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I’m sorry this is a week late, but I’m in America right now, only able to watch the BBC in small doses, through semi-legal means, but I finally saw Are You Having A Laugh? the recent documentary where former politician, anti-abortionist and pregnant woman shackler Ann Widdecombe argued that Christianity and Jesus have come in for an unfair amount of abuse in recent years from comedians and comedy shows. 

There’s a whole world of points this opens up, about good and bad done in the name of religion, the bounds of satire and freedom of speech, the entitlement of any given group, their rights to protection and so on, but I’d like to focus on one small element of the argument. One that’s so trite, simplistic and just plain wrong, but gets churned out time and time again without being questioned, and commanded a fair chunk of this show:

“You wouldn’t say that about Muslims.”

“Yeah, you can kick Christianity, but imagine saying that about Islam.”

“How come Jesus is always the one that’s fair game? Mohammed is never mentioned.”

Which is NONSENSE. Absolute nonsense.

I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard this, and it’s drivel for at least three (that I’ve counted so far) reasons.

Firstly, IT’S NOT TRUE.

They do. I can think of plenty of my comedy colleagues who have jokes about Islam and/or Muslims. Some, admittedly more sophisticated than others. Nick Doody, for example, had a whole, well thought out and intelligent routine about Islam in his Edinburgh Fringe show a few years ago, jokes he also did on the circuit.

This year’s festival has wonderful comedian and provocateur Scott Capurro bring his new show Islamahomophobia. I’m not entirely sure what the whole show’s about, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion Muslims get a namecheck.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are so many jokes about the number of virgins suicide bombers are supposedly handed in the afterlife, that the whole topic has been consigned to the deepest pits of hackery.

The second I hear someone start the bit, I’m absent-mindedly mouthing along, “Let me guess? You’d rather have one experienced woman who knows what she’s doing? Good for you.”

That’s how many jokes about Islam there are: some of them are hack, up there with cats and dogs, airline food and the line, “He knows what I’m talking about”

Secondly, WHILE THERE ARE *FEWER* JOKES ABOUT ISLAM, IT’S FOR VERY PRACTICAL REASONS.

This was a point that was touched on in the show by Steve Punt, but then ignored. There aren’t as many Muslim jokes because not as many people know about Islam. Not the comedians making the jokes, nor their audiences. Britain is a culturally Christian country (albeit a relatively secular one), and America even more so.

I’m an atheist of Jewish origin, yet I went to Christian-run schools for the vast majority of my childhood. To this day, I probably know the words to Onward Christian Soldiers better than I know Adon Olam. I’ll talk about Christianity (and Judaism and Atheism) more than Islam for the same reason I’ll talk about Birmingham more than Belarus. It’s what I know, and it’s what my audience knows.

There is another practical reason we talk about Christianity more than Islam, and it’s one that’s always being hinted at by those who bring it up but never explicitly said:

Some, and I stress some… in fact, let’s over stress that - a tiny, tiny minority who in no way represent the vast majority of mainstream Islam… 

But SOME Muslims are a little bit killy. They tend to overreact to what they perceive as blasphemy with murder. While this isn’t really an issue for the club comic - radical fundamentalists don’t tend to pop down to the Amused Moose for a beer and a chuckle - it’s definitely a concern for mainstream broadcasters and publishers.

And to be honest, if that’s a reason why your religion is mocked more than theirs, then well done you. You should take that as a compliment - your crazies aren’t quite as crazy as their crazies. You see? By mocking Jesus, but not Mohammed, they’re paying you the highest respect. They’re saying, “You can take it.”

But thirdly, finally, and most importantly,  I DON’T BELIEVE YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

Or, at least, what you’re implying. I think you’re being disingenuous in the extreme when you make that argument. Because what you’re suggesting when you say, “You wouldn’t joke about Muslims” is that the only thing you object to is the lack of parity. But I don’t think for a second that if a comedian’s routine were “fair”, if it hit other religions equally you’d be fine with that.

Do you, Ann Wiiddecombe, or anyone else who makes that point, honestly believe that if you heard a comedian tell a joke about Jesus that hit too close to home, but it was immediately followed by one about Mohammed, or Yahweh, or Buddha, Shiva, Zoroaster or whomever, you’d revise your opinion and renounce your earlier offence? “Well, I was uncomfortable with how he portrayed the Virgin Mary, but then he really stuck it to Abraham and Vishnu, so it’s fine by me.”

Because I doubt it, I really do.

