Jimmy Carr has been under fire all weekend over a joke he told on his Netflix special ‘His Dark Material’, in which he says people ‘never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis’ in the Holocaust, because ‘no one ever wants to talk about the positives’.
Here’s a clip of the joke doing the rounds on Twitter:
I don’t know what I should be more gutted or disgusted by here.. the kind of Racism that us GRT people are forced to live with every day.. that’s it’s still absolutely ok to demonise us & our demise as a joke…or the reactions of whooping & cheering from the audience.. pic.twitter.com/nZnJslasX2
— Mikey Walsh (@thatbloodyMikey) February 4, 2022
Well according to The Mirror, Jimmy addressed the controversy during his show at Whitley Bay Playhouse the other night. During the gig, a woman in the audience heckled him and asked: ‘Are we going to talk about the Holocaust?’ to which the comic replied:
We are going to talk about cancel culture, the whole thing. We are going to talk about f***ing everything people. Relax.
We are speaking my friends in the last chance saloon. What I am saying on stage this evening is barely acceptable now.
In 10 years f***ing forget about it. You are going to be able to tell your grandchildren about seeing this show tonight.
You will say I saw a man and he stood on a stage and he made light of serious issues. We used to call them jokes and people would laugh.
The joke that ends my career is already out there. I am going to get cancelled, that’s the bad news. It’s on YouTube, Netflix, or whatever, and it’s fine until one day it f***ing isn’t.
Sounds like he’s pretty relaxed about the whole thing? Probably knew it was only a matter of time before the cancel crew came for him, given the kinds of jokes he’s cracked over the years. Netflix is now under pressure to remove the segment from his special, or remove the special from their platform entirely.
It’s a tricky one, though. We know it’s the job of comedians to push the limits of what is acceptable to joke about, and sometimes we laugh at a joke exactly because we know we’re not supposed to. It doesn’t mean you literally agree with or support what is being said, it’s that you know it’s an outrageous thing to say. Jimmy Carr set up the joke as though he was going to say one thing, and then said the opposite. Classic comedian misdirection.
It’s also worth watching the part that came immediately after the joke:
Right after that Joke. pic.twitter.com/2Vt1qjuBcn
— InStInCt (@LeBlondor) February 4, 2022
Does that make the joke any more palatable? Debatable. Pretty amazing that Carr’s managed to get this far in his career without being cancelled already though, given the jokes he’s made about rape, acid attacks and starving African children over the years. We’ll have to see how this one plays out.
For the comedian ordered to pay $35,000 for making a joke about a disabled boy, click HERE.
