Why Daniel Tosh Shouldn’t Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

07/11/2012 10:00 am by

So Daniel Tosh walks into a bar and gets raped.  *taps mic*  Is this thing on?  Man, I never get the endings of rape jokes right…

Daniel Tosh Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

Oooooo. I always get these wrong. Okay, I give up. Which thumb was up your ass?

By now, interwebz citizens, you’ve likely heard that stand-up comic and Tosh.0 star Daniel Tosh took on a female audience member after she broke about nine cardinal rules and complained aloud at his Laugh Factory show last Friday (June 29).  The unnamed woman’s Tumblr blog entry about the nasty incident– ”A Girl Walks Into A Comedy Club”–went viral yesterday, eventually prompting a half-assed apology from Tosh on Twitter.

twitter fail whale wide 600x482 Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

In case you missed it, Rape.0 went a little something like this.  Tosh, known for being as inappropriate and equal-opportunity-irritating, was doing a bit about how there are horrific things in the world and that being horrific doesn’t mean there aren’t jokes to be made.

The woman blogged:

I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

I did it because, even though being “disruptive” is against my nature, I felt that sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly, would have been against my values as a person and as a woman. I don’t sit there while someone tells me how I should feel about something as profound and damaging as rape.

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing i needed to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there. It was humiliating, of course, especially as the audience guffawed in response to Tosh, their eyes following us as we made our way out of there. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said about me.

PSSSSSSSST!  I’ll give you a hint.  It starts with c and ends in t.  What?  I mean “Can’t take a joke.”

Tosh’s Twitter apology read:

danieltoshtwitterapology Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

Tosh tried to tweet some context for his joke, which is always a good idea, because all you typically need to provide context for rape jokes is 140 characters…it’s science.  He referred to the woman as a heckler, as many a message board has, seeing as calling her a heckler is the easiest way to work the words “her fault” into the discussion, in between references to feminazis, fat chicks, and–bizarrely–knocks on Stephen Colbert, whose only crime in this case is pulling lower ratings than Tosh.O in the common room at Sigma Rapey Decathalon.

Fraternities 600x450 Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

Think Colbert has gotten too low-brow.

Here are a few truths about this situation:

  • I haven’t heard a rape joke yet that wasn’t stupid.  But people are welcome to keep making them.  Assuming they don’t capture rape joke lightning in a bottle, it will catch up with him or her in the end.  Get it?  “In the end.”  Ah, rape…
  • The woman wasn’t a heckler because hecklers are trying to show-up the comic onstage. The woman was a protester.  I mean, she wasn’t even funny.  She didn’t make a single rape joke.  I checked.
  • Whether you’re a heckler or a protester, you will get picked on by the comic in question.  Any comic.  Anywhere.  By any means necessary.  And to make sure you stay quiet, that comic will bully you.  Is it nice?  No.  it’s also not nice to interrupt someone at work.
  • Does Daniel Tosh show up when you’re trying to rape someone and interrupt you?  No.  I won’t say it’s the Golden Rule, but…
  • Odds are nil that Daniel Tosh thinks actual rape is funny.
  • Daniel Tosh acted like a dangerous bully, making someone feel unsafe versus just making her feel stupid.
  • The woman has every right to feel sad, to have felt frightened, and to tell the whole world that she was bullied.

And the final truth:

  • Daniel Tosh should never have apologized.

    Daniel Tosh glee 600x337 Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

    Don’t get too excited. I’m going to say some shitty stuff, too.

Hey, you on the message board!  Yes, you.  The one mid-keystroke about how I need to get laid, how I’m a fat-ass c-wad, and how I must only watch Nova reruns and have never seen Tosh.0.  You can stop writing now.  You, who just decided that I have botched my feminism, I’ll give you a minute to regroup and redirect. *beat*

The whole point of wildly inappropriate or upsetting humor is to get us closer to ugly things.  To take away the shroud around ugly things so we can talk about said ugly things.  To apologize for using rape jokes to battle a heckler/protester means you aren’t backing up the joke that got you heckled/protested in the first place.  Daniel Tosh: apologizing implies that you weren’t trying to make a point that terrible things are joke-able because no one loves terrible things (rape, dead babies, mushed kittens, Creed).  You weren’t trying to shed light.  Apologizing implies that you lost control.  That maybe deep down you meant it—I have to believe you didn’t mean it, because I need to sleep.  Apologizing, for me, is the jackass nail in the rape joke coffin.

laugh factory Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

Fact: Was originally called “The Rape Joke Coffin.”

