VN AfterTaste

The Guardian interviews Jimmy Carr after his amputee soldier joke became the media outrage of the week. [Guardian story]

“Say what you like about those servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012.” Pretty much standard-issue Jimmy Carr: tasteless, offensive, short, targeting disability – one of his key subjects alongside rape, paedophilia, prostitutes, homosexuality, Aids, the physical and sexual abuse of pets, sex of all kinds (but especially anal), penises, breasts, vaginas ("Where did you lose your virginity?” someone in the audience at Margate asks him. “In a vagina,” he fires back),
[…]
What was exceptional was the backlash. “TV comic’s slur on amputee soldiers,” screamed the Sunday Express on its front page; “Families’ anger at Jimmy Carr’s ‘disgraceful’ joke about war hero amputees,” countered the Mail on Sunday. The “disgraceful” came courtesy of the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan; the families of wounded soldiers were vituperative; the defence secretary was said to be furious; Liam Fox for the Conservatives was incandescent; even the prime minister’s office made a statement.
[…]
Carr says the storm was concocted by the media. “I played to 9,000 people that weekend. I did Manchester and Stockport, and two people complained. My audience aren’t offended, but this other audience that reads the papers are offended. They’re totally entitled to be offended by those kind of jokes, but they’re normally not exposed to those kind of jokes. I know what the rules are on TV – what you can and can’t say. There are a hundred jokes in the show that are worse than that, so if you want to be offended you can find a lot of stuff.”