What better way to start a blog than with controversial comedy!
In December 2010, Frankie Boyle made a joke about "glamour model" Katie Price (AKA "Jordan", or "that money-hungry slag") and her son, Harvey, on his (Boyle's, not Harvey's) Channel 4 show "Tramadol Nights". Harvey, son of Katie Price and Dwight Yorke, has autism and septo-optic dysplasma which has caused him to go blind. Which is no doubt a sad state of affairs, and he must be a brave little boy (no joke, just sincerity).
Boyle, known for his dark, satirical sense of humour, made 2 jokes about Harvey. The first regarding custody of him between Katie Price and her ex-husband, failed popstar and all-round twat, Peter Andre. This joke was: "Jordan and Peter Andre are still fighting each other over custody of Harvey - eventually one of them will lose and have to keep him."
This was then followed by a joke regarding her current (soon to be ex) husband, the cross-dressing cage fighter Alex Reid. This joke was: "I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter - she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her."
Now, I was both shocked and in hysterical laughter at this joke when it aired. Some of you may feel this is a vile and viscious attack on a dysabled child. WRONG! But I'll get to that in a wee bit.
Suffice to say, Katie Price demanded a public apology as it had offended her, her family, and some mothers of dysabled children. And, obviously, Frankie Boyle refused. This then became a big hoo-har which is still going on.
I think one thing has been foolishly ignored - the complexity of Boyle's second joke. Let's analyse this joke together, shall we?
Boyle says: "I have a theory about the reason Jordan married a cage fighter - she needed a man strong enough to stop Harvey from fucking her."
"The reason". What Boyle is saying is that she had a motive, other than love, to marry Alex Reid. She wanted to something from him, to exploit him, just as she has with her son and her personal life.
Katie Price is the epitome of "celebrity" - talentless prick who gets recognition and money for doing pretty much sweet fuck all.
She has made a fortune out of getting her plastic tits out, having other people write books for her, and selling her shitty, uninteresting story to glam mags. She has had her sex life, marriages, divorces, and son's dysability plaster all over mind-numbingly shit magazines that I wouldn't even consider to use as toilet paper if I had dysentery on a desert island.
Since the dawn of comedy, comedians have mocked those who perhaps shouldn't be mocked. But note that Boyle's joke isn't a pointless attack on an innocent child, but rather a very clever piece of social commentary. By making a sick joke about Harvey, he is saying to Katie Price "don't complain, you've allowed this to happen". Which she has. If she truly did care about Harvey, she wouldn't have thrust him into the media spotlight since his birth.
This begs the question, who should people (including the offended mothers) be angry at? A satirist with a openly dark sense of humour, or a woman who got famous by getting her tits out, selling her story to the media, and who exploited her son's disability so that she could make money and further her obsession for fame?
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