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Comment by ris | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting statement by Amazon about its stance on (persistent) racial slurs.

If you were to follow the same argument, you could also argue that the continued popularity of Top Gear is an equally interesting statement by society about it's stance on (persistent) racial slurs.

Indeed you could. There's more than enough evidence to bear it out.

It should come as no surprise that there's a huge segment of society whose stance on racial slurs is 'more, please.'

I don't think racial slurs are Top Gear's primary appeal. They're just slipped in by the hosts (and clearly with the approval of the production team in some circumstances) as a (quite sinister) wink-and-nod to appear chummy with viewers who "think like them". It validates their behaviour and views.

How many comedians do you know that never make any offensive jokes? Gender, race, handicaps/health etc are very common themes in almost every comedy program I know. I won't judge on the quality of specific jokes and where exactly a bad joke ends and a racial slur begins, but in general it is an accepted part of comedy.

It's fine for people to tell offensive jokes.

Is it fine for me to call Roy Chubby Brown lazy and stupid and unfunny because of his bad jokes?

Is it fine for me to ask people providing me content to try harder to be funny, rather than just flinging shit and calling it a joke?

I always thought in HN land you got a certain amount of leeway to complain about how X needed to be better and it was OK. But then at some point -- because we recognize how the world actually works -- if you see that X can be better and nobody else can, the onus is on you to actually do X better and prove it.

In the business world this is a startup.

In comedy, I guess that means being a comedian.

From what I can tell it's about the same as startup-land, there's a power law distribution where a few comedians get really wealthy, a bunch of people get by, and tons of folks fail outright.

Given the very long road that folks travel to become widely known and "successful" I'd guess that the jokes they tell are in some way reflective of society's preferences.

But hey if you know better than all these folks, have at it!

Well, okay. Let's change my question to "Is it fine for me to give my money to comedians I find funny, and not to comedians I don't find funny? And to then tell those comedians why I'm chosing not to buy their product?"

Absolutely vote with your wallet! It's one of the great features of capitalism that few disparage. Avail yourself of the opportunity.

I get the whole "I want to tell people why I'm not buying their product" mentality and whatnot. I feel the same way a lot of times. But complaining in general isn't going to get you anywhere and even if this HN thread totally blows up, it's not going to sway anyone at Amazon or Clarkson, Hammond or May. It'll literally never be on their radar.

So at this point you're complaining for the sake of complaining. Fair enough! I do it all the time too.

But you're not really telling them anything, since they'll never see it.

I completely agree with you, there is lots of comedy that I dislike and that I choose to live without.

Still, implying that Amazon is ok with "racial slurs" is not quite the same than saying that Amazon is ok with "bad comedy".

I'm pretty sure some of the existing Amazon Prime original productions will fall into my personal "bad comedy" category already.

Maybe it's a statement on how they feel of everything needing to be politically correct. The shows popularity is probably also an indication on how most people feel about needing to be politically correct.

The recent github 'retard' ban is a nice example of forced political correctness.

I'm happy to see Amazon not give a toss about non-issues that keep SJWs up at night. Not that I watch the show or care for Clarkson.

I must assume you consider it a non-issue because you didn't see a clip of, e.g., the "slope" incident, which is unmistakeably a racial reference. The shot in question makes no sense otherwise. Allowing "clever" references like this continue to signal that it's A-OK to use these terms casually.

It is not a non-issue. And I suggest you would not consider it a non-issue if it were the word "nigger".

I did not see it - but I read the Wiki article about his controversies.

All of them appear to be no more than play on words, there is never any ill will or desire to humiliate anybody.

The reason these particular jokes get noticed is because some people are obsessed with crying foul when certain groups are offended. He could make 10 jokes about the English/Scotts/Welsh and nobody would bat an eyelash.

So a play on words with the word "nigger" would be ok by you?

"...never any ill will or desire to humiliate anybody" - this is the sort of very flimsy faux-naivity that I come to expect in these debates - especially on technical forums with a very literal-thinking crowd.

"He could make 10 jokes about the English/Scotts/Welsh and nobody would bat an eyelash."

Context. You cannot ignore context as much as you try. In the modern day, the English, Scots and Welsh are not typically discriminated against for their racial "traits". Certainly not in any serious way.

Derogatory racial terms are not ok.

The word nigger still has pretty heavy connotations in our society so I don't think it would be ok. As you said yourself - context matters.

Likewise, I'm not aware of asians being discriminated in our modern day. That's really the point - I don't have a problem with Clarkson's play on words because to me it's a meaningless sound. And the fact that an asian guy might be called slope/slopes (?) and that's a feature of the bridge is a pun - hence it's funny.

They probably make an average of one joke/pun for 30 seconds of the show. Some of them may be unfunny or crude - but unless you can actually demonstrate ill will (simply alluding to the naivette of your interlocutors isn't sufficient) - it's ok.

Just regarding that "context": Clarkson never used the word "nigger" in show, let alone made a play with it. But depending on context, I think it might be okay.

However, publicly calling Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" certainly was intentionally offensive, which you can conclude from the Royal National Institute of Blind People being offended by the comparison, the Scots being offended by the comparison, and the association of idiots probably being somewhere trying to prepare a statement about being offended. Guilty as charged.

On the flip side, making a big deal out of an attempt at comedy shows the world that these words bother you, which gives malicious people more ammunition to attack you with.

Did you know the word idiot used to refer to someone with a mental handicap? They stopped using it because it was being used as an insult and was no longer politically correct. The new politically correct term was "retard", which of course became an insult as well, so the term had to be changed again. And these days, no one would cover their child's ears if someone said the word "idiot" on television.

