poor choice in verbiage "nigger prince" and i attempted to make the case by using his history,dark humor and bad taste to add context to his poor choice of wording.

bareboards felt it was a matter for the administrators to deal with.i am not saying her choice was wrong.just that we approached the problem from different perspectives.

now gorilla decided to become the human torch and flame out.which threw my approach right out the window.

but the point i am making in that case,is that bad ideas,bad philosophies,bigotry and racism will ALWAYS reveal themselves if we allow that process to ultimately expose bad ideas/shit person.

the free flow of ideas is the proverbial rope that ultimately hangs all shit ideas.

thanks for hanging kids.
love you all!

@bobknight33
ya know bob,at some point you are going to look back at these comments,or someone is inevitably going to bring them to your attention in the future,and you are going to be forced to eat a slice of humble pie.

i am not disagreeing with you in regards to corporate media bias,and that some people consume only those outlets that appeal to their own prejudices and biases.

as this election has made abundantly clear:both those who identify as democrat and republican are guilty of confirmation bias,and had fallen into the trap of their own personal echo chambers.

so many supposed "news" outlets were aught red-handed pandering,obfuscating and sometimes promoting outright propaganda.

the latest outlet to get caught in this fuckery is the washington post,and i suspect there will be many many more.

my point is simply this.
propaganda works,and it is an effective tool to control attitudes and opinions,they do not even have to "win" the argument,they just have to make a person reconsider their position by postulating possibilities,make one go "well,maybe..that could happen"...and they win.

so you are right in regards to fake news that appeals to the more "liberal minded" but do not think for a second that there are also corporate "news" outlets that appeal to the more "conservative minded".

we all,each and every one of us,are susceptible to this tactic.we all can be manipulated by appeals to emotions,our sense of justice and fairness,and of course..our prejudices.

the only way to combat this tactic is by remaining vigilant and do our due diligence.this starts by listening to people we may disagree.by fact checking and discussing with one another to test the veracity of the claims by certain outlets.

speaking only for myself i dumped corporate media years ago.

it is still an imperfect system i use,and i have posted fallacious content (not intentionally) and been called out for it's bullshit.

i didn't like being called out,and felt shame for my laziness and the fact i posted because it adhered to my own preconceptions,but i was the better for it.

so be careful when you make declarations of certitude by using corporate media outlets as a source,because more often than not,that information has been manipulated to appeal to a certain mindset and attitude.

liberals have known for decades the FOX news is a corporate media propaganda machine,but they have also been just as much a victim of the very same tactics by such outlets as MSNBC and CNN.

american conservatives are not the problem,nor are american liberals.

it is the corporate media who is beholden to those who wield power and influence,and seek to manipulate the opinions of the american people in order to retain THEIR power and THEIR influence and therefore diminish the cohesive community of the american people.

ok..i really don;t know where i am going with this..i had a point somewhere.

basically stop using corporate media as your references bob,otherwise you are going to be pantsed in public,and that is an ickly feeling.

Thing that really sticks in my throat here.

The most generous current estimate of trans % by population is 0.6%.

The mother of the child here is a vehement and very pro-active trans rights campaigner.

I don't know the proportion of life long trans campaigners, but I'm pretty sure the odds of them having a trans kid are vanishingly small. Much more so for such an extreme and unusual case as this one.

We are both relegated to pure speculation here but, I know at least one example (my brothers partner) of a girl being raised by a lesbian mother, who had deep emotional problems instilled into her from a very early age. i.e. men are bad, she should be attracted to women etc.

Took her well into adulthood to get over that and she is still a mixed up person (mother is to put it politely; a bit mental)

This is a different example of course, but the underlying problem and how it messed her up for most of her childhood seems like it could be similar. We are so used to the prejudices against "normal" gender roles and sexual orientation that it is perhaps easy to forget that this can work just as easily in reverse.
The problem can essentially be asshole parents instilling a mixed up and narrow concept of what is normal. Which either restricts their existing exploration of identity, or actively coerces towards a particular outcome.

IDK, you may just be right and the kid manifested this underlying genetic problem at a very early age. Her mother may be a perfectly even handed and caring person etc. etc.

It just concerns me that it could so easily be the other way around. But you are right about many people simply adopting alternative gender roles rather than physically transitioning. But if this kid starts the hormone blockers, she is sterile for life and will undergo irreversible changes in her development.

If she were to change her mind later in life as she matures... that 40% suicide rate is no joke

& yeh there are certainly strong arguments from inside the trans community against ideas of non binary genders. Most trans people are one gender wishing to transition to, or be treated as the other gender.

I can see an argument for perhaps having a third intermediary gender, beyond that it seems more like lifestyle choices than actual gender issues. e.g. like you say a T.V. man who likes to dress as a woman isn't someone who wants to be a woman, or even gay. It's just a man who likes to feel beautiful in a dress and makeup (to quote Eddie Izzard "male lesbian").

Anyway I don't think you have said anything offensive. This is a mire of a subject and anyone reasonable is going to appreciate your (our) confusion & concerns.