A more cynical writer might claim that the main reason you bring up Islam is to piggy-back off of bog-standard racism to distract from a sub-par argument. To appropriate the prejudices of those who are either afraid of Muslims, or jealous of what they perceive to be special treatment, to buy sympathy for your cause.  But that’s not my style - I’m much more sophisticated than that. He knows what I’m talking about.

There’s a fun joke my friends and I sometimes do and it’s one you can do too. The butt of the joke is the nicest one in your group; trust me, you know who that person is. They’ll also never know it’s happened, because what you do is wait until they’ve just left the party, or the bar, or the car you were road-tripping in, wait until the door’s shut behind them and they’re a fraction out of earshot and say, ”What a cunt!”

Here’s the thing: You have to say it like you mean it, like you were personally slighted by them and their presence. Your friends will pause for a second, then the penny will drop and they will laugh. Why? Because that friend is so obviously not a cunt. Because they’re the least cunty person you all know. Because they’ve spent the whole evening being an absolute delight, and it’s so implausible that you’d actually mean that that it must be a joke.

Here’s the other thing: You have to pick the nicest one in the group. Most people also have a friend who they like, but can sometimes be a dick. You can’t do that joke with them because the others will say, “I know he can be difficult, but his heart’s in the right place”, or worse, agree, and then you’ll have to explain that you actually meant the opposite, and then you’re explaining a joke, and that’s never funny. (See this whole article for evidence.)

Last night, The Onion tweeted this:

Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013

Here’s Salon.com’s take on it. It’s fairly representative of the general shit storm:

“Most likely — the Onion has not yet responded to Salon for comment — whoever tweeted that was trying to bring America’s fawning obsession with the child star down a notch with a dose of schadenfreude.”

No! No it wasn’t! There was no schadenfreude nor was the butt of the joke America’s fawning. The butt of the joke was her niceness, and the absurdity of the writer’s view. This joke only works because Wallis is 100% blameless; she is the embodiment of innocence. It wouldn’t have even worked as well if they’d picked an adult actor who’s thought of as nice - a Bradley Cooper or Jennifer Lawrence, because people would think, “Maybe I’m missing something - did they do something dickish and I didn’t catch the story?” Whereas Wallis is a 9 year old girl, and one who, in all public appearances, has been nothing but a joy. She could never be considered a cunt. She’s the very last person you’d ever call that, and that’s what powers the joke.

Not only that, but the real joke isn’t even the second half of the sentence, it’s the first seven words: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it”. It’s the idea that there’s some dirty secret. That we all know it, but it’s just society’s niceties that are keeping us from voicing the truth. The joke is in the writer saying something no one would, or could possibly think, then turning to an astonished crowd and saying, “Am I right? We’re all thinking it. Come on!”

Salon continues:

At best, the tweet reads like a degrading attack on a child; at worst, it’s a racially tinged degrading attack on a child, by virtue of the fact it dredges up memories of those offensive tweets directed at Rue from “The Hunger Games,” another young, black, female child actress in her breakout role.

What? Point me to a single word in that tweet that has a damn thing to do with race. The Hunger Games tweets the article referenced were racist, because they were specifically about her being black, and by people who meant it, rather than meaning the exact opposite. Nothing in that Onion joke is even racial, let alone racist.

A lot of people are then saying, “But how do you explain that to her? She’s a young girl. She shouldn’t be exposed to this joke.” Firstly, she probably wouldn’t have ever seen it at all if people weren’t so public about their outrage. The wording of the joke has been reproduced many thousands of times more, and in more mainsteam avenues, than it ever would have been, were it just a single tweet by an adult comedy publication.

And if, by some peculiarly specific bit of self-googling she had seen it, her parents or minders could have explained, “It is a joke, based on how nice you are. It’s like when someone’s just won a race and you say to them, ‘You’re a bit slow!’ because they’re obviously not. It means that people think you’re lovely.” And then they could explain how sarcasm works. They’d also have to explain a rude word, but again, they probably wouldn’t have to because there’s no way she would have seen it.

Now, thanks to the many thousands of times it’s been reproduced on the web, she’s far more likely to come across it, and thanks to the relentless, misunderstood analysis and the Onion CEO’s back-pedalling mea culpa, those same people will now have to say, “It’s because you’re famous, and when you’re famous people will say mean things about you, but you shouldn’t listen to them.” The original joke wasn’t being cruel to her, but the reaction has made it that way.

Which is why when the nice guy leaves the bar, and your friend says, “What a cunt”, don’t then text him with, “Hey, Jim just called you a cunt. What’s up with that?” because the context is lost, the moment has passed, and he won’t get it. And Jim will have to say sorry for a perfectly fine joke.