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Permalink Reply by Spike Vincent on June 14, 2011 at 10:05am

      He wasn't jokes... he was ranting.   It was more of a speech then any punchlines.     All you have to do is switch out gay with Black or Jew and have someone say " If my son came home with a black girl I'd stab him"

 Or if My daughter dated a jew "I'd stab him".     Then it wouldn't be a question of "is it hate or comedy"

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on June 14, 2011 at 12:58pm

I'm on the fence about this one but I think it's better not to advocate the killing of someone because of the way they were born. He can have all the free speech he wants but if most people also don't feel like watching his movies or tv show that's fine also. He's just a bigoted idiot.

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Permalink Reply by Kirsten on June 14, 2011 at 11:53am

I actually don't see any issue in this whatsoever; people who were truly offended by his act left. Their community asked for an apology. He chose to apologize. It seems like it's more media hype trying to drive it into something other than it is. Whipping up your reader's sense of indignation is a great way to sell or get subscribers. Nothing new there. Just another dirty tactic.

George Carlin (my favorite comedian) offended a lot of people and spent a lot of time in jail for it. That, right there, is where the line is crossed. If Tracy had been tossed into jail and harassed by police he'd have people on his side. Using laws to control civil liberties is ridiculous. Nothing in this story approaches that line.

He had the right to speak. They had the right to leave. He chose to apologize for PR reasons. I think his form of comic entertainment is pretty crude myself, but if he has an audience, that's their choice. Just because one has a right to speak doesn't mean everyone else has an obligation to listen. I'm pretty sure hate as comedy is going to slowly die out. Education is the best cure we can give. Hopefully education budgets can get ramped up instead of being cut. Now that is an issue to care about.

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Permalink Reply by Bryan B on June 14, 2011 at 3:56pm

Really there needs to be zero tolerance for this kind of thing. The only way to beat things like this is to make it socially unacceptable. Take, for example, spousal abuse. Even thought technically illegal this used to be a regular occurrence anyway. That was because it wasn't deemed unacceptable. When other men and women began speaking out and educating the problem became far less common. It became socially unacceptable. This is the way to beat hatred too.

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