For those not in the know, Canada apparently just passed a bill that makes "Refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun” legally prosecutable.

i.e. calling someone He or She when they would prefer xe, ve, per, ae, zie (or anything else they care to make up), that is now legally actionable.

I suspect however the reality of the situation may be overblown. Some people are claiming it's now a hate crime which seems a little misleading.
Though that it is technically somewhat correct, the law really just added gender identity to the existing list of classes protected from "hate speech". That is to say, a legal offence predicated on apparent prejudice or hatred towards a specific minority group.

Now the idea of hate speech laws themselves is another can of worms (I have my misgivings). But as far as I can tell the law isn't really about casual use of pronouns, so much as institutional prejudice against said groups, or extremist rhetoric ("Kill all the queers" or whathaveyou).

Still strikes me as questionable, but it's the precedent of having hate speech law in general that concerns me (or rather the ripe potential for misuse).

IDK, complicated issue.

Edit: To be clear that's context for the joke, not the content

Sometimes I feel like I live on a different planet to other people. People keep telling me 'that's what men do' but I'm a man and that's not what I've ever done. But I'm not going to bang on and on about Trump, it's all been said before.

Because I'm so used to the kind of trash Trump comes out with, what shocked me from this video is that Oliver would suggest Clinton is the end point of a century old quest for female equality. She is from a powerful, rich family with connections and funding from some of the shadiest, rapacious industries/organisations in the world. Her victory wouldn't be a triumph for women, it would be a triumph for money and the elite ruling classes.

A triumph for women would be a rise to status based on merit and hard work, battling oppression every step of the way to change opinions and break new ground for anyone who follows. The success of Hillary's career mirrored Bill's and as his power and wealth increased so did her's.

What does this say? Work hard and you can overcome the prejudices of a male dominated society? No - it says if you're from the right family and know the right people, you can be president. Called Bush or Clinton? You're in with a shot. Hillary winning doesn't change the game, it doesn't pioneer a new path for females.

It is bullshit and it riles me because it's a manipulation of virtue. Hey everyone, vote for our FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT, what an amazing and equal country we are, you're sexist if you don't want it! This has been a centuries long struggle but finally a strong enough woman has achieved what no other woman could do, it's time to recognise her strength of character! FUCK OFF. There have been millions of women more qualified and appropriate than her who never got even a sniff of a chance because they didn't anchor themselves to the right man, they weren't born into a particular family and spent childhood holidays with the sons and daughters of fossil fuel barons, investment companies, etc. The system is biased and wrong and Hillary winning only confirms that.

Agreed all religious books hate gays, subjugate women and worse. But protect your Koran. Just don't ever pretend to be progressive or for equal rights. Not sure what happened to the old bareboards2, guess something changed. And btw, I don't remember everything, but I do remember people and their hearts. That part is so fucking easy I seriously think other people just don't care. I want equality, and that sometimes means people are equally full of shit--ie. religious texts. And also, no fucking way can someone defend it as being "interpreted differently by different people." Maybe a book says kill all the faggots and certain people would say it means kill them with kindness, but only a truly fucking ignorant person would think that about followers of that religion. I couldn't care less about prejudice against a book.

I fear you have misunderstood what I was getting at.

He talks for full minute about the ironic idea of the victims hypothetically having a sense of cognitive dissonance about the experience (done from his perspective).

Timestamp: 3:40ish to 4:50ish

I don't for a moment think he is suggesting they actually did, but the juxtaposition of that can be funny for the reasons I already outlined.
i.e. it is a common phenomenon in other areas of our experience, with people we idolise. By associating it with an experience in which we presume most people wouldn't or didn't feel that way, we have more strings of that irony thrown into the comedy orchestra.

Cosby is famous and loved and his fans presumably find him funny. There is therefore humour in the ridiculous idea that there might be some starstruck joy in being violated by said idol.

I think the bit worked perfectly if one can detach oneself from ideological prejudices.

As I already said, Louis's bits about paedophilia don't appear to be doing anything different here and thus far you have failed to explain how they actually differ, other than using the unqualified term "truthful".

Louis talks about their desires and relates them in a way universal to the human condition. This is precisely what much of Jim routine is clearly doing. "think about the thing you really love to do, well that's how Bill feels about rape" (paraphrased).

I can't see a distinction right now other than you appear to be much more emotionally sensitive to the rape thing. This is understandable, but I'm not seeing the lack of equivalence between the two comics here in terms of composition and implied meaning?

This whole bit felt deeply multi stranded and was tackling many disparate concepts at once. The gradation of rape was merely one of them and I think it's unfair to break it down to only one, or to deny the "truthfulness" hiding behind the sham.

Without that "truthfulness" the whole bit doesn't work, the assumption that the audience recognises the reality beneath the sham is unavoidable. Unless of course you think the audience and or Jim to be genuinely callous and misogynistic (which you've made clear you do not).

I guess my whole point is that the two bits are functionally almost identical. The only difference I can really see is a different style of delivery and subject matter.

I notice you appear to have dodged the comparisons to his war jokes?

