My two cents:
This Dan Turner is an immature idiot who was probably a really unpopular kid who found his dad’s dirty joke book in 9th grade and managed to get his classmates to pay attention to him, which made him decide that he was actually funny, and until now, no one’s told him that he’s really just an idiot. He’s the kind of blowhard who tells really bad, unfunny jokes and thinks he’s the life of the party, and because of his proximity to power, people have just let him get away with it. So, he tells a joke that wouldn’t even be funny if “enough time” had passed, and forgetting that there’s a time and a place (or possibly never having been told this in the first place), he sends this joke out in an official communication. Realistically, he probably tells bad jokes via official email all the time and no one’s ever called him on it, but this time, he happened to make light of a recent international tragedy. To me, this is the kind of guy who probably should have been fired long ago for not behaving in a professional manner, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and the most disappointing thing to me was that it took this lame ass joke to finally break the camel’s back as it were.
As for Gottfried, I’ve appreciated some of his humor, and I don’t demonize him for these jokes, because it’s what he DOES. As someone mentioned, the scene in the Aristocrats showed him starting in on 9/11, and the audience shouting “too soon, too soon.” Just last September, when fellow comic Greg Giraldo committed suicide, Gilbert tweeted (on the day of Giraldo’s death) something to the effect of “if he’s cremated, will that be the Greg Giraldo roast?” Insensitive? Yes! Funny? Depends on who you ask. Too soon? Well, most would say yes, but if you watched the Aristocrats, you’d know that Gilbert does not subscribe to the theory of there being such a thing as “too soon”.
What I got out of the Aristocrats was something that I’d sort of known intuitively, but had never really articulated…the fact that the basis of humor is in defying your expectations….we laugh because what we are given in the form of a “punch line” is not what we are expecting. There are many ways to achieve this, but the comedians who work “on the cutting edge” do so by “pushing the envelope”. Essentially, if you consider what humor was 20, 50, or 100 years ago, the funniest things were what was culturally outside the norm. Our cultural mores shift over time, and in our modern society, very little that used to be taboo is now still considered “untouchable”. In fact, it seems that the most shocking (and therefore to some, the most funny) thing you can do is to violate the rules of political correctness.
So this is Gilbert Gottfried’s “schtick”, always has been, always will be, and to be honest, I “get” mean humor…it requires detachment from the situation. So the way I see it, a comic who makes his living by saying shocking things, by being politically incorrect and insensitive, can be expected to make light of a tragedy without regard for the rules that most of us follow. If anything, Aflac should not have the gall to act surprised that he would make these jokes….anyone following Gilbert on Twitter because they enjoy his humor would be hard pressed to claim they were “offended” or “shocked” by these comments.
Now, although I can laugh on the inside at “mean” and “insensitive” humor, and therefore have no right to judge someone for utilizing it, I see a big distinction between Turner and Gottfried here, Turner was an assistant to a high ranking government official, he was acting in an official capacity…not only would his position have put him closer to the situation. One would expect that making light of an international tragedy amongst government and political figures would bound to be unexpected and unwelcomed by most who would read the comments, not so with Gottfried.
Bottom line is, comedy and tragedy have often been linked, because indeed there is a fine line between the two. Both shock a reaction out of you…the difference being in how that shock is meant to make you feel…good or bad. Some things can be both funny and tragic, and this often depends solely on perspective. To someone who is emotionally detached from the situation, something could be funny which would be patently offensive and personally upsetting to another. Humor is a subjective thing…to be honest, as much as I abhor rape and rapists, I’d rather sit through an hour comedy routine consisting only of rape jokes than watch Jay Leno’s show for an hour, yet millions watch him every weeknight. I think when someone makes light of something truly tragic, it does not mean that he or she does not understand why it is tragic, it doesn’t mean that he or she does not feel bad for the victims of the tragedy, but it does mean that given the ability to view this situation from a disconnected and unemotional point of view, they are able to find the humor within the situation.
To wrap this up, I think we need people like Gilbert out there making these kinds of jokes, because he is trying to break down our modern day taboos. He is a response to our current culture of outrage…people seem to be looking for things to be outraged by, and it’s gotten to the point where we as a society shoot first and ask questions later. Consider 9/11. Up until that day, people were throwing eggs at Bush’s motorcade, many felt he was an illegitimate leader who had illegally seized power by using his influence. On 9/11 he gave a speech which boiled down to the equivalent of “we’re gonna make ‘em pay for what they done,” and it was hailed by over 90% of the people as a truly “Presidential” moment. For months afterwards you couldn’t say anything bad about Bush…every anti-Bush website was taken down or suspended…even Barbara Streissand went on record saying she would not be critical of him at this time. It was “too soon”. Bill Maher simply stated that you can call people who die for what they believe anything you want, but “coward” might not be the right word, and he was fired and treated like a pariah. Something like 2 years later, one of the Dixie Chicks suggested that Bush made her ashamed to be a Texan, and suddenly they’re banned from radio and getting death threats. Now we’ve got this conservative blogger who is sending people out undercover to destroy the organizations he doesn’t like, such as ACORN (an organization that fought for decades to raise people out of poverty) or NPR (the only source of news we have in this country that is not controlled by commercial interests)....same guy responsible for bringing down ACORN just this week re-edited some comments from an NPR fundraiser to make them sound really bad, and both the fundraiser and the President of NPR were fired, even though the whole tape showed nothing that offensive.
And both sides do the same shit. This week, ultra conservative Larry Kudlow on CNBC was simply doing his job, talking about the financial impact of the Tsunami, and what he tried to impart was that the human cost aside, this could also be a great economic cost…nothing untrue or offensive about that, but his comments were portrayed as if he said the human cost was not important at all. You have Helen Thomas who for decades covered every Presidential press conference, and then one day said something that was poorly worded that offended Jewish people, and suddenly her esteemed career ends in shame.
Political correctness and our over-willingness to police it by being hyper critical of every thing anyone says that someone might not like is destroying long held traditions, well intentioned people are making life more difficult for those they most want to help by over-reacting and not asking questions or trying to put anything in context. We are a society that lacks context, we seek the 15 second sound byte to tell us what we think, we’re too busy to see point of view, perspective or multiple sides of the same story. People like Gilbert Gottfried realize that and make that point by purposely not playing by these rules. And seeing that I can say two things that may seem contradictory, but which are both 100% true. #1 – I feel deeply for the people affected by the tragedy. #2 – I see nothing wrong with making light of the situation if you don’t do so with the intent of it being hurtful to someone.
In short, people need to lighten up and learn to simply ignore the things they don’t like…if we could ALL do that, then our society could advance light years. But as the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs…Gottfried cracks eggs for a living…we don’t like how he cooks the omelet, then we don’t eat it, simple as that.
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