John Cleese Ridicules Political Correctness: ‘We Can’t Make Jokes About Mexicans?’
Recently, British comedian and writer John Cleese discussed the irony of political correctness. Cleese argued that the concept was “condescending” based on the idea that it only allows jokes to be made about certain groups while implying others needed to be protected.
John Cleese, appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, spoke of how political correctness is flawed as it implies that some groups are too “feeble” to “look after themselves”.
“It’s so awful isn’t it?” Cleese said. “It starts out as a halfway decent idea, and then it goes completely wrong.”
“Make jokes about Swedes and Germans and French and English and Canadians and Americans, why can’t we make jokes about Mexicans? Is it because they are so feeble that they can’t look after themselves?”
John Cleese, famous for his comedic troup Monty Python, appeared to agree with Bill Maher about the hypocrisy of Liberals, who argue that it is not politically correct to criticize Muslims despite heavily criticizing fundamentalist Christians.
“It’s very very condescending there.”
Cleese then asked Maher, “Who are the people you can’t make jokes about?”
To which Maher responded with “Muslims” before challenging the comedian to try and “see what your Twitter feed says”
A laughing Cleese responds, “That’s not saying that you can’t, it just means that they’ll kill you. Theoretically you could.”
John Cleese commented on the dangers of making jokes about “people who are going to kill you.”
“The problem is if you make jokes about people who are going to kill you, there is a sort of tendency to hold back a little isn’t there?”
John Cleese went on to say that he finds any type of fundamentalism “terribly funny.”
Cleese said, “Because the thing about fundamentalism is that it’s taking whatever the book is, the book Qur’an or the bible, absolutely literally.”
“I’ve met some pretty smart people in life and you know not a single one of them was literal-minded.”
Previously, John Cleese controversially made claims that the Bond films lost their humor because Asians can not grasp subtle British humor.
“The big money was coming from Asia, from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, where the audiences go to watch the action sequences, and that’s why in my opinion the action sequences go on for too long, and it’s a fundamental flaw. The audiences in Asia are not going for the subtle British humor or the class jokes.”
Is John Cleese right about Political Correctness being a flawed concept?
[Image via Google Images & DailyMail]