You’ll recall Seinfeld alum Michael Richards’ 2006 racist rant at the same club.  He was heckled, so he said the cruelest thing he could think of, hurling the N word at black audience members.  Remember his apology?  That was because he lost his shit and personally leveled a personal attack at individuals who made him angry.   I don’t know that I buy it and I know that I don’t forgive him, but I understand why he was apologizing.  It wasn’t for a line or joke that was hurtful or stupid.  It was for being a stupid, hurtful person.  If all jokes on all things are up for grabs and don’t reflect your personal ethos, why apologize, Daniel?

daniel s tiger Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

I’ll deal with you later.

At the root of hate jokes or rape jokes is the intersection of relatability and reality.  Relatability is what makes or breaks comedy—being able to safely articulate unsafe ideas to which people can relate.  That’s why rape jokes or lynching jokes or gay-bashing jokes upset people.   Unfortunately, they can relate.   The reality is these awful things happen at a troubling rate (um, any rate over 0).  That means it’s far from a statistical impossibility that someone in the room with you has enough rage or self-loathing to make racist, sexist, violent things happen.  Relatability plus reality = somebody will be scared and pissed off.

Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t toe the sensitivity line.  As Alyssa Rosenberg pointed out on ThinkProgress in 2010, “I do think it’s possible that very carefully constructed and tightly targeted jokes can effectively reinforce the idea that rape is a horrible thing to do.”  She was talking about Louis CK‘s jokes about child rapists and raping Hitler.  CK crosses the line all the time–I’ve made peace with it because it looks and smells like the effective reinforcement of which Rosenberg speaks.  And the fact the CK has never backtracked or apologized reinforces my belief.

louis ck Why Daniel Tosh Shouldnt Have Apologized For The Rape Joke

If I’m being honest, he mainly reinforces my belief by being funnier than Daniel Tosh.

But you know what:  I probably loathe Daniel Tosh’s apology most because it short-circuits women and women-lovers and rape-loathers their rightful moment to joke back.  I blogged a while ago about how women need to fight funny.  This is one of those times.  So Daniel Tosh: would it be funny if I got gang-raped by five people for interrupting your set?  At least it would be more fun than watching your act.

Zing.

source, source, source, source, source

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About Molly Martin

Molly lives and works in Indianapolis, primarily because of her rabid devotion to "One Day at a Time." Continues to lobby city leaders to change city slogan to "Dammit, Julie!"

Filed Under: Best Of MamaPop, Comedy Tagged With: , , , ,


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  • http://www.sweetney.com Sweetney

    *standing ovation* Speechless.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks!

  • http://twitter.com/thegrumbles the grumbles

    You are brilliant beyond words. The thing I can’t get over is her being branded as a standard heckler. Yes, you should be able to take what you dish out, but he took a woman who professed discomfort with rape jokes and said to an entire room of people, “Stare at this women and imagine the people around you jumping forward to sexually violate her. Now, everyone laugh.” Ha. Ha. Ha?

    • MollyGMartin

      Right. And right. And right. Except for me being nifty…that is up for debate…

  • Momo Fali

    Well, damn. You put me smack IN MY PLACE.

    • Momo Fali

      And, I mean that in a good way.

      • MollyGMartin

        :) Your profile name completes me.

  • http://www.facebook.com/lexa.lemieux Lexa Lemieux

    I am having a hard time articulating why this especially upset me so much. Perhaps because it is lazy as hell? Rape jokes are hy-sterical, AMIRITE? Perhaps because as a victim of sexual assault I just can’t have a sense of humor about it? Perhaps because it wasn’t even a “funny” rumination ON rape (see CK), but a threat? That his response to being upset by this woman is to lob such a painful and personal attack? I don’t know. I have been struggling with this. I feel humorless and like I have a stick up my ass and maybe not as evolved as I would like to think when it comes to humor…but I do know the rape culture in this country terrifies me.

