"I have to add a point of information to this thread."
Sorry Lox - I totally disagree – no new information here, unless you believe the subject to be the hurt feelings of the participants rather than the racist outpourings of a stand-up comedian.
However, I do owe you an apology - I did mistake the purpose of your "whingeing liberal" comment and failed to see it in its intended context. I do tend to knee-jerk at phrases like 'bleeding-hearted liberal', 'do-gooder', et al, (not to mention 'finger-in-ear' and 'folk police'), all of which abound on these threads. I accept fully that it was not intended seriously here, - my apologies.
I would point out that my initial reaction was to your "You come across like a rabble rouser trying to whip up an angry mob" - I even borrowed your own phrasing for my response. I am sure I will receive a box of chocolates and a bunch of red roses in full recompense, by return post (a feeble attempt at humour, I grant you, but mine own!).
Meanwhile – back at the ranch!
I fully take on board my friend Peter Laban's posting, obviously based on bitter family experience, but respectfully, I disagree. Nowhere has a case been made for Tiernan being anything other than a stand-up comedian who bases his act on offending people (blacks, Catholics, Travellers... and here, Jews). The question is not whether his 'jokes' were racist - they speak for themselves - but whether racism, the holocaust, anti-Semitism….., is an acceptable subject for humour – I firmly believe IT IS NOT – satire maybe, humour certainly not. If Tiernan is to be considered a satirist, then so does Jim Davidson with his 'Chalkie White' stories and Bernard Manning's 'Paki' jokes have a claim on the title (both have described themselves as such at one time or another, (though Davidson's "I'm not prejudiced – I wish they'd ALL fuck off back to where they came from", rather blew his cover). For me, there is little difference between them all – apart from Tiernan's accent.
The questions I asked earlier remain unanswered. Tiernan bases his whole approach to giving offence – that's what he does for a living. So why did he apologise and why was his act withdrawn from the Canadian tour? He certainly has given offence here, therefore he achieved what he set out to do HE WAS A ROARING SUCCESS – WHAT HAS HE GOT TO APOLOGISE FOR AND WHY HAS HE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO BE THE SAME SUCCESS IN CANADA?
Even if we stretch our credulity and allow that he is a 'satirist' rather than a stand-up comedian; the fact that he has made a total hames of his satire makes what he has to say every bit as racist as I believe Manning and Davidson to be.
While I agree totally that satire is a powerful weapon, I also think that if it is badly done it isn't just bad satire; rather it backfires on itself and becomes the opposite of what is intended – I think it was Johnny Speight, the creator of Alf Garnett who said so publicly. When ''Til Death Do Us Part' was first broadcast Garnett was a powerful caricature of a racist bigot. Eventually it ran out of steam and became repetitive and trite – the result – Garnett became the darling of the racist right, 'a lovable old reprobate who only says what the rest of us are thinking'.
All this aside; it still remains to be shown that Tiernan is anything but a stand-up comedian, and in my opinion, a pretty poor one. His 'humour' is infantile in the extreme (extreme being the operative word); equivalent to a schoolboy running into a shop in Brixton, shouting out "n....r" and running out again – immature, to say the least.
To my mind racism is not a subject for cheap humour – not so cheap, when you thing about it – within my lifetime the bill came to over well over 6,000,000.
Jim Carroll