In the tribute below, Crystal shows a progression of clips from Williams’ brilliant career starting with his early appearance on the Tonight Show and going to some standup routines. The clips highlighted Williams’ ability to improvise, including one scene where he borrows a pink scarf from an audience member in the front row and wraps its round his head like a Hijab, or Islamic headscarf. He then says “I would like to welcome you to Iran . . . Help me!”
The response was outrage on social media sites which called both Williams and Crystal racists and the tribute “offensive” speech. One critic objected that “After that, people who’d never heard of Robin Williams would think he’s Billy Crystal’s racist friend who was on a lot of talk shows?” Others called for apologies and sanctions. While Williams did a brief accent of a women from Bombay, it was the use of the scarf as a veil that led to the posting of most of the objections.
However, the critics ignore the alternative meaning of the joke. I took the joke as less as statement on Islam generally as a statement on the treatment of women in Iran — a subject of continued discussion on this blog. Clearly many women choose to wear burkas and veils and they should have every right to do so. However, we have also discussed how women have been abused in Iran and other Muslim countries when they have tried to resist discriminatory rules and compelled clothing requirements. Comedians use such controversies as the grist for their comedic mills. The best comedians have an edge and a point of view. While to some the veil is a religious symbol, it is also to others a symbol of the plight of many women who want greater freedom from Sharia law and cultural/religious restrictions. There are many women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other countries who have fought bravely for equal rights. The veil is often a symbol of that political struggle, including the continued abuses by morality police against women in countries like Saudi Arabia. This includes the recent sentence of flogging for a women who insulted the morality police and the earlier tragedy of girls forced back into a building school because they were not wearing veils and appropriate coverings.
The greatest concern is that in some Western countries like France, England, and Canada, we are now seeing people criminally charged after complaints have been filed over speech deemed to be offensive by particularly groups or individuals. It is part of a growing threat to free speech that I have written about. For recent columns, click here and here and here and here. When (as we have seen) this crackdown starts to include even standup routines, we have reached an unnerving point in our treatment of free speech and expression. In addition to the prosecutions of such cases, there is the creation of a chilling effect on many who do not want to be accused and potentially charged. The result is a type of self-censorship.
To be honest, I do find some comedians to be incredibly offensive and not funny: I would put Andrew Dice Clay and Kathy Griffin among them. I have even objected to the airing of inappropriate sexual displays during Superbowl shows or New Year shows due to the audience. Indeed, as many have noted, I tend to be a bit old-fashioned (some would say prudish) about crude jokes and a thuggish conduct. However, these objections go further than folks saying that they disliked the joke and raise the question of whether some jokes should be labeled and sanctioned as hate speech or racist. Kathy Griffin simulating oral sex on Anderson Coopers is hardly a disagreement of interpretation. It is appropriate (though in my view still decidedly not funny) in some contests (like a comedy club) and not others (like a television audience with kids celebrating the New Year). The Williams clip controversy turns more on the content of the joke and its meaning.
The clip below can be seen by different people in different ways. However we appear to be losing our tolerance for different or opposing views — even in a comedic routine. The result is pressure to strip away controversial or edgy elements — leaving a type of vanilla flavored level of discourse in our society. The free speech community needs to do a better job in advancing the notion of tolerance for speech in a pluralistic society. It may require giving the benefit of the doubt to people like Williams or Crystal and just not laughing at a joke.
What do you think?
And, of course, the NAACP is racist.
And, of course, Affirmative Action is racist.
The Constitution mandates neutrality.
All men are created equal.
After “equal creation,” the outcome of their lives is up to them.
“The biological bipeds of identical plumages are gregarious.”
If one desires to “flock together” with “birds of a feather,”
one must follow the flock, not artificially legislate admittance to another flock,
perhaps, even “vote with one’s feet.”
What makes this unfortunate backlash so tragic is that it is the second time.
Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda posted a lovely tribute to her father on Twitter, quoting the Little Prince. People started posting negative comments about the selfishness of suicide TO HIS DAUGHTER. She posted a single response in the same vein as her father would have. She said basically that her father was probably giggling up in heaven, having sent a flock of pigeons to go poop on the negative commenters. In response, some posters sent her a photoshopped image of her dad’s dead body. What a cruel thing to do to a grieving young woman.
And now, after having shown such incredible insensitivity to a grieving girl, now people are bashing her late father for being insensitive.
I wish people would just focus on the beautiful legacy left behind by Robin Williams. It grieves me to think he felt so alone at the penultimate moment, but if he’d only called out for help, millions of people would have flocked to him. But depression makes sufferers feel like islands.
The joke was not racist. It joked about the plight of women in Iran.
Political Correctness is an extremist movement.
Simple politeness and tact are more worthy goals, without policing every word . . .
If I remember correctly, that joke was told after the movie came out, “Not Without My Daughter.”
