Bear with me, now.
Fight for “Springtime for Hitler,” Joan!
Joan Rivers, who took the baton from Phyllis Diller after Diller had proven that women could be funny stand-up comics, and then proved in her own act that women could be funny, gross, and tasteless stand-up comics, is refusing to apologize for her 7, 678, 423rd tasteless joke, uttered on Monday’s episode of E!’s “Fashion Police” regarding the Julien Macdonald that dress model Heidi Klum wore at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation Academy Awards party:
“The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens,” is how Rivers described the German-born supermodel.
Sure enough, the joke, and Rivers, who is Jewish, are being condemned by Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors as being insensitive.The Anti-Defamation League’s director, Abraham H. Foxman, called the joke “vulgar and offensive to Jews and Holocaust survivors.” Rivers is standing her ground. The 70-something comic told The Hollywood Reporter, “My husband lost the majority of his family at Auschwitz, and I can assure you that I have always made it a point to remind people of the Holocaust through humor.”
In the wake of Seth MacFarlane’s various controversies at the Oscars (yes, I thought the John Wilkes Booth joke was funny, especially with the planned comeback, “Too soon?”) and the Onion getting too outrageous in its misconceived tweet using a 9-year-old girl as the prop for a joke about something else entirely, this is as good a time as ever to seek a consensus on where some ethical lines should be drawn regarding jokes and satire.
They can’t be drawn where a lot of people would like these days, which is at the point where a joke that offends or might offend or conceivably could offend has to be withdrawn in groveling fashion the second anyone objects to it. This would effectively end satire and humor as we know it, which I’m sure would be just fine as far as the hopelessly humorless and politically correct among us are concerned. Nor can it be drawn to exclude all jokes about tragedies, violence, crime, and real life catastrophe. Rivers is right: humor can remind us about terrible things that should not be forgotten, and still bring laughs. The line also must not be drawn so as to empower professional grievance-mongers, who enhance their visibility and cultural influence by claiming victimhood at every opportunity.
So…how do we leave room for “Blazing Saddles” and “The Producers”…, for Mel Brooks generally, and for “The Family Guy,” “The Simpsons,” and Chris Rock to give us guilty laughter, and yet still insist that MacFarlane’s mocking of Scarlet Johansson for having her privacy and dignity stolen by a hacker requires contrition? The relevant line is one that divides general humor and satire about a sensitive issue that many will never be able to laugh about, from jokes exploiting actual living victims, or children, by name for cheap laughs. There are other lines, but that one must be sacrosanct.
That is the line that Rivers is holding, and as a comedian, she is obligated to fight to defend it. Her joke didn’t denigrate the Holocaust, or any Holocaust victim. It was a German joke, a pretty mean one at that, but mean has been Rivers’ trademark for more than 40 years. The biggest problem with this joke was that it just wasn’t that funny, and perhaps not sufficiently funny to justify its irreverence. If one is going to make a Holocaust joke, it better be hilarious.
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Facts: USA Today
Graphic: Fallacy Files
Ethics Alarms 
Well said.
Personally,I like Joan. Sorry,can’t help it. Now if she said something like another Jewish comedienne said, and I paraphrase,Hell yeah the Jews killed Christ. I’m glad. I’d effing kill him again. Not only is that offensive but its not even funny at all. I doubt it was supposed to be although the audience howled with laughter. I choose not to like that woman.
Given that Joan Rivers told it, it doesn’t even make the top ten of her most offensive jokes. It was tasteless and boring, just what I’ve come to expect from her.
You couldn’t imagine Phillis Diller telling it.
Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers wasn’t poking fun at the Holocaust; she was poking fun at Heidi Klum. Of course the Jewish groups are right to be offended. In terms of humor related to any wrong committed by man against man, I’m certain the line for tasteful inclusion in humor stops at referencing actual murder. I think her justification of “I was trying to remind people of the holocaust” is pure malarkey manufactured after the backlash.
