Gilbert Gottfried: Funniest man alive

rime of the aflac mariner

can we start a rumor that "aflac" actually means "schadenfreude" in like Old Church Slavonic or something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JokbugkYEpM

Well, then get mad at or unfollow whomever you follow who RT'd one of his jokes.

I guess I feel like it's kind of ludicrous for people with 'zero practical connection' to the events to claim that they are being traumatized and therefore need to laugh at crappy tasteless jokes in order to get over their non-existent ordeal. Plenty of people are going through actual trauma because of this stuff, they don't really need to be lumped in with a bunch of people sitting on their couches watching the news and claiming to be 'shaken' before getting on with their lives undisturbed.

But the main thing is that as a 'pure jokemaking exercise' the tweets really aren't very good.

― peligro, Tuesday, March 15, 2011 1:39 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

Why is it ludicrous? And it's not about getting over an 'ordeal' it's about interfacing with the everyday miseries of the world - it's just easier for me to react to this by exchanging jokes with people than if I decided to get all handwringy over the details of this horrible tragedy. You're just twisting around this natural human reaction so you can have an opportunity to sneer at people who deal with things differently from you.

can someone link to the family guy writer thing, i dont know what it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PM3s3B473w

can someone link to the family guy writer thing, i dont know what it is

google "al3c sukl1n"

This might be the most attention Gottfried has received in his entire career! Kudos for his brand, Boo-dos for his lack of sensitivity.

sorry, "sulk1n"

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/family-guy-writer-apologises-for-japan-remarks_1207328

lol Boo-dos

I guess I feel like it's kind of ludicrous for people with 'zero practical connection' to the events to claim that they are being traumatized and therefore need to laugh at crappy tasteless jokes in order to get over their non-existent ordeal. Plenty of people are going through actual trauma because of this stuff, they don't really need to be lumped in with a bunch of people sitting on their couches watching the news and claiming to be 'shaken' before getting on with their lives undisturbed.

i think there's a kind of.. not trauma but feeling of immense sadness and powerlessness at such a brain-breakingly awful thing happening and crass jokes can offer - as gbx says - both a way out (permission to suspend these sensations for a second) and a way in (because the jokes only "work" insofar as you recognize the extreme inappropriateness of them, a recognition that requires sympathy in the first place)

after a shitstorm he posted this: Yesterday death toll = 200. Today = 10 thousand. I am sorry for my insensitive tweet. It's gone.

maybe you didnt intend it this way but when i read the princess tamtam internet character laughing at jokes making light of thousands of deaths i didnt think 'ahh hes dealing with tragedy the only way he knows how,' i thought o lord hes being 'edgy' again. where do u draw the line between everything you do being acceptable because on the inside, you really feel for people, and recognizing how people might perceive it?

Family Guy thing is worse, for my sensibilities, because the zing is about someone deserving their terrible fate--W. humor. I'd co-sign with TamTam: this kind of joke "interfacing with the everyday miseries of the world" more than proving a stance that someone deserves pain and misery.

like, i guess there are people out there who laugh maliciously at these jokes or something but surely they are the same unreachable broken minority who post about pearl harbor on facebook

xpost

the most recent aflac commercial is quite wack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHvLP6xCiAA

There's probably some neural reason why a certain joke sticks in one's craw. It's like the part of the brain that turns images/facts over and over and over spills over into the part that also remembers a joke or a lyric, and now you're singing to yourself this lyric about this awful thing.

rebecca black thread is that way

xpost I'm not talking about my reaction - I never even saw these jokes till today - I'm talking about what happens if you're a public figure on Twitter. You have no idea who's going to end up reading some throwaway joke or comment, or how it's going to rebound on you.

deej OTM. I think Tam Tam's argument is dubious. I'm not going to say people can't find inappropriate things funny (like I say, the floating school joke made me laugh) but I find it hard to take when someone justifies it as their way of processing a tragedy. This kind of joke is valid if there's pain involved, and a complexity of response - I don't believe that's happening for most people here.

Invoking Pearl Harbor is just stupid because we already retaliated for that in a major, globe-changing manner; it's the type of comment that doesn't work without body language signaling that you are making fun of people who say shit like this.

And by here I don't mean itt - I mean the people RTing Gottfried's jokes.

Tamtam, I genuinely don't intend to come across as sneery, I just feel like these are not 'everyday miseries' and that the horror the people actually involved are experiencing should be respected. I certainly mean no offence to you or anyone else, just stating my opinion

xp

i have no idea what that could be, eazy, but the "mechanistic" part of humor might explain it (still haven't read that bergson essay)---i still remember some p awful dead baby jokes from middle school and i think at least some of it is because the punchlines follow so...inevitably. rationally, even. like duh of course those of us in the truck-unloading business prefer it when a shipment of babies comes in because boy is it easier to use a pitchfork.

i mean i've even seen this...thing where if you tell a dead baby/helen keller joke in certain company you'll get these guilty, knowing nods and ppl will like say the punchline with you even as they're shaking their damn heads. mostly because lol middle school ~memories~, but also because those jokes (kinda like the GG tsunami jokes), regardless of the punchline, find their humor, their lamp-post, in the exact same "truth" every time. all HK jokes are rooted in her disabilities, every time. if you told a joke that invoked her actual personality/humanity, no one would get it.

