It's ironic you open up with the line 'I agree in principle' because it is the notion of common principles that drives any legislation through though I readily concede it sometimes goes waaaaay too far with these idiot PC 'ites.
I also agree with your observation re the use of the 'n' word but that's more to do with the black population flipping us white folks basically saying, 'we can use the word but you can't' which turns the whole banning issue of it on its head and makes it ridiculous in a practical sense.
It seems to me there's a certain degree of hypocrisy involved here in that the black community want people to stop using such a derogatory term [and rightly so] but that also means the same responsibility is placed upon everybody otherwise if you wish to ignore the conventions then this opens the door for everybody else regardless of whether you were focal point for that word...... but in practice, this doesn't happen, you have to ask yourself why ..
With regard to 3rd party intervention deciding what's allowable and what's not, whilst distasteful is less distasteful than an open house policy across the board because in practice this merely serves to accommodate each and every perversion known to man under the umbrella doctrine of free speech.
I suppose the real point is this ... whilst we can sit back and do what you suggest in allowing vox pop to decide what's best and what's not by out of order comedians crashing and burning ... but, can we honestly say, the fact these people gain air time has zero effect on propagating that type thinking ... if you think not then cast your eye toward the data surrounding the internet and child porn ..... the fact it's been readily available for the last 20 years or so coincides with a huge, and I mean huge rise in offenses of this kind over the same period.
I don't know if you remember a few years back when one of the newspapers was given some police data regarding the number of personal computers that had downloaded some form of child porn and I think it was something like 2 million addresses in the UK had indulged themselves ... 2 fuhkin million ..... now you can't tell me that number was apparent on a pro rate basis twenty years ago .... I think if you expose people to it, you'll help promote it ..... of course you can argue it's down to people's personal morality if they choose to look at that sh!te or not but why wake a sleeping dog?
I'm surprised at your stance on this.
First of all, I've been away for a while now (8 years or so) so I don't recognise the names that have been thrown around by the particular comedian (mentioned above), or who the victims of his jokes are (Madeline somebody), or if they were in fact relevant to your post above.
Where it falls apart for me Pete, is the connection being drawn between Child Pornography and Stand-up comedy.
One one hand, I think it's canny debating by yourself, as once the comparison is made the natural repugnance to the former stains the lattter with a ****-like substance thats hard to wash-off. However, are there really comedians telling jokes about child-porn? For me, that's totally out of order, but something that should be dealt with in isolation, unless you're saying that there is a general trend towards kiddie-porn jokes among comedians, which I would find, well, unbelievable, in the worst way.
It would be a mistake to legislate comedy, in fact I don't know how it could be done effectively. Comedy is just an amusing parody of life imagined, told by one person to another. What (other than child pornography) would you want to stop them from doing/saying?
How about gay jokes, are they OK?
What if some gay guys strenuously complain?
What about if it's in a pub, and you're telling me the funny gay joke, can you be arrested, as you're saying the joke in a public place?
How effective do you think legislation would be, given the viral nature of comedy?
I think it's a non-starter. It reminds me of 'Demolition Man', where people are fined for swearing, and they get a ticket, and Sly don't know how to use the 3 sea-shells, so he gets all the tickets and wipes his ass with them. If you see what I mean.