    • Snarky_Amber

      I am with you on the rape culture ick (as a fellow sexual assault survivor), but I do feel like humor can be used as a tool to actually examine and unpack and combat rape culture, so I don’t agree with that rape jokes can’t be funny. I just have yet to see/hear it done effectively, for me, in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or, as you said, lazy. If someone were to do it, I doubt it’d be Daniel Tosh, who seems to think all he has to do to be funny is be offensive. If that were true, Andrew Dice Clay would be funny. Louis CK has offensive/funny down right. His whole bit on the word “faggot,” for example.

      • http://www.sweetney.com Sweetney

        For those who haven’t seen it (the Louis CK bit): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcja4WFFzDw

      • http://www.facebook.com/lexa.lemieux Lexa Lemieux

        Yep, I agree…it can be used effectively. I have seen bits on rape and laughed/thought they were doing it “right”. This…not so much.

        • MollyGMartin

          Um yeah. He’s not funny to me and this didn’t help.

      • MollyGMartin

        I love how you articulate the potential for humor to be used to unpack and combat ugliness. Thank you!

    • MollyGMartin

      So lazy (his joke, not you :)

  • http://www.avitable.com Avitable

    I agree to some degree, but have some thoughts on this:

    She was still a heckler. She was disrupting a show that other people paid money to see. It doesn’t matter the reason – that’s a heckler. Hecklers are drunk people talking to their friends, people who think they’re funnier than the comedian, and people who are offended by the material of a comedian who want to speak up about it. Hecklers are texters and talkers and just people who don’t have respect for the audience and the performer.

    Tosh was setting up a premise for a joke that he’s written for something that he’s performing. It may have been effective reinforcement, but we can’t know that, because she interrupted in the middle.

    There’s no other type of work where it’s considered acceptable for someone to interrupt in the middle. Imagine that at a rape scene during an opera? There is a message being given and while someone may disagree with the message, they can leave. And that’s what she should have done.

    I don’t think his response to her was the best one, but I’ll tell you that when you’re on stage, trying to do something that you’ve worked hours and hours to do, and there are people who have paid to see you, and someone insists that their voice is worth that ticket price, you will say absolutely anything you can to shut them up. Saying that people should rape her was a deplorable statement, but I can’t blame him in any way.

    • JiveTurkeyJones

      I agree with you. She was heckling, plain and simple. His response was ignorant, plain an simple, and proved that he is not smart enough to handle the typically taboo topics (see Louis C.K. for how to be DOIN IT RITE).

      • http://www.avitable.com Avitable

        His comedy style tends to be pushing the envelope as far as possible, then apologizing for it in a misdirecting way. I find some of his stand-up to be funny, but he’s not a smart comedian in the way that CK is.

        But I’ll tell you – I ran a show where my headliner was being heckled incessantly from a drunk girl in the front who was telling him that he wasn’t funny, and he tried everything to get her to be quiet and/or leave. It wasn’t until he finally just called her a cunt who should have been aborted that she left and the audience applauded. Handling hecklers is harder than anyone realizes, and sometimes you have to cross lines just to make that person realize that you’re going to take it further than they can imagine, so they need to leave.

        • native_sister

          Are you guys fucking serious? Emphasis on the GUYS. “There’s no other type of work where it’s considered acceptable for someone to interrupt in the middle. ” That is true. But in comedy, it’s par for course. @avitable:disqus, your incessant heckler aside, I don’t think most people are bothered by a little bit of heckling; I’ve seen comedy shows where it happens. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not, but I never felt like I wanted my money back b/c of it.

          This here is an entirely different scenario. I’m sure there were plenty of other women laughing nervously trying to be “cool” about “edgy humor” and silently thanking this woman for standing up.

          You know, what WOULD have been funny is if Tosh had been gang raped right after his comment. Now that is the kind of heckling I think everyone would have approved of.

          • http://www.avitable.com Avitable

            Ask any actual comedian and they’ll tell you that any little bit of heckling is bothersome. Even if it doesn’t bother all of the audience, it’s disruptive to the person who is trying to do their job.

            This is not a different scenario. He was setting up a joke, she interrupted, and he went over the line and said something that I consider to be deplorable to get her to shut up. I’m not saying that he should have said that – there were any number of things that he could have said to get her to be quiet, but they all would have been rude and offensive. There is no polite way to dispense with a heckler.

          • MollyGMartin

            Deplorable, regrettable, avoidable… Thanks for reading and chatting, man!