which is why you'll also see ppl (if you hang around with such ppl, and tell such jokes) react to DB/HK jokes they haven't heard by trying to guess the punchline. like even if the joke is going to be horrible, it's hard not to go "well ok with that setup, and knowing that this is a joke about dead babies, i bet the punchline is _____" despite yourself.

kinda think this applies to everything from "crossing the road" jokes to even the most vile racist/misogynist/whatever jokes you can imagine.

how the hell does anyone not know it was goddfried? only one person has that voice

I'm betting that the punchline is "corduroy." Did I win anything??

but I find it hard to take when someone justifies it as their way of processing a tragedy. This kind of joke is valid if there's pain involved, and a complexity of response - I don't believe that's happening for most people here.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, March 15, 2011 1:56 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark

Pain & complexity don't make it more valid, just more interesting to you! There's probably nothing provocative to you about an American inuring themselves to the misery of others with bad jokes, and maybe there shouldn't be - but as an emotional response I don't see what's invalid about it.

I actually feel like I'm arguing a little too hard in the other direction now - probably making it sound like there's this rich inner pain experienced by anyone making an edgy joke after a disaster, when really I'm just saying that it's an easy & fun way to avoid thinking too much about stuff that bums you out. And I get why that rubs people the wrong way, as it's an equally common & valid human response to be pissed when someone is joking about something you take very seriously.

am i led to believe that Gottfried was still doing the voice up until the japan jokes? I mean it's one voice doing one word. They could've, i dunno, taped it and just replayed it for every commercial. this is the real story here

Also, the family guy thing is much much worse since it basically implies that the Japanese deserve to die for the events of two generations ago, absolutely not surprised to find out the FG writers really do think this way

am i led to believe that Gottfried was still doing the voice up until the japan jokes? I mean it's one voice doing one word. They could've, i dunno, taped it and just replayed it for every commercial. this is the real story here

― brownie, Tuesday, March 15, 2011 2:15 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

I used to follow Alec Sulkin on Twitter, and honestly he seems like a pretty chill dude and this comment is sort of out of character imo

am i led to believe that Gottfried was still doing the voice up until the japan jokes? I mean it's one voice doing one word. They could've, i dunno, taped it and just replayed it for every commercial. this is the real story here

man I can't believe how short you're selling the art of the AFLAC commercials. Like, sometimes the duck is just sticking his head into a situation and interjection his opinion - so he'll say, like, "Aflac." Other times, people are hating on the duck, putting him into all kinds of drama, and he'll respond, "Aflac." This is really just the tip of the iceberg too man, lotta craft and love goes into the construction of the duck character

how the hell does anyone not know it was goddfried? only one person has that voice

― frogbs, Tuesday, March 15, 2011 6:13 PM (8 minutes ago)

idk how many markets the pardo sub was going on in and the internet is being typically difficult about tracking it down right now because everything is all about these gg tweets but i doubt it was just mn

SOURCE: The Honig Company, LLC for Gilbert Gottfried

Mar 15, 2011 13:42 ET

Statement From Gilbert Gottfried

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - March 15, 2011) - The following statement was just released by comedian Gilbert Gottfried:
"I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy in Japan. I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families."

Contact:
Steve Honig
The Honig Company, LLC
818-986-4300
Email Contact

Via: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Statement-From-Gilbert-Gottfried-1411936.htm

john i don't buy this don pardo think for a second. you're pulling my leg!

thing is, the "pearl harbor" meme, as epitomized by the FG writer tweet,

"If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google 'Pearl Harbor death toll.'"

isn't a joke, or even "jokey"! it's just smirking arms-crossed.gif snarkiness. it's only going to get a chuckle if you happen to subscribe to the same worldview as the moron asking "amirite?" after he says it. otherwise it falls totally flat. or, rather: not a single person in Japan is likely to find a comment like that even remotely funny, or recognizable as humor.

whereas i'm p sure there's nervous tension-breaking jokes being told between survivors right now (though they probably don't resemble any of GG's jokes, tbh)

aero otm re duck nuances

Mother Nature still not quite as homicidal as Harry Truman

ok now that's a tension-breaking joke

xpost OK, TamTam, I get where you're coming from now.

Coming to Broadway, 2016: Kelsey Grammer as King Lear, Gilbert Gottfried as the Fool.

mother nature's kill rate is 100%

Can we change thread title to Gilber Gottfried: MOST INSENSITIVE MAN ALIVE

THIS THREAD TITLE MUST NEVER BE CHANGED

have we talked about the effect of distance (time) at all here? like holocaust jokes are de rigeur now and people make 9/11 jokes, which means it's just a matter of time before tsunami jokes are "ok" to some degree. and it's a tricky thing, because the first people who manage to find the time when those jokes are "ok" get the benefit of being "edgy," but if you jump in too soon, you get the gottfried treatment.

some talk of the 7 day rule above

Gottfried was widely praised for making a 9/11 joke "too soon", so it's not hard to see what his reasoning might have been.

http://cdn3.iofferphoto.com/img/item/169/639/422/SwzY.jpg

GG wasn't even the first to the scene, and his jokes weren't funny at all. pretty sure I remember laughing at 9/11 pics on Photoshop Phriday the same week it happened. 4ch*n posters went to work right away, too. (the only funny picture I have seen from this was a shop'd World of Warcraft Cataclysm reference to the now famous whirlpool pic. Tried to find it to post here, but am at work so can't actually go to the site.)