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ScruggyBear

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Posts posted by ScruggyBear

  1. Posted

    Great Case Closed. In my mind what makes comedy offensive or not is the perspective not the subject matter or when it was said. For instance, when Gilbert Gottfried was making jokes about the tsunami in Japan, I thought that was fucked up, because he was making fun of the victims, and I just don't see the merit or humor of sitting at home making light of a tragedy that didn't affect you. To me that's just callous, and I don't think the jokes are any funnier now that time has passed because the perspective of the jokes is belittling the pain, hardship and death that actual people have experienced. It's not the topic I find distatesful, but what he's saying about the topic.

     

    He didn't really make fun of anything specific. All of those tweets could've been changed from Japan to New Orleans and they would've been the same... Whether the jokes were funny or not based on being jokes, that's up to you and your sense of humor.

     

    Regardless of being funny or not, that was blown way out of proportion and not was not worth being fired over. I mean, Aflac fires him, gets headlines, and then went out and hired an impersonator to be the duck. They must've really cared about their character since they hired a cheap imitation! Aflac couldn't give a fuck about the Tsunami, they just wanted to be seen as righteous, grab headlines, and save money by paying a fraction of Gottfried's salary to some other guy.

     

     

    I pretty much agree with thestray on this topic. I think Gottfried's joke made fun of the victims of the tragedy in a really callous way, and it would have been the same if he'd been making fun of Katrina victims. Just as I don't think we should say that comedy about a tough subject is "too soon" just because it's comedy, I also don't think you should hide behind the banner that "it's just comedy" when you're being so callous about the victims of a tragedy. In one case the comedy is making fun of the people who promote a culture of gun-worship and people who take advantage of children's grief; in the other case the comedy is making fun of victims. I think that's the difference - not the timing, and certainly not the issue of whether it's a straightforward opinion, a story, or comedy.

     

    As to the firing, I didn't (and wouldn't have) called for it, and his joke really doesn't affect whether I would buy Aflac. I do think there's a censorship element to going after the job of anyone who says something you find offensive. But I don't think that just talking about why I don't like the joke and find it malicious is the same thing.

  4. Posted

    Well, there certainly could be something to God's Laws just being weird and arbitrary. Harris's explanation of pork taboos doesn't really explain all the other weird food taboos in the Old Testament. The only explanation I've heard had something to do with animals looking like monsters or something (shellfish), or animals that have cloven hooves but don't chew cud or vice versa... Which is kind of arbitrary and doesn't make sense, but humans are often arbitrary and don't make sense, so I could buy it.

  5. Posted

    Marvin Harris posited that the reason for the pork taboo had more to do with how shitty it would be to herd pigs through the desert. Unlike, say, goats, pigs basically just eat the same things humans do, so they'd be taking away some of the people's own food supply instead of just grazing. Also, goats provide wool, milk, and blood all throughout their lives, whereas pigs only provide meat. Well, I guess pigs have milk, but I've never tasted any and I assume there's a good reason for that. The thing about food poisoning doesn't make that much sense because the other meats they ate apparently had just as high (if not higher) rates of food poisoning.

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