Open Discussion:
Dane Cook was met with both laughs and groans at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles when he made a joke about The Dark Knight and the shootings in Aurora that left 12 dead and dozens wounded.
Newser.com quotes Cook:
Video obtained by the Daily Caller shows Cook telling a joke at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles: “I know that if none of that would have happened, pretty sure that somebody in that theater, about 25 minutes in, realizing it was a piece of crap, was probably like, ‘Ugh f—ing shoot me.’”
What do you think? Is it too soon?
Will it ever be okay to joke about something so devastating?
Was Cook’s joke the problem, or the subject matter?
Or is this joke legitimately funny?
The question offers a false choice–“Is it too soon for this type of joke, or is it legitimately funny?”
How about “Even if this joke isn’t funny, it’s still NEVER too soon.”
This is about as funny as the news of Magic Johnson’s AIDS diagnosis. Jimmie Walker (JJ from the sitcom Good Times) was on the O’Reilly Factor recently talking about how Jay Leno has let the stand-up community down by not featuring more comedians on the Tonight Show. “He was one of us,” Walker said of Leno, explaining how it was expected that Leno would make breaking new comics a big part of the show, but didn’t.
If this is what’s out there, thanks Jay.
I sympathize with people who find a given subject impossible to laugh at, whether it’s because it’s “too soon”, the joke sucked, or just that they could never personally find any joke about a given topic funny. That’s everyone’s individual prerogative. That said, I don’t think any topic is or should be off limits to humor for all people, based on the how the most sensitive people feel about it. It’s okay for people who want to need to laugh at tragedies to do so, and for people who can’t to refrain, which may include avoiding comedians who are known… Read more »
I’m mixed on this. Like Marc says the joke probably did some people some good and I really don’t like the idea of trying to declare that Cook (or anyone else) should flat out never joke about it.
I agree with Marc. Mixed reactions. It’s still not as bad compared to what Daniel Tosh said about rape.
The moral guardians are already after him. What does he have to lose? CafeMom and Feministing don’t give half a care about stand up comedy until some single, cisgendered man misbehaves, so why bother?
Too soon for who? It will always be too soon for some people. Other people will need it the next day. Listen to that mixed reaction. groans, laughter, shrieks of decompressing emotion. It seems to me that it was good for some people. Plus, its kind of a crap joke, but its the kind that plenty of dark humored people had already made in their mind.