The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Offending the Easily Offended

Posted on | July 24, 2018 | Comments Off on Offending the Easily Offended

 

Do I want to defend Trevor Noah? No, he’s not funny and I hate his politics. On the other hand, who is offended by this 2013 joke?

South African comedian Trevor Noah is facing heavy criticism after a video of a stand-up routine from 2013 where he made a joke about Australia’s Aboriginal women resurfaced online.
Australians on social media are now calling for a boycott of his tour scheduled to begin with a performance at Melbourne’s Hisense Arena on August 23. . . .
“All women of every race can be beautiful,” the host of the Daily Show said.
“And I know some of you are sitting there now going, ‘Oh Trevor … I’ve never seen a beautiful Aborigine’ But you know what you say? You say, ‘Yet.’ Because you haven’t seen all of them, right?”

Is that offensive? To whom? Aborigines, perhaps.

According to the most recent Australian census, there are fewer than 700,000 Aborigines, about 3% of Australia’s 24 million population.

Because I’ve never been to Australia, and have no plans to go there, my opinion about Aborigine women’s beauty (or lack thereof) is moot. If you’re a world-traveler who greatly admires Aborigine women, OK, but opinions may vary. What’s so outrageous about Trevor Noah’s joke?

Isn’t it the suggestion that beauty is not distributed equally among women? That some women are more fortunate in this regard than others? And that beauty is a generally desirable quality?

Trevor Noah could have made Peruvian women or Mongolian women the punch-line of his joke, to the same effect, and the perpetually offended would still scream in outrage. The very idea that women vary in beauty, and that men notice this, is sexist objectification, according to feminists.

Pandering to the social-justice mobs is Trevor Noah’s stock-in-trade — he’s made The Daily Show about as funny as a Rachel Maddow monologue — and so of course, he rushed to apologize:

Henceforth, Trevor Noah will ask the SJW overlords for prior permission to joke about anyone who is not a white heterosexual male Republican.

 

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