Comedian Guy Earle has been called before the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for violating the human rights of a lesbian couple with insulting comments at a nightclub. Lorna Pardy, 32, filed the complaint after she was insulted at dinner with her partner. She alleges Earle, restaurant owner Salam Ismail and Zesty Food Services Inc. “discriminated against her in the provision of a service … on the basis of her sex and her sexual orientation.”
We have been following attacks on free speech in the West, including in Canada, here and here. Canada’s human rights tribunals have been at the center of the controversy over limits on free speech, here.
Comedy clubs are known for often bawdy and offensive speech. What is interesting in this case is that the complaining party actually elevated the dispute to the point of physical contact by throwing water in the face of the comedian. There may be a legitimate basis for complaint by these women, but to elevate the matter to a human rights violation with claims of post-traumatic stress seems a bit over the top.
We saw a vile racist outburst by Michael Richards (aka Kramer) recently in a confrontation with hecklers:
The incident ruined his career but it was not made into a human rights matter.
B.C. Human Rights Tribunal member Murray Geiger-Adams refused demands by Earle’s lawyer to consider challenges based on free speech and jurisdictional questions. Earle’s lawyer stormed out of the hearing.
Earle says that Pardy was heckling him and that he responded by swearing at her.
Pardy said that the incident occurred during open-mic night at Zesty’s Restaurant on an open-microphone comedy night. She says that during the argument the women were called “dykes, bitches and c—.” She admits that she threw water in Earle’s face in order “to snap him out of whatever rage he was in.” She claims to have suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome since the May 2007 incident.
For the full story, click here.
Those pussy-eating dykes shouldn,t be mad, I mean come on, Who doesn’t love two women with each others love cream all over their faces. They should be proud to be cunt lickers and not offended!!
“Poe wrote on both”.
Good point, Buddha. I find that self-deprecating humor allows me to let people know that I am aware of the character flaws that they find so transparently obvious, thereby retaining a modicum of dignity by obviating the need for others to point them out to me directly.
AY,
I beg to differ. Comedy is funny even if you are the target. Funny is funny.
The extent of largess of one’s own self-deprecation has a higher threshold in some than in others. That’s another story entirely.
Comedy is funny so long as you are not the target. When you can turn a joke then its funny. How many Jewish people really get upset when on of their own is making money? They turned a liability into profitability.
Canadian Eh!, I don’t have a clue what you meant, but it sounds very convincing.
C Eh!,
You have confused me with your TLAs (three letter acronyms).
This story was all over the news here this morning. Ridiculous….absolutely ridiculous. Unfortunately anyone these days can cry PTSD when they should really be in intense DBT for BPD.
All comedy is discriminatory. It it is also mean-spirited and demeaning, it is no longer funny, but it is not a human rights violation because no one has the right to be free from ridicule. If any of these ladies is truly suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, one can only imagine the psychic damage that real stress might produce in such frail creatures.
She could have challenged him to a duel.
It wouldn’t have been as spectacular as Hamilton/Burr ….