Either everything can be made fun of or nothing can. Where do we draw the line? Family Guy makes jokes about Catholics vs Protestants, but South Park gets censored when talking about Muhammed. Chris Rock can say "nigger" in his comedy, but no one else can? Gabriel Iglesias is "fluffy". Can I, a city-dweller, make jokes about rednecks like Jeff Foxworthy?

No one watches Top Gear and says "oh hey it must be okay to commit violent acts against people who are different than me". At worst, it's a tasteless joke that some might find funny and others might roll their eyes at. Or maybe people like Clarkson are removing the power of the word much in the same way words like "idiot" or "lame" are no longer pejoratives against the handicapped.

Which racial slur is that exactly?

It's well known in the UK and in that article that he ~ambiguously~ mumbled the word "tigger" in a nursery rhyme.

I'm not sure how a guy saying something that offends some people once, is "a persistent racial slur"?

And there's the stuff about "slopes". And the stuff about gypsies. And the stuff about Mexicans. And all the other stuff.

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/here-are-all-the-nonra...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jere...

Here's a useful Graniad opinion piece about Clarkson: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/08/not-eno...

It's a persistent pattern. Whether that should affect what he's allowed to publish is another matter, but it's probably wrong to say he isn't overtly racist.

Some people say "it's just a joke" - fair enough. Here's Stewart Lee responding much better than I can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CnMQ4L9Pc

He makes comments about every group, I've seen no persistent bias against any group (aside from politicians who make it less fun to drive).

And he certainly doesn't exclude himself/his own type, as there's something negative about the UK practically 30 seconds.

As for "it's just a joke", yes, it is. Pretty much every successful comedian uses ethnicity/race sometimes. Bad ones rely on it entirely (Ex: Carlos Mencia). But as something that should be off limits for humor? No.

Any instances of Clarkson making offensive comments about white people?

Also, when all the presenters are white, it's a little hard to take this "we make fun of everyone" line seriously. If a white British person makes fun of white British people, that's obviously a different dynamic to a white British person making fun of people lower down the social pecking order.

Oh, and then outside the show, there's the times Clarkson has explicitly advocated racism:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9247835/J...

You should watch the show before you speak about it. They make fun of each other, they make fun of Americans, they make fun of the Welsh, they make fun of people from the North, they make fun of the French, the Germans, Mexicans, Africans, Koreans and many more. Literally everyone. The show was about them pushing limits. They were cast as hyperbole factories. They were caricatures of middle-aged white English guys.

As I said, when you have a group consisting exclusively of middle-aged white English guys, then making fun of "everyone" is not really as equitable as you're making out. Punching down isn't the same thing as poking fun at yourself. If me and my white friends get together and tell some racist jokes about black people followed by some racist jokes about white people to "balance it out", that's not ok.

He makes fun of himself, his co-presenters and basically everything about the UK and British people constantly (especially when it comes to manufacturing).

For that matter, they've done entire episodes about how terrible the UK is at things, like the British Leyland cheap car challenge.

If he made those comments about anything else, someone would call them offensive. I find that double standard and the concept that you can't make jokes about anything far more concerning than the content of his "controversies" aside from the punching.

I don't see how that's comparable. He's used racist slurs against various non-white ethnic groups and explicitly advocated for discrimination against certain (non-white) ethnic groups. If he's done the same with regard to white people, I'd be interested to hear about it.

You never heard him talk about the French?

(Or Germans, for that matter.)

Yes, I have often heard white Europeans making fun of other white Europeans. The idea that it's ok to tell racist jokes as long as you also poke fun at more privileged groups of people simply makes no sense. That being said, Clarkson's xenophobia is hardly any more defensible than his racism.

First you say you are interested if he makes fun of white people, and when it is pointed out that he makes fun of white people, it is not interesting because then he is just making fun of "privileged" groups.

Clarkson makes fun of everyone, himself more than anyone else (call that privilege). That is why he is funny.

You don't seem to understand why the two cases aren't comparable. There's a huge difference between making fun of a group that you belong to and making fun of other groups. You can't excuse racism just by making a few digs at yourself.

>and when it is pointed out that he makes fun of white people

He doesn't make fun of white people as such. Making fun of Germans for being German is not the same as making fun of white people for being white.

Thanks for the links.

The more I read from this guy, the more I like him.

It's sort of a fine balance - we can't have everybody on tv making fun of gypsies and mexicans. On the other hand it feels too sterile when nobody can say what 90% of the people think.

I'm glad he exists.

"what 90% of the people think"

I think a lot of people like to think that 90% of the population have the same rather twisted prejudices as them.

Yeah, yeah - stereotypes are all false. And twisted!

I nominally agree that I don't think this says much about Amazon, and that Clarkson probably isn't an out and out bigot. His does have a fairly significant track record of controversy that makes it easy to paint him as such though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson#Controversy

One thing people have to remember about Clarkson is that he grew up in an entirely different generation. It's not an excuse, but it's plausible that the man simply messed up. In the unfortunate era he was brought up in, the word wasn't tigger.

EDIT: Also, not saying he's not a total arse sometimes. Just saying that I think in this particular scenario he got kind of shafted.

Clarkson isn't that old.

Clarkson made an allusion to the racism in the original rhyme by mumbling something vague, and then got punished by people who didn't distinguish the difference between referring to racism and actual racism.

The 'slopes' thing was racist though.

Other people his age seem to manage just fine not saying racist comments. Why is he an exception?

Most other people don't spend hours and hours in front of camera trying to come up with material that can be brought together to a funny show with lots of jokes.

So the default position of running out of material for jokes is racism?

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