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Comment by freeasinfree | Hacker News Reader

Comedians say much worse on a daily basis and rarely catch any flack. Are regular people not allowed to make jokes?

Comedians have a social context for their jokes -- the presumption of anyone looking at the content of what they say is to look for a second or ironic meaning first. Justine is just a normal person, so the presumption of the mob is that the literal meaning of what she says is what she meant to communicate.

There are a lot of people who are hungry enough to signal how righteous they are to their peers that they'll immediately jump to the least-charitable interpretation of anything anyone says, and Justine was their target for 24 hours.

That is my issue with this. Daniel Tosh makes sexist, racist, and rape jokes on a daily basis and people at large aren't up in arms threatening to strike if he visits their workplace. To me this says these psuedo-activists care more about picking on an easy target than actually preventing hurtful speech. Not to mention the hypocrisy of many of those tweets when they call her a bitch, or send her death threats.

I'll let another comedian, George Carlin, explain:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They’re only words. It’s the context that counts. It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language.

Bullshit! It’s the context that makes them good or bad. The context. That makes them good or bad. For instance, you take the word “Nigger.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word “Nigger” in and of itself. It’s the racist asshole who’s using it that you ought to be concerned about. We don’t care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say it.

Why? Because we know they’re not racist. They’re Niggers! Context. Context.

We don’t mind their context because we know they’re black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pksx_IAHDE

In this case, people know the context of Daniel Tosh's words, therefore they don't mind. They minded here, because a Tweet has no context.

It's the same reason that SF gentrification articles come in waves on HN. There is a cause du jour, and it only lasts a little while until the new one.

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