Is there no moral equivalence there? If anything there is far less empathy and personal "truth" being explored. The "little cunt" just dies, Jim never attempts to humanise him or relate the kids experience in an ironic way.

By your logic that routine should be far more offensive surely? (especially when we consider that life and subsequent brutal death in a warzone is quite possibly a more horrible experience than most rapes, especially the kind being discussed here)

That's a pretty big can of worms you're opening there newt.

Do you REALLY want to make it ok for people to legally discriminate for any reason?

You'd be comfortable with shops refusing services to gays or non-caucasians or atheists or insert-your-own-prejudice-here?

"Awww, but we could boycott them!"

So, a libertarian market solution then? Those don't work. Because as soon as you allow a business to be racist or homophobic or whatever, you will have racist, homophobic assholes queueing up to support them.

Sorry, but you don't get to impose your values on your customer (regardless of whether your values are good or evil). Unless what you're being asked to do is actually illegal (and that includes hate speech, so asking a baker to make a KKK cake would cover that), you suck it up and do your job.

If you want to make a political point in your business, there are other ways to do it. Source your materials through fair trade. Tell this moron Trump supporter that the profits from his t-shirt are going straight to Hillarys campaign fund.

White people in England are immigrants though if they happen to be Polish, for example. Only the Brits in Poland are expats. Not sure about Brits in Poland who happen to be of colour, they might be elevated to expat status, unless some football hooligans meet them in a dark alley, then they become... yeah he is about right.

The "individual acts of prejudice" can only happen because society in general allows them.

Without wishing to bang on about it - that happens a LOT on the internet. I think it's less about tone of voice and more about people being so offended by inequality that they are over aggressive in their pursuit of equality. They attack the argument before fully understanding it or allowing it to be fully expressed.

It's a really tight line to walk and I know this because I have in the past offended respectful, honest people in my crusade which was against abuse of power and authority. I hated being mistreated by people in authority so much that I became prejudiced against people in authority. The reason I behaved like that is because of how I was treated by authority figures in my formative years and the defence mechanisms I developed because of it. And in the same way, some women who are very poorly treated by men may develop barriers, prejudices and coping mechanisms in response.

(... and that's why I make a dozen edits to my posts. Sometimes I get carried away and detract entirely from what I was trying to achieve.)

I'm not saying that's the underlying cause of the misunderstanding here, but the point I'm trying to make is that there may be good reasons why someone just said something you thought was sexist. Problems arise, I think, when we deal in absolutes; this person is definitely chauvinist because he's ignorant and rude, this person is definitely a man-hater because she is ignorant and rude - both may be unfair to the other.

@ChaosEngine.

Yeah. I know. Your last sentence says it all -- he didn't achieve near as much as was hoped for. Hence your disappointment.

From my perspective, I never believed he could do all that was hoped. Because this isn't a dictatorship (thank god, maybe we can survive Trump.) It was clear to me from the beginning that is wasn't possible.

So I wasn't disappointed. I was glad for all that he did manage to get through.

And that is what makes him consequential.

I have my list of things I am pissed at him about for doing -- including the murdering of brown people, including bin Laden. (And I'm pissed at most of the people in this country for cheering state sponsored targeted assassination and ignoring the huge collateral damage of that day and the days that followed.)

History isn't going to judge him on what he promised and couldn't get done. History will judge him on what he actually did. Half-assed heathcare is half an ass more than was managed in over a hundred years. LGBT people aren't disappointed.

And being the first black president -- he'll be in the history books for being that particular breed of person -- the minority who is 10 times better than the ruling majority, who swallows the indignities of prejudice with grace and determination, who rises above the humiliations to become The First. Think Jackie Robinson -- that is what we remember about him, that is the story that has survived. (The recent PBS doc taught me a fuller picture of who he actually was after he survived those brutal first two years in the majors.) That is the story we crave.

He's consequential, all right. Not perfect. Consequential.

Hillary is the most consistent liar and has most inconsistently held positions (flip-flop) in US candidate history. It doesn't take much time to research this with as few words such as "Clinton lies" or "Clinton fraud" on YouTube.

There's plenty of short video's of compilations &/or speeches pointing out her pathological lies for those who just can't be arsed spending too much time actually looking into the matter.

For those who genuinely give a shit (or say they do), there are well detailed documentaries going into scary detail of just how unreliable and empty her words are, and always have been, for the sole reason that she (proven time and time again) says whatever she thinks is 'opinion-poll' best at the time, regardless of what she's said yesterday or will say tomorrow.

I hope Bernie somehow wins it, as he's the only decent human as a candidate. Although Trump may not be an ideal option for many, some of his shit wouldn't fly and you at least get a reliable direction of his intent.

Hilary is a fraudulent, power hungry pathological liar lacking consistency, who has more experience and skill in shadow politics than any candidate of recent history.

How can so many refer to her as the lesser of 2 evils, when none of you legitimately know what her positions are, as even experts state it can't be known from what she's said or done.

Sounds more like some of you are prepared to vote out of prejudices against Reps. Blind loyalty is pretending you know what you're doing, when you don't really care about the issue.