This is supposed to be funny? What kind of a society do we live in where "comics" like this win awards"?

Question

I'm new to the world of MP3 players and podcasts since I gave my daughter an MP3 player for her birthday. I heard about a website for the "Podcast Awards" and decided to check it out. I followed one of the links for one of the "People's Choice" candidates, a comedy podcast called "Keith and the Girl".

The animated sample podcast was an absolutely disgusting skit mocking and ridiculing kids with mental disabilities at some imaginary benefit for a home. I stopped watching after about a minute and my blood is still boiling.

These kind of lowlifes make me absolutely sick. I guess if you can't be funny you just have to be idiotically insensitive and crude.

Oh how clever of them to push the boundaries of bad taste. Way to cater the worst in people. For every person out there who tries to set a positive example for the young and impressionable there's idiot parasites like this exploiting and promoting the worst in them.

(continued)

What is wrong with a society that not only produces this garbage, but also that receive popular support as "The Peoples Choice"?

All of the hard work done by wonderful and compassionate people to undo the stigma is so easily and thoughtlessly undone by this kind of cruelty.

I feel dirty just having been briefly exposed to this. Thanks, for listening to my rant. Looking forward to hearing your responses.

P.S. I have another daughter who is mentally disabled, so this is not just about me sheltering my older daughter.

Answer 1

I haven't seen this bit. I haven't heard of it either, but that doesn't mean much. I guess that my answer to that would be that as of late, there really is no original bit of anything. Pretty much everything has been done and now, the only thing left is to explore uncharted frontiers and to make fun of those with disabilities. It's sad and flawed, but it is the reality in which we live. If you just poke around online and read some people's answers to questions, you will see that a lot of people's first response to anything that they do not understand is to simply ridicule. It’s the easiest way out and in some forums, the easiest way to get a laugh. It’s very easy for someone lacking a conscience to obtain laughs and/or approval from a vacant, insipid audience. The content fits the audience and one can only hope that the audience is a small one.

Answer 2

The difficulty with an advanced concept like "freedom of speech" is it allows not only the finest ideas you can think of, but also the worst.

Of course - commenting without hearing/seeing the skit would be of little value. That's just a "me too" knee jerk response.

Comedy is very subjective; and over several hundreds of years some pretty brutal comics have said some very insensitive and offensive things. Jonathan Swift satirically suggested the Irish eat their children during a famine. That's pretty bleak stuff.

Are people uncomfortable around the handicapped or disabled? Yes - honestly, many of us are. Do we say it aloud - no, not generally. Is it wrong to be "honest" - even when it is cruel? Possibly. Is it funny? It would take a brilliant comic to make such discomfort funny for everyone.

Is comedy supposed to be for everyone? No - some like pickle jokes and some like Jon Stewart.

Is it wonderful that everyone with a microphone can make their "jokes" available to the entire world via the Internet. Um, no. One of the advantages of the "old media" is that there were editors/publishers/record label executives, who helped choose what was well-written, or well-recorded, before it got released.

Now I can make an all-cow bell song about farting and put it on the web. And if there is one person in every city that finds that funny - then I have 5,000 fans in America and they all feel like - because they found the other 4,900 goofballs that have the same sense of humor as they do - that they're normal.

Answer 3

I know, dude, people can be sick and heartless, but this is the world we live in right now, and if you've taught your daughter well, she'll just tune out all the offensive stuff and stick to quality. It's like when I was in high school and Beavis and Butt-Head were on, getting all kinds of bad press. Because I had been raised right, with morals, ethics, and values, I could watch those shows, even see the humor in some of them, and still not try to copy or imitate anything I'd seen and heard. I don't mean to slam you personally, but I think that if our society worried less about what was on TV and in the media and focused more on giving their kids a good background and strong moral fiber, they wouldn't even need to concern themselves about what the kids were watching because they'd know that their children know the difference between right and wrong. As kids grow into adults, it is important that they are exposed to everything in the world and then use their own (hopefully strong) moral compass to filter out that which they don't want to see or hear. Sheltering them from everything is not the answer. I am 100% against censorship in any form.

Answer 4

Childish people with IQ's hovering in the single digits have to make fun of others to make themselves feel more prestigious. To the point, though, this society has become that way because everyone is a star (in their own minds at least) and get their tips from MTV reality shows and the such. There is no longer hardly any respect for other people in our society. When kids can safely smart off to and ignore teachers and others with authority without fear of reprisal, what other direction do you expect people to take? The kids with the mental disabilities are far better people than the perpetrators of stuff like this could ever be.

Answer 5

I haven't seen the skit, but I think you are 100% correct. Just the other day, the morning dj's I listen to were outraged over something they saw on YouTube. Apparently, there are some guys who get a thrill from going through a drive-through restaraunt, and when the cashier hands them their drinks, be it a soft drink or a milk-shake, these losers throw it on the worker and speed off, laughing hysterically. How is that supposed to be funny in any way, shape or form? Society has developed a very warped, twisted sense of humor and unfortunately, it often comes at the expense of those less fortunate.

Answer 6

I guess we live in a world that is pretty screwed up in many cases. It seems that a lot of people today are so indifferent to the problems of their fellow man. And many of them are on here. I have asked legitimate questions before and gotten rude answers and been called names as I have seen many others also have. A large percentage of our culture has grown insensitive. Our world is too fast paced and the problems that threaten our very existence on this planet are many. These things have turned us into a hardened society. It has become a " move over, get out of my way or I will run you over" society. I wonder where we are headed from here. AND thank you for giving me the opportunity to vent. I wonder how many thumbs down I will get.

Answer 7

Parents shower money on their kids. The market then reacts by creating what the kids gobble up. No mystery there. The result? A sizable culture of crude banality. No surprise there either.

In the "old" (and poorer) days teenagers didn't have the economic muscle to create their own culture. Some of my young friends actually think I'm joking when I tell them there was actually a period in history when young people wanted to become adults.

Answer 8

I'm going to cite a society with freedom of expression and thought. As you are allowed to find that sort of thing highly offensive some others are entitled to find it very funny. That is the world we live in.

When it stops being a world where people can say what they want and have convictions (no matter what those may be) it will not be a world worth living in.

You can't please everybody so if you don't approve of it then don't promote it.

Answer 9

That's the way it is?! And that's the price of free speech?!
Bull Roar and Nonsense.

No one has to put up with a Roman Coliseum mentality or verified trash in support of free speech. Some of the answers here show why we have asinine comics there.

Telling someone to put a lid on poor taste is not a violation of free speech; but sound parental instruction which some seem never to have received.

Answer 10

I haven't seen what you are talking about, but I have seen lots of things in that vein. I am trying to raise my boys to be better people than these idiots who put that stuff out, but it is hard. Kids are exposed to so much crap out there. We just have to explain why those kind of abuses are not funny and how they are hurtful and hope for the best. I am lucky that my kids have been exposed to a friends son who is special needs and they know that he is just as much a person as his gifted brother. All we can do is stand up for what we believe in, and put boundaries on our kids. Keep fighting the good fight!