The one about the comic and the soldier

In the light of that joke by Jimmy Carr, Peter White reflects on whether gags about disability are a way of ramping up the shock factor or a release for tension and discomfort

I suppose I’d known Mike for about fifteen seconds when he asked me if I’d heard the one about the blind man who bled to death trying to read his cheesegrater. I was a bit taken aback: not by the joke (I had heard it, many times), but by the speed with which it had been delivered! It usually took people about a minute: we hadn’t even been introduced.

I wasn’t offended: it was 1968, pre-disability consciousness; and I was fresh out of special school, still guilty of
telling such jokes myself in order to curry favour, or “put people at ease” as I would probably have put it at the time, with “normal” people. But I was quite interested, even then, in why people felt the need to do it; and I concluded, as I still do, that it was mainly not a sign of hostility or potential hatred, but of their unease and discomfort in a situation they weren’t used to.

I’m not sure they are particularly offensive, and it’s much more the “why” than the “what”, that interests me. In other words, why is disability on Jimmy Carr’s list of things to make jokes about: along with women, and gays? And as Jimmy helpfully tells us, the fact that he was a virgin until he was twenty-six, the theory that these are all things he’s uncomfortable with seems to me to stand up pretty well.

In my experience, most of the offence caused by jokes about disability comes from non-disabled people: I reckon that there is an equally interesting debate to be had about whether one has the right to be offended, as there is about whether the other has the right to tell such jokes.

My real contention is that these jokes are better out than in. This stuff is out there, and needs to be confronted, and debated, and countered.

I understand the argument that giving exposure to such views on the air or in public performances may seem to be giving them tacit approval; I don’t agree! You can’t fight what you can’t see and, uncontested, this stuff just festers. In the case of Carr and my acquaintance Mike, a yawn and a shrug would be much better than a display of outrage: the latter only encourages them!