Frankie Boyle's controversial Paralympic jokes

[sarahsquarepants]

Was reading an article about this and wondered what your views were? Comedian Frankie Boyle is known for being a bit contraversial at times with some of his gags. He has recently caused some issues with jokes posted on his personal twitter account about the parlympics.

What do we think? Are jokes about disability too far? Do we see a difference between say, racially stereotypical jokes, or sexist jokes and disabled jokes? How far is too far? Frankie claimed we have to be able to 'laugh with disabled people', not at them. Do you think this is how it came across?

Link to the article below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19439270

[weezypops]

Firstly I should probably say I am not a fan of Frankie Boyle and in fact rather dislike him so I'm not coming at this from an unbiased point of view! I think individual jokes may not have been offensive, but coming one after the other as they did just came across as a barrage of insults, and some of them were pretty nasty. Plus, I just don't think he's funny, and that he says things just to shock, rather than because they're actually witty or amusing. Or if they do amuse, it's at a really base level that is often quite unpleasant.

I do think that good comedy is often edgy and may offend and that it needs to push the boundaries, but in a way that is clever and insightful. For example, the Brass Eye paedophilia episode which was highlighting the media's hysteria about sexual predators etc, NEVER poking fun at the victims of the crime instead, and things like that are very touchy subjects done in a way that is funny but also makes you think.

I feel like a lot of comedians hide behind the idea that 'I'm just making a joke' in order to say things that they know are not really on. Frankie Boyle doesn't seem that different to me to the old school racist/sexist comedians like Jim Davidson and Bernard Manning, who say dreadful things about groups of people then hide behind the shield of 'can't you take a joke', except he does it in a more modern way, with new victims. I love a bit of edgy black comedy and most of my favourite sitcoms fall into this category, but Boyle just seems to be to be full of lazy insults.