The natural disaster joke for which footy pundit Rodney Marsh was sacked wasn’t racist, and was arguably moderately funny. ("David Beckham was asked to sign to Newcastle, but he said no because he’d heard the Toon Army killed a load of people last month").
Calling someone a "fucking lazy nigger" is appalling, even if it’s meant non-racistly; hence fellow pundit Ron Atkinson’s sacking last year was warranted. That, however, is different from making jokes that use natural disasters to mock a dim footballer.
The tsunami is both an appalling tragedy, and a perfectly acceptable source of humour. If you think accepting the latter diminishes the former, then you’re an idiot.
Hear hear. I’ve just written much the same.
Nice blog.
Agreed, though he probably should have known the boundaries of taste for a football phone-in are a bit tighter than for a pub conversation.
I would have demanded an apology, but congratulated him on the quality of the gag.
Good gag I thought.
I don’t think that everything is funny, nor that everything is a joke, but one can make a joke about anything. Yes, there are even good jokes about race, which Atkinson’s obviously was not, that was just idiocy for which he was rightly sacked.