Friday 2 December 2011

A seasonal leap forward

There has been an outburst of manufactured outrage about Beachy Head Brewery naming a seasonal beer Christmas Jumper. This, it is claimed, is offensive to those unfortunates who take their own lives by jumping from said headland.

In a sense that is true, but it isn’t referring to any individual, and in any case much of the best humour has a dark edge to it and to some extent plays on our inner fears. Very often the funniest things you see are the viral text message jokes you start getting a few hours after some “tragedy” in the news.

It seems today that the acceptable subjects for humour in public are becoming so circumscribed that you can listen to some so-called comedians without even raising a smile.

In any case, the brewery’s story that they originally named a beer after the well-known unwanted gift of knitwear and only then realised it had another connotation seems entirely plausible. If any other brewery had done it, nobody would have batted an eyelid or spotted the alternative meaning.

The people complaining about this are probably the same politically correct, humour-free “legions of the perpetually offended” who were whingeing yesterday about Jeremy Clarkson suggesting in obvious jest that public sector strikers should be shot.

8 comments:

  1. How can anyone who's actually jumped be offended?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Couldn't agree more with that last comment!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry, I'm one of those humourless public sector workers that doesn't find it funny that the government is taking a tax grab on the pension that I have paid for, wants me to pay more for it, work longer to get it and have it's value further reduced by the way that future increases are calculated. Note that my pension isn't paid for by tax payers nor is my pension fund in debt no matter what lies the Conservatives and Daily Mail would have you believe. Just to repeat - it isn't a joking matter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Golden Glory is all about water sports, I'm outraged!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Birkonian: Everything is a joking matter, that's human nature. Don't be so precious.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tasting notes:- Goes down really well, but is flat at the end.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Birkonian, you're another of the millions who never saw the show and only know about Clarkson's speech from what you read in the papers. He actually said the strikes were "fantastic" and then said: "We have to balance this, though, because this is the BBC. Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families." And when the presenter said those were "only Jeremy's views," Clarkson replied: "They're not. I've just given two views for you." So very clearly he was joking: taking the piss out of the BBC's desire for balanced coverage. Except the "looking for any opportunity to be offended" mob wouldn't recognise sarcarm if it bit them in the leg.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, especially on older posts, may require prior approval by the blog owner. See here for details of my comment policy.

Please register an account to comment. Unregistered comments will generally be rejected unless I recognise the author. If you want to comment using an unregistered ID, you will need to tell me something about yourself.