          • http://www.twitter.com/bstephenson Brad Stephenson

            @native_sister:disqus You’re dead wrong. Interrupting a comedian is not ever — NEVER — fun or part of the show. Some comics are REALLY good at handling hecklers, so it seems hilarious and exciting to the audience. But the comedians ALWAYS hate it. Always.

          • MollyGMartin

            So glad you and @avitable are here as two funny stand-ups I trust. It must really knock you out. I can’t imagine

          • MollyGMartin

            By ‘it’ I mean heckling. Disqus fail.

          • MollyGMartin

            I really like your point about the internal monologues among women in the room. I struggle with wanting to tell women to fire back and getting too close to ” walk it off.” vthanks so much for reading and commenting.

  • http://www.amalah.com Amalah

    ZING, indeed. Hot damn, this was a good read.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks so much!

  • http://www.twitter.com/bstephenson Brad Stephenson

    Well put, Molly.

    Bottom lines: 1. Don’t go see someone like Daniel Tosh if you are easily offended. 2. Don’t run your stupid damn mouth when someone is performing. I don’t go to the ballet… well, ever. But if I did, I wouldn’t start yelling at them in the middle of a performance.

    • http://www.twitter.com/bstephenson Brad Stephenson

      By the way, I hate Daniel Tosh. Totally not defending his abilities as a comic.

      • MollyGMartin

        I sense we can all agree on that :)

  • anymommy

    So thought-provoking. I love how you lean one way on this and then swing back and make some points for examining the opposing argument. That is analysis that is worth reading and makes you think. My husband loves Daniel Tosh and he read about this, whistled and said, “man, he could have handled that better.” Maybe that’s where the apology came from in the end.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks! Yeah, I sense that some of his own fans are feeling the ew…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=569942343 Leanne Kemmler Palmerston

    You left out the part where Jamie Masada, owner of the Laugh Factory, points out the inaccuracies in Ms Anon’s account of what happened. Masada claims that a) Tosh had asked the audience what they wanted to talk about and an audience member said “rape” and Ms Anon then protest-heckled and, b) that Tosh’s reply to Ms Anon was NOT to wonder aloud about how funny it would be for Ms Anon to be gang raped but wondered aloud if Ms Anon had been gang raped and was therefore sensitive to the topic.

    Tosh himself, in his apology twitter, mentions misquotes in Ms Anon’s accounts.

    I fall on the side of “if you are a delicate flower, don’t walk into a comedy club” and for goodness sake, don’t open your mouth when the comedian’s onstage!

    • MollyGMartin

      So interesting. Thanks for the context of the Factory’s response. Appreciate you reading and commenting :)

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=569942343 Leanne Kemmler Palmerston

        There was another thing that bothers me about this entire incident and the mammoth amount of attention it’s getting – up to and including Tosh losing his Comedy Central show: WTF is up with the complete annihilation attitude that has been shown by the majority of women regarding what Tosh said?

        Is NO ONE reasonable any more?

        Let’s, for a moment, imagine that Tosh said exactly what the anonymous bloggers said he did, exactly how he said it – and regardless of Masada’s questionable account of the subject I do not for one second believe anon’s account wholesale. Even if Tosh’s rape joke and subsequent heckler shut down was totally effing despicable, does that actually make Tosh a) a shitty comedian, b) evil incarnate and deserving a thousands of angry rants and millions of apoplectic comments and c) worthy of losing a large chunk of his income?

        Part of the nature of working in clubs is to explore material to discover what works and what doesn’t, to hone the material so it goes from ham-fisted to divine. Is it possible the specific material being worked on that offended anon was just such early material not yet properly polished or rejected?

        Can’t people make mistakes anymore?! A daycare worker makes a huge mistake and forgets a child at the daycare while out on a field trip and people call for her to be jailed. It’s called a mistake! Everyone makes them! Tosh tells a joke he thinks will be hilarious and pushes the boundaries of the joke into pure absurdity and the subject matter was particularly taboo and Tosh possibly went way to far and made it really personal and dangerous for an audience member. Does that mean that this is what Tosh does every day, day in and day out, advocate rape as a means of shutting down hecklers, spread the gospel of rape and urge men to go forth and rape?

        Is Tosh so evil and influential he deserved to lose a significant income and the possibility of future earnings? IS HE THAT EVIL? Holy mackerel! If only people hated Bill O’Reilly or Nancy Grace that much! Or heck, I got a list of internationally indicted criminals who started and perpetuate wars, genocides and atrocities against humanity – if everyone’s so fired up to do something!

