From Katja's accessibility travel adventures to a comedian insulting deaf people on the radio, the Slumguillion always has interesting and important information.
I too am appalled at how often able bodied comedians use people with disabilities as gist for their routines. A friend of mine who is another quadriplegic told me that he attended a live comedy show and was the butt of jokes most of the evening by the comedian du jour. Although he has a sense of humor, he felt that it was done in an excessive and demeaning manner.
And in this case doing it on the radio to people who cannot even hear them is the height of cowardice.
An excerpt of the radio show:
"Lisa Lampanelli: I was always [wondering] if God would maybe think my act was awful and make me deaf so I cant do comedy no more, ’cause that’s why people are deaf; ’cause god hates them.
Male DJ: Now, listen, Lisa.
LL: God hates deaf people, what is wrong with you?
Male DJ: There are gonna be a lot of deaf people there.
LL: Oh, I hope so.
Female DJ: Well there will be. There’s a college within RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology] that’s specifically for deaf students.
LL: Don’t you think deaf students, could be maybe just retarded, and they’re trying to sneak by saying they are deaf?
Male DJ: Lighten up a little bit."
Over at RidorLIVE.com, a deaf blogger writes:
"Don’t you understand this?! Lisa Lampanelli took this opportunity to make fun of Deaf people behind our backs without our knowledge by going on the radio station and mocked us of our dignity — all that we fought for years to preserve our dignity. It is the oldest trick between hearing and Deaf people, by making fun of us using their voices without us knowing what they had to say about us. That is what?
Audism.
It is not cool to make fun of people’s races, but it is cool to make fun of Deaf people?"
A la Michael Richards' racist tirade.
And this bit about people going around all of the time saying God hates disabled people - or we are being punished - is not cool either.
4 comments:
I disagree. I think disabled people need to lighten up. Comedians can make fun of anyone they want. It's called free speech.
Even comedians cross lines that aren't appropriate. People need to see- no joke intended ha ha - that those of us with disabilities aren't going to laugh at these kind of jokes, don't find them funny and will protest against them just as blacks did with Michael Richards. She went too far.
Deaf comedian Kathy Buckley talks about how she was thought to have mental retardation as a kid. I wonder if Lisa Lampanelli realizes that she shows her ignorance in two ways - yes Deaf people can be comedians and also mixing up being deaf and having cognitive limitations is also ignorant.
Lampanelli insulted both death and developmentally disabled people.
The thing about comedy is, if you target a group to be the butt of many jokes, you probably need to be among that group to do it without being just plain mean. And sure, Lampanelli thrives on her title as Queen of Mean, or whatever, but look at Chris Rock and all the edgy critical things he says about black folks. Guess what? They're funny and thoughtful and outrageous because he's on the inside making those remarks, not stomping on a group of people from outside that community.
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