When is a joke too sick?

[Oneeyedvic]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1 285715,00.html

A comedian has been booed off stage for making a joke about missing Madeleine McCann and shooting victim Rhys Jones.

Dave Longley criticised the fact that photographs have been released of both children in Everton football tops.

Longley told the stunned audience at Liverpool's Baby Blue club that "you think parents would have learned about putting their children in Everton shirts after Maddie and Rhys".

The red-faced comic, who was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, was booed off stage.

Was this wrong because it was two kids who are affected? Or was it just 'over sensitive' Liverpudlians?

[laurence2]

If you are easily offended, just a word of advice,

Don't go and see a comedian.

I do not have an issue with ''any'' jokes, i'm sure the Mc Canns and jones of this world have laughed at someones else's expense.

[Romeo]

In response to NJOK's reply, I so want to invite Charlie Brooker in the Guardian to try to smack me round the head and tell me to grow up. Thinks he's hard, does he? We'd soon see who smacks who >:-)

[styley]

I think I would probably have laughed at that if I'm being honest, but would have felt guilty at the same time. I'd say it's still a bit too early yet for jokes like that as neither case has been solved yet and also its a bit too close to the events. I think most comedians would have waited about a year before, making jokes about diana and dodi, but sure everyone's having a laugh about it these days. Also obviously when kids are involved its different as parent will all feel slightly attached to those two events.

[meredith101]

I remember the Billy Connolly one about the beheaded hostage, I can understand that kind of joke. It is kind of what allows jokes about death, and with double the power. Jokes about death work because death is so absurd that sometimes a joke is the only way to really deal with it. It is a good thing that we can laugh at death (unless you're an A and E doctor, you may lose your job). Similarly, with the beheading: it is just as absurd. You take someone who has nothing against you, and who has done nothing to you, and cut his head off in front of a camera cos you think god wants you to do that. To retain faith in the idea that the world is not full of people like that, and to digest the utter tragedy of it.........I can see where the joke is made.
If it happened to me (something similar nearly did), I would certainly want Connolly making a joke of it. Life is much bigger than the events and people that comprise it. This is why we can joke.
Similary: jokes about paedophilia. It is even more important here. Everyone knows of the sad nutters that are into this kind of thing, but there are plenty of people who are their victims who must try somehow to get on with their lives after some difficult set of circumstances. As such, you perception of life and of people must rise above the definition that an abuse event tries to force on you. Making jokes is a way of doing this. The comedian is not condoning paedophiles, nor ignoring the seriousness of the act or its consequences. He's just saying: we are all bigger than this. We overcome the world, not vice versa.

[emidevitt]

What was wrong in saying these jokes was not only the lack of respect for poeple's grief.
It just shows a serious lack of empathy. I am not really offended by it, more saddened and rather disgusted by the fact that this boofhead thinks he can crack a joke that isn't even his, in order to either provoke (in the best case) or get a cheap laugh out of it.

I don't think I lack humour by not laughing at this; it's the guy who seriously lacks talent and imaginattion, and thinks he can make up for it by a shocking his audience. He is probably proud he got a reaction and i'm sure he now thinks he is some kind of provocative, ununderstood genius.