06.05.2012 03:34 PM

Two jerks, one bad joke

One jerk gets star treatment because he’s star Ontario PC candidate Rocco Rossi.  Thought he’d deleted this, but apparently he hadn’t:

The other jerk, the National Post’s Steve Murray, is here.  He thinks Hitler’s funny. Wonder what his paper’s readership thinks?

5 Comments

  1. Matt says:

    Rocco Rossi = Ass.

  2. Dave says:

    Warren, you’re a fan of punk. What about a song titled “California Uber Alles”? Were the Nazis funny? What about the Producers and Springtime for Hitler?

    I don’t think there’s anything wrong with mocking Hitler – the British did it quite deliberately during the war – even during the Battle of Britain – as a way of disempowering him; Chaplain did it as well with great effect as do numerous Jewish comedians. My father spent several years in a Nazi labour camp and throughout his subsequent life he relished skits and films that mocked and ridiculed Hitler. It gave him a sense of vindication that he had not only outlived the bastard but was now able to enjoy his being ridiculed.

    I remember a few years ago when Life is Beautiful came out a WASP liberal friend of mine was outraged on behalf of us Jews that someone had had the temerity to make a comedy about a concentration camp while I and all the Jews I knew who saw the film, particularly those who had either lived through the war or were the children of survivors and thus not far removed from the events, generally liked the film. If you want to get outraged over the mocking of Labatts PR faux pas, fine, but please don’t get outraged on behalf of us Jews over a Hitler joke – a) it’s not your place to get outraged on our behalf b) if you think mocking Hitler upsets Jews then you don’t really know the first thing about us.

    • Warren says:

      Fair points, all.

      Also fair to note: I never suggested Jews alone are entitled to be outraged by Hitler jokes, nor would I. Others were his victims, too.
      There’s a line. Hard to see, sometimes. Highly subjective. But it’s there.

      My point was that the National Post jerk was one of many having a giggle about Magnotta, his victim(s), etc. when it is all too soon and too fresh. Regulars know I love humour (I’m in a band called Shit From Hell, for instance). But not about this, not now. Maybe not for a long time.

      In the first few minutes of the foot discovery, I confess I laughed at various reporter’s tweets. When the story got more serious, I was reminded that there was a victim, and it wasn’t funny.

      Reporters, like everyone else, don’t like to get called on making bad jokes. Today plenty of them did, and they don’t like getting called on it. I understand that.

      I’ve made dumb jokes about cookies and cats in the past. I apologized when I realized I’d gone too far and had been unfunny.

      I guarantee you not one of those jokey Ottawa gallery types will ever, ever do likewise. They always know best.

  3. Quincy Morgan says:

    Boy – this has really achieved a level of heaviness I didn’t think it would.

    I would hope that horrendous unparallelled atrocities the Nazis joyously committed – and those human degradations all now embedded in the collective souls of our generation – would not in anyway be compared to this single incident of homicidal degradation.

    I’m reading into what Warren is saying by inferring that a man died, was chopped to pieces, mailed to both the Conservative Party and Liberal Party Headquarters (much trauma by the way to the staffers at the CPC) and then a political pundit and a candidate republishes a rather tasteless joke on their own websites. Sounds like really bad judgement on their parts – which is what Warren id calling out. Nothing more or less than that. Outrage from what I’m reading in his comments.

    In Warren’s defense – he is right on the mark here calling down, not just the casual crazy blogger who writes unedited – but actual individuals who get major attention from the press. I think he is saying just this, “Shame on you.” And we can leave it at that.

    The war crimes against Jews stand alone as the high water mark of human brutality and it cannot be tarnished by this discussion.

    By the way – Warren has been and is a committed defender of Jewish rights and Israel – just to add that (which he probably won’t considering the tone of the rhetoric.)

    Cheers – let’s get back to figuring out why this guy did what he did.

    Quincy Morgan

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