Has the Party of Tolerance become so intolerant that comedians can no longer make jokes about Sharia Law?
Because no amount of outraged arm waving can change the facts: Sharia Law abuses human rights, especially those of women and gays, in every single country where it is practiced. They murder gays and rape victims, and yet people here in the US are actually defending Sharia Law from criticism???
On a side note, I just watched a lovely video of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school where kids are taught to sing that they love the flow of blood, and bodies piled high, and they’ll all go to heaven when they’re martyred.
The US gave UN schools over $100 million last year alone, knowing full well that these schools hire Hamas soldiers to indoctrinate kids to become suicide bombers.
Nice, right? How dare anyone criticize . . .
Political Correctness humans are grading people. But one must look at the context of the statement or test which they are supposedly grading. If Robin Williams had put that skit out as a multiple choice test and then chosen an answer from a list of five choices then they could say for sure that he might be a racist or however ya spull it. But how does a Political Corrector judge or grade an essay exam answer? It is all subjective. And there is the problem. Political Correctness is subjective. Take the NAACP for example. If I said that I was in favor of the advancement of colored people then the PC squad would be all over me. But if I said that I was the head of the NAACP and they criticized me then I would say read the fine print on what NAACP stands for. And it goes on. If I said that I was in favor of President Obama because he was African American I would get chastised for suggesting that he was born in Kenya and raised in Hawaii. If I said that he was a great Black man then they would say that he was half White. And it goes on and on. Political Correctors need to be corrected. I suggest sterilization. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
and say Dennis Miller mean spirited towards dems, would be different how, exactly?
http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/08/28/3476787/feminist-video-game-critic-death-threats/
Anita Sarkeesian has gotten death and rape threats before for her critiques of the video gaming industry. But this week, the harassment got so bad that she was driven out of her home.
After releasing her newest web series Feminist Frequency’s “Tropes vs. Women,” which focuses on how women are depicted in pop culture and video games, Sarkeesian has suffered an onslaught of online harassment. Immediately following the series’ latest installment, “Women as Background Decoration (Part 2),” that harassment escalated, causing her to call law enforcement and flee her home:
She later posted responses from one particular user who claims to know her parents’ names, where they live and where she lives. He threatened to “rape [Sarkeesian] to death.”
Yes Paul, Who said he wasn;t?
I read the 1st Amendment and find, “Congress shall make no law….abridging the freedom of speech….” Regardless of how “PC” a statement may be, or may be thought to be, I think “no law” means simply no law.
And I like what th fellow said, “F…’em if they can’t take a joke.”
And the anonymity of twitter (and FB and even this blog), people tink they don’t have to think twice about sending out whatever they want. no point in apologizing either cause “they don’t know who I am”.
Squeaky …. good shot at it. Thanks. Your answers number one & three cite the nonsense of the misuse of the term. I suspect from your answer number two, where you site “ethnicities,” that you are aware I don’t think much of the colloquial concept of “race”… and you’d be right.
As someone who has lived in far away places and in minority communities in the USA, I know the term “race” was once significant, albeit less than scientific, and served to define unreasonable distinctions based upon appearances. Today, with the term applied to everything from articles of clothing that are foreign to us, to ethic differences, to a nation with myriad ethnic groups therein, and so forth….the term “racist” has come to mean nothing.
Elaine, I think some folks lack the decency to even consider what they say on Twiiter to be bad enough to apologize over. Those who do apologize at least display some humanity, albeit because of backlash by others.
Good grief ! First, some people need to acquire a sense of humor. Second, there was nothing racist about the joke.
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Mike A.
I agree. How many folks have taken to Twitter to express unexamined thoughts–and then had to apologize for them later?
If one looks at the skit in its entirety,(posted above) Wiiliams imitates a rabbi, a chef and some others with a scarf used as a prop.
@aridog
I’ll try!
Question 1: By what logic does a skit about Persian women in a Hijab & Niqab become “racist?”
Answer: It doesn’t, and isn’t through logic that the charge is made. It is made for the same reason that Democrats play the race card, i.e. for votes, for money, for self-aggrandizement, or sheer idiocy.
Question 2: What “race” are Persian women? Somoly women? Arab women?
Answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran
Question 3: Does the wearing of a Hijab& Niqab identify a “race?” How?
Answer: No. You are searching for reason in something inherently unreasonable. It is like going to an insane asylum, and asking why that guy thinks he is Napoleon, when Napoleon is obviously dead.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Mike, “just as an unexamined life is not worth living, an unexamined thought is not worth expressing.”
Worth a repeat. Hope that a couple of others here read it and think about it.
Robin Williams comedy was never mean or racist. Loved the joke and the political commentary.
bettykath – Robin Williams comments at Democratic events was very mean spirited towards Republicans. So, yes, Williams comedy was mean. My very liberal sister whose law firm defended him in a case, called him ‘pond scum.’