Looking Back - Speaking Freely

A comedian called Frankie Boyle got himself into a bit of bother when we were in England as a result of comments he made (on tv, I think) regarding the backward child of a rather vacuous celebrity model, followed (a couple of weeks later) by his use of some pretty unpleasant racial epithets. Mind you, I'm not sure it would be appropriate to say he'd got himself into trouble. Based on the maxim that any publicity is good publicity he'd probably made an astute career move.

I've seen the guy now a few times on one of the many programmes that feature fast-talking, witty comics doing their bit with their fellows in an improvisatory setting - commenting on the news, that sort of thing - and he struck me as pretty clever, sometimes quite funny, generally entertaining and not terribly pleasant. (Think Thersites in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.) But then few of these chaps are. The humour involved in such programmes is nearly always less than generous, indeed essentially reductive in nature with a slightly desperate, competitive air about it.

Having said that, I'm broadly in favour of allowing this kind of thing air-time. Sometimes a bit of nastiness is good for us. Sometimes it's a way of approaching the truth. And I'd rather people be allowed to think these issues through for themselves rather than being told what they're allowed to expose themselves to. Eventually you can simply turn Mr Boyle off if you want and I don't really buy into the idea that somehow this kind of thing poisons a society.

Except: where is the line between honest outspokenness and hate-speech? I think there is one. What I found interesting about this particular fuss over Boyle's comments is that he seems to be treading that line. The devil here really is in the details - he's always worth looking out for - and that makes the fuss worthwhile. I hope.