Well, again - to be clear - I agree that making such a joke was extremely insensitive. And yes it was indeed a shitty excuse for a joke. I also agree that some form of reprimand for making such a joke is appropriate.
I also did not read the article, just BoingBoing’s tldr, so I admit I did not have all the facts.
My concern lies solely with our culture’s recent tendency to take penalization for alleged actions into its own hands.
Take for instance all of the shit Johnny Depp has gone through in the kangaroo court of the media due to the allegations of his former wife. Those allegations are turning out to be false, and yet he has suffered considerably because of people wanting to punish him for those actions without any proof.
Another example of this is when Jennifer Connel sued her 12 year old nephew after her arm was broken by his enthusiastic hug. She was dragged through the social coals, but it turned out that she had no ill intent toward her nephew and that they had agreed upon doing this law suit in order to pay for the medical bills that her insurance wouldn’t cover.
I’ve been seeing this again and again. Someone makes a mistake - or is simply accused of that mistake - and our society pounds them into the ground without having all of the relevant information and without trying to fully understand the circumstances.
Because of this I find myself getting more and more frustrated when I see some article trigger a demand for punishment that seems completely disproportionate to the circumstance. That is what I saw when reading the comment thread here, hence my contrary response.
