The student editors of a University of Colorado newspaper were wrong to publish an opinion column written earlier this week that said all Asians hate white people and should be captured and “hog-tied,” CU officials said Wednesday. [DUH] [Original Column]
Yeah, yeah, first amendment rights and freedom of speech…but I’ve always held the opinion that if you’re going to make racist jokes, sexist jokes, whatever, your jokes had damn well better be funny. In other words, bad jokes are just bad jokes unless they’re bad hateful jokes, in which case the “but I was trying to be funny!” excuse doesn’t really cut it.
There are a good couple of posts on this at reappropriate, too.
I’m catching up on the blogroll a little, don’t mind me.
Thanks much. Man, I don’t understand people. Satire is satire. This is just mind-numbingly dumb.
The student press published an actual apology after their sort of fake apology, which I can’t find now but when I was googling for it I found that Karson has been suspended from the paper.
http://dailycamera.com/news/2008/feb/28/paper-suspends-karson/
That’s good to hear.
I think the problem is that satire has been used to protect people’s freedom of speech (you know, when it’s actually satire), but it is difficult to define exactly what is and isn’t satire concretely, in legal terms. So it gets used as a crutch by everyone and their brother to cover up all kinds of vile speech.