Freedom of Speech

There - that's the blogpost about the meaning of life out of the way, thank fuck for that, so now I can finally write something useful. Yay me! To my steady readers, of which there are very few, I would just like to warn you that this won't be a very funny bloggpost - it will be a (probably bad) attempt at being serious.

It is worth noting, I believe, that this won't be a direct translation of the Norwegian version, nor will many of the others. The reason is that the wording in this article, like the others I will change, will feel very irrelevant to people outside of Norway. The message of most of the articles will still be relevant, but not how it is presented.

Otto Jespersen is the name of a Norwegian comedian. He has a weekly segment in a program whose name is translated to "The Thursday Club", wherein he bashes some celebrity, or old people, or a religious group, or whatever. What he did, was to make a monologue about the media and the way he though they focused on details instead of looking at the big picture - and one of the images he used was "think about the poor flees during World War Two who got killed, whose only crime was to reside on jews". Obviously a remark meant to critizise the ridiculous media coverage on meaningless things. However, the Israeli ambassador - of course - pressed charges, and he was accused by many for being anti-semittic. As a respons, he made another monologue that was even harsher - and you can see that here, with translations. As a result, however, TV2, the channel he was on, was convicted of "Unethical Broadcasting" by something called "Pressens Faglige Utvalg".

I am a strong believer in the freedom of speech. I think that we all have the right to criticize, and we all have a duty to accept criticism. To me there are two types of humor: Good humor, and bad humor. I couldn't care less if something is deemed "offensive". I laugh just as much from jokes about scousers, swedes, whites, blacks, and jews, and I think people's prejudices - no matter what they are - are fucking funny. What determines if it's offensive or not, is the thought behind the joke! I don't find it funny if a guy from the KKK tells a joke about black people, and I don't find nazis joking about jews funny, but if the same jokes are told by a black man and a jew, they can be funny as hell. The reason the satire in question is funny, is that it's very clear that he doesn't dislike the jews in particcular; he even says so straight out: "I have no reasons to hate jews in particcular. I am equally annoyed by all groups of people, regardless of race or religion".

This is very well illustrated in several of his monologues, perhaps espescially one where he talks about immigrants - where all moslem immigrants are viewed by him as men that beat their wives and steal money from the welfare state. He has also had monologues about people from Northern Norway, about the parents of small children, and about the elderly. None of these have led to any legal action, even though several of them have been far worse than the ones he had about the jews. Perhaps it's about time to realize that if satire is supposed to be protected under Freedom of Speech, it has to do so even if we don't like what's being said? Even if we don't find it funny? I'm sick and fucking tired of people who are arguing for freedom of speech when it's their own people being censored, and at the same time arguing against freedom of speech when it's someone they dislike.

And yes, that was definately aimed at religious people.

To quote Richard Coughland: May God Be Less.