Does anyone have any historic knowledge of Joan River’s, for the benefit of holocaust-forgettors, sprinkling into her act the occasional crematorium-based chuckle or cyanide-gas-laced laugh or the occasional punch-line that started with “once a few hundred jews were put in front of a firing squad”? No, she made a joke, it was terrible and horribly tasteless. Her justification that this was for the edification for people who’s memory lapses sometime between 1939 and 1945 is bull.
Does she owe anyone an apology? That certainly depends very much on her track record of being a comedian-history teacher who’s primary method for educating the masses on the Final Solution’s institutionalized slaughter of 6 million Jews and several million other minorities consists of one-liners.
Joan Rivers could easily have quipped “The last time a German looked this hot was when they strolling in the streets of Dresden in February of ’45.”
Were that the joke it should have been just as offensive (for those who know what that even refers too) and just as unfunny.
Humor
I’m not saying that humor can’t toe the line in offensive territory and still cause us to crack the forbidden smile. In a similar vein from South Park:
Kyle (the Jewish kid) just got scolded by the teacher for inability to pay attention in class.
Cartman suggests they send Kyle to concentration camp.
I’d say however, certain things are so not-funny that good comedians don’t go there. Murder of actual innocent people probably doesn’t fit the bill.
John Wilkes Booth getting into Lincoln’s head? Not funny (and although the statute of limitations is wearing out on it, it is still mildly offensive in addition to its lack of humor)
Asking someone who just got done excessively complaining about their day: “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?” Amusing.
Cracking a joke in regards to an actual event of roasting otherwise innocent humans because they were conveniently scapegoated? Not funny AND wildly offensive.
The example above from South Park? Amusing.
Dane Cook popping off about how he heard the latest Batman movie was so bad you wished someone would come in and shoot you? Not funny AND wildly offensive.
Not sure if there is an amusing counterexample to this.
Yes, there are certain topics (few indeed) that do cause intelligent comedians to just not handle in terms of humor.
Heidi Klum
That being said, in regards to Joan River’s joke, offensive as the sideways comment was, it was not meant to poke fun at the victims of the holocaust, only used their plight (understatement) as a vehicle to poke fun at Heidi Klum. This is why I don’t think she used the joke as a helpful public service announcement to the rest of us that yes, indeed the Germans did massacre people by the millions.
If you make the huge leap of stripping the horribly offensive nature of that vehicle, the joke is just one celebrity complimenting another celebrity. The actual target of the humor, Heidi Klum, apparently is not offended at all. Were she hyper-sensitive, she could easily make a stretch with the notion: “What? Because I’m German I personally ought to walk around always ashamed that I’m attractive and my forebears killed people whose descendants might have been just as attractive?” But she didn’t.
Of course, if Joan Rivers did truly enjoy Heidi Klum’s appearance, an underhanded compliment would not have been necessary. I suspect that Joan sent her the underhanded compliment because she felt that perhaps Heidi’s appearance was a bit over the top (she was pretty revealing in the dress) and she needed a subtle take-down.
Germans
In a larger sense the joke could be loosely interpreted to be offensive to modern Germans at large (who as a group probably have come to collectively accept that they will never live this down, even though probably 95% of them today have nothing to do with the holocaust). Of course as much as they know and accept these kinds of references will specifically target them, I’m certain they don’t like being reminded of such a shameful past enacted by their ancestors. But none of that was part of Joan River’s intention either.
Wrapping Up
It was simply a tasteless and un-funny joke and if someone can’t show me that her repertoire is replete with humorously informative factoids relating to the slaughter of millions, then her justification for the joke is contrived bull and an apology may very well be warranted.
If you can show me that her repertoire is filled with those kinds of helpful-history-reminders-packaged-as-jokes, then, I guess her justification is fair, then also she’s really not that amusing of a person.
