Tosh Rape Joke Incites Fury, Black People Still Love Him
12 years ago

Daniel Tosh has crossed line after line in his career, but Twitter accounts nationwide agree that he has broken the proverbial hymen of a joke that went too far.

In an L.A. comedy club last Friday, Tosh directed several jokes at a female audience member, who also happened to be a small time blog-about-my-thoughts Tumblr user. The offending comments were only made after the woman interrupted his act by exclaiming “Rape is never funny!”

Tosh’s now infamous line of “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now?” has appeared all over the social media universe, both in and out of context.

Tosh was forced to apologize via Twitter, but defends himself saying that there are plenty of terrible things in the world, “but you can still make jokes about them.”

Tosh has an excellent point, and as someone who occasionally writes a funny list I can see where he’s coming from. Comedy is nothing but a parody on life itself. Tosh’s style of humor relies on portraying the insanity of the world and calling out those who disagree. Tosh has relied on sometimes subtle, sometimes overt racism in his standup, but despite that holds an extensive African-American fanbase.

“I fucking love Tosh,” a black friend of mine said once in a drunken conversation. “He tells it like it is, and he’s not afraid to say things that might offend people.”

The real issue here? An insignificant blogger heckled a comedian, and got her panties up in a wad in consequence. When you’re at a standup show, you have absolutely no right to interrupt the person who is paid to entertain you. Write him an angry letter afterwards if the stick up your ass is throbbing that badly.

The funny thing is, this real-life incident directly mirrors an episode of comedian Louis C.K.’s television show, where C.K. responds to a heckler with blatant jokes about rape.

Comedians agree, rape jokes can work. It’s one of the saddest most traumatic experiences the world has to offer, but if we can’t laugh about it then it would just depress us all the fucking time.