        People sure like to throw the baby out with the bath water. So Tosh said something horrible (totally up for debate)? So what! Why can’t people just say, “that comedy just isn’t for me.”

  • http://twitter.com/lizlabz Liz L

    I agree that “offensive” humor can be used to get at a deeper issue, something C.K. does all of the time. I think Tosh’s line-crossing humor is *usually* in that vein. I do think, however, that joking about that specific girl getting gang raped was a reaction more in the vein of Richards’ outburst. He was pissed and he said something mean. It wasn’t insightful. It wasn’t even really a…joke. (not to say Tosh actually wanted that woman to be raped but that the sentence was not funny)
    I don’t think she should have heckled (and I do think it was heckling) but I think his response was poorly handled and phrased and demanded an apology. I don’t think it undermines his point at all, assuming that the point was that “offensive” jokes can be funny and insightful. If they aren’t funny and insightful (like his comment) then you’re just left with offensive, necessitating an apology.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks for reading and commenting! This must be the Toah newbie in me: has he crossed the line effectively? Not about rape, natch, but about other taboos?

  • http://twitter.com/zunguzungu Aaron Bady

    This is ridiculous: “The whole point of wildly inappropriate or upsetting humor is to get us closer to ugly things. To take away the shroud around ugly things so we can talk about said ugly things.”
    In two ways:
    A. Who is talking about the ugly thing now? Only the people criticizing Tosh. It’s not like Tosh pivoted and brought us into a deep and frank discussion of a taboo subject. He did the reverse and works to desensitize his audience from taking an incredibly grave subject seriously. After all, are any of Tosh’s defenders (like yourself) actually talking about this “ugly thing” that so gravely needs to be unveiled? I certainly don’t see any; the only people talking about rape are, overwhelmingly, people pointing out what a callous asshole Tosh is.
    B. People defending Tosh are almost, to a man, the very opposite of free speech advocates: they will defend to the end Tosh’s ability to say whatever he wants, but the moment anyone calls him an asshole, they come out of the woodwork to declare his critics to be the greatest villains ever seen.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks so much for reading and commenting so thoughtfully. Yes, yes, yes rape is the ugly thing and the culture he reflected is the ugliest thing. I think the idea of line-crossing humor when done artfully can produce/provoke thought. Daniel Tosh, to me, is not artful enough to do it. So we share a lot but my point is not to refute just to thank you for the comment and challenge us all to, as you suggest, keep elevating the real issue: rape is not okay. Bullying is not okay.

  • http://twitter.com/_kateCouture Katey G

    MOLLY! MOLLY! MOLLY! Woooo! Brilliance.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks, Katey!

  • NinaN2

    I can’t believe that was his response to her. How horrible.

    • MollyGMartin

      Very ick. #understatement

  • http://twitter.com/Kizzbeth E Robinson

    How come everyone’s only mentioning male insult comics? Is it because we’re only looking at the definitive rape joke to rape joke comparison? Joan Rivers practically freaking pioneered this kind of line crossing. I remember watching Lisa Lampanelli’s long form work for the first time and practically choking because every time I started laughing I’d start thinking, “How is she getting away with this? How is it still funny?” That’s an essay I’ve been writing for years now. I watched her bring a 12-year-old boy on stage at a Planned Parenthood event recently and, honestly, I didn’t see her water down the work but I also didn’t see her disrespect the kid. It was fucking brilliant. I think she is actually shining the light on the subjects she’s joking about. There is some indefinable way that an audience can tell that she’s not endorsing the deplorable stuff she’s making jokes out of.

    Whenever these things happen I feel stuck in the middle. I mean, yes, you’re talking about someone whose job is to make jokes but also it’s ideally the person’s job to make good jokes. On this one I was actually ready to back the heckler/protester. It felt good for once to have it be cut and dried.

    Thanks, Molly, for mucking it up again. I actually mean that.

    • MollyGMartin

      I feel mucky… Thanks!

  • Morgan (The818)

    Oh my god YES.

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks for reading & commenting!

  • Banana Stickers

    I cheered HARD when I read this. So brilliant and well put, it hurts (in a good way).