Except that her justification, which is a bit of a stretch, I agree, isn’t the reason the joke doesn’t require an apology, as I wrote. The reason it doesn’t require an apology is that neither it was aimed at the Jews, nor the Holocaust, nor its victims, nor did it nick any of them in the least, nor are Jews and the Holocaust immune from joke-making, as Mel Brooks, Seinfeld and even Woody Allen have shown. She might owe an apology for making a clumsy and unfunny joke, but then most of her jokes are, and asking an old lady who’s still bitter about being black-balled by Johnny and whose fasce is encased in plastic to apologize for her whole career seems unnaturally cruel. Heidi, meanwhile, is gorgeous, rich, and, I hear, has a brace of Mengele-patented, Nazi-manufactured, blue-eyed mutant centaur slave killers to do her bidding. She can take care of herself.
Addendum #1: The Dresden joke is worse, as it ridicules victims specifically. Much worse. Marginally less funny, to my ear.
Addendum #2: I like the Dane Clark joke. It is horribly tasteless, but it does not mock any victims. Condemning it is a slippery slope: is it too soon to say, facetiously, “Shoot that guy”? Pizza gun, anyone?
Addendum #3: Many have made the case that banning humorous mention or reference to shameful moments in history just makes those moments and their victims more invisible and easier to forget. Joan’s explanation was facile and a bit disingenuous, but not without merit. I first explained Hitler and the Holocaust to my son when he was about 5, watching “The Producers,” when he asked about the references. I think Native Americans were better off with cultural reminders of their history in names like “The Blackhawks” or “The Braves” than they will be when activists have bullies every team into dropping them.
Addendum 4: Pssst… I’m only arguing with you because I think Finnegan might be on to us…
A short and sweet answer I think would be: in the profession of comedy *anything and everything* goes. No apologies necessary. Each comedian knows his audience and will tailor his jokes to that audience. If they over step bounds or are not funny the market will reward them with smaller and classless crowds. If they offend someone it is the hazards of the service they provide.
That being said: if a venue or host invites a comedian and doesn’t like particular parts of his routine or certain humor territory he is known to tread in, then the venue or host can always have the comedian show discretion.
Let the market balance out.
So in short. No apologies for humor ought to be obligatory or expected when offenses are clearly made in the realm of an attempted joke. Of course if behavior, antics, or words are clearly outside the realm of jokes or their routine (such as Tom Cruise’s well known explosions on late shows) occur, certainly apologies are warranted.
The razor I suppose is deciding when a particular person has crossed the threshold from humor to intentional spite.
And I shouldn’t have called Finnegan an idiot. I just get frustrated when a heavily slanted political opinion is worded in such a way that it implies the writer hasn’t even attempted to evaluate things objectively.
I’d say that’s exactly what you should have done, Tex. And for the reason you gave.
I think that is the short and sweet answer. Like most such answers, though, it’s inadequate. I think jokes that intentionally pull on the loose threads in peaceful society, like mean racial and religious stereotype jokes, are just wrongful—they cause more harm than they are worth, and they do great anti-social attitudes. I think trivializing ongoing, identifiable abuse for a cheap joke, like using rape scenes to shout “I saw your boobs!” to a specific actress in a national venue, is genuinely reckless. (Yes, animated characters can get away with almost anything.) I understood the mechanics of the Onion joke calling the 9 year old actress “a cunt”, and the mechanics were sound, if an innocent young girl didn’t have to learn that she was being insulted in the crudest terms, just to make an ironic point about how viciously snarky pop culture is.
In humor, as in all else, we must not discourage the groundbreakers and innovators who play the Enterprise and “gwnmhegb!” Or woman, like Rivers, and Wanda Sykes. But there always has to be a prime directive.
To hell to Joan and the joke. I’m more offended that you make a reference to The Producers with a picture from the movie and not with a picture of Dick Shawn as Hitler!!
You know why? Because there is no clear available photo of the great Shawn. Believe me, that was my target.
Pure genius