So Rory Bremner, the excellent comedian and satirist, feels he can’t do Islam jokes. Surprise, surprise!
No doubt a whole host of others – comedians, artists, writers, musicians – feel the same.
And what an indictment on the state we find ourselves in when people who are doing genuinely creative work have to self-censor because of people who run their lives according to superstition and imaginary friends and sky fairies.
I don’t object if people feel they can organise their lives according to religious principles, but they shouldn’t expect the rest of us to believe in the same things.
1 comment:
Bit pathetic, but I suppose Bremner's just one of the last in that Footlights Review tradition, and with a much more diverse bunch of newer comedians straining to get shows we should just say, 'if you can no longer produce the goods, step aside and let others through'.
Honestly, from Stewart Lee to Bill Bailey, Frankie Boyle, Shappi Khorsandi or Omid Djalili (to name but a few, including Muslims, ready to not only tell the gags but also push boundaries and make us think twice - Lee's routine announcing he's going to tell a Muslim joke then making fun of the 'PC gone mad' racists who'd love him to do it for the 'wrong' reasons, to name but one stunning example)who cares? And if he hadn't bothered to whinge about it to another privileged old Oxbridge fence-squatter who'd have even noticed?
My own view is that NOT to tell religious jokes is itself insulting, in that it assumes adherents of the religion mocked can't take a joke. I get most of my best religious jokes anyway from adherents of those faiths who tell them to me and each other.
BTW, must share another 'religious joke' here - when I followed the link to the story there was an advert at the top of the page asking 'Why is Scientology the Fastest Growing Religion of 21st Century/'!
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