    • MollyGMartin

      Thanks — your profile name…she pleases me…

  • arni

    I love your last paragraph… that would have improved the awkward (at least for the heckler) situation and made the “rape” bit actually funny.

    It all boils down to this, if you can’t take a joke, just watch the Comedy Central special in the safety of your home.

    Also, if you heckle the performer, you are fair game.

    Whether or not Tosh crossed the line I cannot comment since I was not present.

  • http://twitter.com/GingerBecc Ginger Snaps

    I think somewhere in the discussion of the post the point was missed. Should he have apologized? NO. He wasn’t having tea with someone’s mother he was on stage performing his act. Should he have even made the joke? That’s debatable. I am certainly not a Tosh fan and I cannot recall too many times I’ve laughed at a rape joke, but I don’t think “are rape jokes funny/ok/taboo/whatever” is the issue of the day, let alone the topic of the post. This is tantamount to attending a Kenny Chesney concert then halfway through standing up to yell, “Hey! Stop singing that! I HATE country music!” In other words, the audience knew why they were there. The idea that you go to a comedy club means you understand the risk of getting offended. Hell, leaving the house means you run the risk of getting offended. Bill Maher put it best when he said no one has the right to be protected from offense. Go ahead, take offense, just don’t expect the person to be obligated to take back what they said or apologize. Whether they choose to or not is a comment on that person’s character. There are plenty of taboo and distasteful topics that comedians use as joke fodder; when we start treating any of them as though they have protected status we weaken the group being joked about. If that’s the case where do you draw the line? The girl who spoke up in the club and then blogged about it really just sent a message to me that she started a fight she couldn’t finish and wanted someone to do it for her. As women if we don’t learn to stand up for ourselves and stop demanding special treatment we’ll ever be the subject of condescending sighs and eye rolls, at the very least.

    Having that said, I am wildly curious about why comedians, male ones especially, find rape so funny. I’m not judging I am sincerely curious about it. Is it that they don’t get it’s a fear every woman has about it or they don’t understand the emotions involved in the aftermath of an assault? Or is it that they DO understand the fear (because it is, after all, entirely possible for a man to be raped) and have trouble connecting to it or articulating their feelings on another level?

    • MollyGMartin

      The million dollar question…that would be research money well-spent. Great comment.

  • MollyGMartin

    A-hole never crossed my mind! Love u, love your sharing!

  • MollyGMartin

    Even though parts of the follow-up convo have been tricky (thay’s good right???) I love seeing all the thought and heart and diverse perspective everyone brings. You’re terrific. Thanks for reading!

  • Nachzes Black-Rider

    OK, so we’re all agreed that he should actually BE sorry to make an apology. But we try to tell children to “say it like they mean it”, and it never works. So why should it for adults?
    Rape jokes AREN’T funny. Ever. Call me a hard-ass, I don’t care. I don’t see why it’s necessary to “joke” about such horrible things. It’s not comedy; it’s pure dickishness.

  • http://twitter.com/bharatwrites Bharatwrites

    No matter what a comic says, as an audience member you don’t talk until the comic asks you a question. Perhaps Tosh’s reaction was a little over the top, but there’s no cause for interrupting a comic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1271379261 Matt Sitler

    either its all funny, or none of it is funny. if rape is off limits, 9/11 should be much more off limits – yet there are 9/11 jokes. Comediens should not be asked to apologize – their material should speak for itself, and their audience dictates what is funny and what isnt. 20 years ago dice was edgy, raw and people would have suggested some of his material be banned. Saw him 7 years back, and as one of my buddies put it 30 minutes into this show – If we dont leave now, i think the joke is on us. Yet Dice still tours, and still sells out shows – I’d suggest he be banned for lameness, but his fans buying those tickets would disagree.
    I think 9/11 jokes are completley wrong and i dont think i’ve heard one i’d laugh about yet – but i wouldnt suggest they be banned. I can only give a comedien offering one up my stone cold stare and silence.

    • http://www.twitter.com/bstephenson Brad Stephenson

      What about the Louis CK joke?

      How soon after 9/11 was it OK to masturbate again? For me, it was after the first tower fell but before the second.

  • some guy

    I think this is best summarized by something Jimmy Carr said to a heckler once. It went something like “You’re interrupting my job, I don’t go to where you work and slap the sailor’s cock out of your mouth”. Why does anyone really care?