Modified On August 9, 2012
This time, it’s Jimmy Carr who owes someone an apology.
An article in the UK Mirror describes the hubbub… and includes the joke:
A former Army commander yesterday called for Jimmy Carr to quit for making fun of soldiers who have lost limbs.
Patrick Mercer, Conservative MP and chairman of the Commons subcommittee on terrorism, said certain subjects should be instinctively “off limits” for stand-up comics.
Carr told a 2,500-strong audience at the Manchester Apollo: “Say what you like about servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a f***ing good paralympic team in 2012.”
Not a very coarse joke on the face of it. In fact, if you dig a little deeper, it’s actually very complimentary of those who served and sacrificed a body part– It bespeaks hope, determination, grit, focus. If we were to compare it to other depictions of returning servicemen, it certainly leaves out the part about being emotionally crippled or self-pitying. (Have we ever seen or heard of a paralympic athlete who was self-pitying or bitter? We don’t think so.)
Perhaps Carr could have set up the joke better. After all, who, besides the most hard-bitten idealogue would he be addressing when he prefaces the joke with, “Say what you like about servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan…”
Say what you like?
Is it really necessary to grease the skids for a joke about servicemen amputees with a qualifier that is nothing more than a nod to those who might have bad things to say? Was the joke misquoted? Is the atmosphere in England so tainted that he felt the need to acknowledge that their might some sort of disagreement as to the opinion of injured servicemen?
That aside, we weren’t halfway through the article when we concluded that Carr probably picked up the joke (or the inspiration for it) by talking to some of those who had actually been mutilated in war. No one is more ready with the sick, twisted and dark humor about the misery and limitation of injury and paralysis than those who are injured and paralyzed.
Back in August, the Washington Post ran an article about how some of the folks who leave a limb or two (or more) behind in Iraq or Afghanistan use humor to deal with their circumstances.
Yes, the humor can be offensive and galling– burn victims sometimes call one another “crispy,” for example. The sphere of people who can get away with telling amputee jokes is tightly defined, and not every wounded warrior is able to joke about having a hard time going up stairs or holding a coffee cup. But for others, it’s the ultimate palliative as they move from denial to anger to acceptance.
“You have to have fun with it,” said Kevin Blanchard, who lost his left leg while on patrol in Iraq in 2005. “And you can get away with murder, because who’s going to yell at an amputee?”
Emphasis ours. The sphere of people who can get away with it, at least according to a Conservative member of the British Parliament and others, does not include diminutive British comedians.
Carr apologized and said he would perform in a fundraiser to help raise funds for wounded soldiers.
The joke prompted a huge response on the Army Rumour Service website. One poster wrote: “I believe this was probably a line he picked up from Headley Court from the guys in rehab and so feels justified in using it.”
Many branded him “smug” but most agreed if the gag had been made by someone in the military it would be viewed as funny. One said: “It’s not the joke that upsets people– it’s because Jimmy Carr told it.”
And therein lies the problem. Folks on the inside (but not quite close to the objects of the joke) take offense on their behalf. It is their view that Carr hadn’t “earned” the right to make the observation.
But Mercer (the whining MP) also added that:
“He was one of their favourite comics,” said Mr Mercer. “He has spent a great deal of time with troops at Selly Oak and Headley Court, but that just makes it even more bizarre.”
Selly Oak and Headley Court are a giant hospital and a rehab center for the British Armed Forces respectively, and it is this bit of info that makes us think that Carr believed himself to be qualified to make the joke, to believe himself to have earned the right to make such a ghastly joke about amputees.
Perhaps Carr erred in doing the gag in front of 2,500 fans at the Manchester Apollo… or perhaps doing it in that setting without a lengthy, somewhat sappy, Bob Hope-like, How-’bout-those-brave-troops?, Aren’t-they-great? kind of setup. Sometimes, in a different context, that’s what it takes to sell a joke like that.
It is Mercer’s reaction which is bizarre. Perhaps pressure from humorless constituents (do they call them that in England?) is what forced Mercer to get all judgmental.