Pro wrestling announcer fired after racist joke

Well, it should. Because intent matters.

Being offended or feeling insulted because of some crude humour that's primarily expressed to laugh at is not that problematic. You, and those over sensitive (or overly entitled) people are equating it with being discriminated or being deliberately insulted.
Basically you want people to go along with you so the humor you find inappropriate (but of which you seem to acknowledge it actually can be funny!) is no longer expressed. This is how your posts read!

 

I'm not really weighing whether or not it's funny here. When you think something is funny it's because you relate to that mode of thinking, or something like that. I guess what I'm really saying is when you know it's wrong to laugh about it, it ceases to be funny.

You're making an interesting distinction: serious versus not serious discrimination. I find that one often leads to the other. And what are we really saying then? That a person's feelings, the person's who is being discriminated against, don't matter. Or perhaps they only don't matter as much... or enough to not find it humorous.

I do not agree. I think that your interest in comedy is novel. A sense of humor can be valuable. I also think you are letting yourself go if you find racism in any form humorous.

 

Absolutely. But so does reaction. If you intend to be funny, but the audience finds you offensive, you're in trouble

 

I agree with this and I don't think any topic should be off limit for comedy. Through the years, comedy has probably been one of the best avenues for free speech. Comedy that broaches the topic of racism can often reveal the absurdity of it.

As far as the Wrestling announcer goes, I don't follow wrestling, so I don't know if the announcers attempt to be campy or something, but that comment seems out of line for any sports announcer.

 

Not necessarily. Depends on the exact circumstances. I agree that the audience and location can also matter. With audience i don't only mean a paying audience, I just mean the people who are listening to a joke in any context.

Yes, I acknowledged: it's about it being appropriate or not. Which as we can see is subjective. You seem to project stuff on people who differ in opinion with you on this (that they're condoning and supporting discrimination).

It's entirely subjective wether it's wrong to laugh about it, my concern is that some people (like you) act like it's absolute and even worse: that people who come to a different conclusion than you here are actually racist because of it. I know for a fact this is bogus.

I make the distinction between faulty humour and actual discrimination. You leap everything involving race on one pile as racist discrimination.

It's not my conclusion that their feelings don't matter. It's my conclusion that you essentially would like to ban such faulty humour because others feel offended. I say we can try not to offend them by thinking about aspects as where, why and to who are you telling such a joke, but trying to make it some kind of taboo is futile and likely even countereffective.

Well, reality indicates you're wrong about this too. It's at least as common to embrace faulty humour as to not laugh at something funny out of some personal principle (which is tried to put as being a universal truth)

Racism is an excellent subject of humour. It's ok you (choose to) find it unfunny. But you can't decide for everybody else, or in seriousness act like anyone who disagrees is racist or condoning actual discrimination.

 

The thing is; its ok to be offended by a joke. It's ok to laugh at a crude piece of humour because you find it funny.

 

Sure, but as you suggested location and audience can make the joke (or attempt at one) inappropriate and it's clearly inappropriate for any legitimate sport announcer to say that. This thread makes it apparent that wrestling announcers aren't held to the same standard, so I don't really know where they are supposed to toe the line but it doesn't seem surprising that comment is a fireable offense.

 

But pro wrestling isn't a legitimate sport...

Instead of firing this guy shouldn't they have drug him down ring side and beat him with a folding chair or someshyt?

 

Probably not in the script

 

Not enough fake blood capsules on hand?

 

Folding Chairs saved for the main event