Should Joan Rivers be able to tell tasteless holocaust joke just because she is Jewish?

No that is a step too far, I agree, barrow.

I also agree. I do like Joan Rivers but this is scraping the barrel.

I normally like Jewish humour but this isn't funny.

I agree not funny

That is horrific

Yes merlotgran I like Jewish humour, it's usually clever. I have always thought Joan Rivers' humour was quite cruel.

I do find Joan Rivers funny and I do like Jewish humour, similar to Irish in that it is often self deprecating. I'm digressing slightly here, but I hate the N word, really hate it, but it seems that many black people use it about each other. I wish they wouldn't

JR should be ashamed of herself. Sick and not remotely humorous.

Meant a few not many, mainly rappers.

This is a lot worse than that!

Can't stand Joan Rivers - her kind of humour is dated and tasteless. I've heard a few holocaust jokes which actually were funny because they had unexpected punchlines which turned the tables on the nazis, but this one isn't funny.

There may be worse than that, but it does not make it either 1) funny or 2) acceptable. As soop said, sick and not remotely funny.

It's tasteless and unacceptable because it's projecting the guilt of the Nazis onto one individual who wasn't even born at the time of the Holocaust.

If a German had said that the last time she saw a Jew that hot she was being put into the ovens the world would be up in arms and quite rightly so. JR has gone too far. It's a racist comment as far as I'm concerned.

Gracesmum if you were referring to my post, could you read what I have said properly.

Have seen the actual joke now, yes have to agree it's offensive. Sasha Baron-Cohen also treads a fine line at times, but have to admit do find him funny. However, as janeainsworth has said this particular JR joke is unacceptable to the target, Heidi Klum.

It's nothing compared with the jokes that were levelled at her when she was the 'victim' of a 'roast'...There's little room for 'good taste' in comedy - it would be out of place!

Who said it was a joke?

I don't interpret what Rivers said as in any way offensive to Jews. I interpret it as a reminder, by a play on words, of what the Nazis did to the Jews. She doesn't want people to forget the Holocaust. There's nothing unusual about that. We are always being told that each generation must learn about the Holocaust, lest we forget, and quite right too.

What Rivers said is only a 'joke' insofar as it is a play on words, the words 'hot' and 'German' in particular. If anything it pushes home the point that many of the Jews who were killed by the Nazis were Germans. Some of them will have been more 'German' than Hitler.

It is not an offensive joke. It is a reminder of something offensive. Something we need to remember.

I thought Klum looked reasonable from the waist down and from the neck up, but the supposedly 'hot' bit was simply in bad taste. But that is just a matter of taste, I suppose.

I thought the point was that the 'joke' was offensive to Germans, Bags.

Why is the Jerusalem Herald making a fuss and demanding an apology then?

And anyway, if it is offensive to Germans (of the non-Jewish variety; the murdered victims were often German too!), that's just tough. Yes, it must be a bit tiresome to be reminded all the time. Again, that's tough. T's unfortunate to have a history that keeps coming back to bite you in the bum, but better that than to forget.

And it's a reminder to the rest of us, including Germans, who weren't even born then, of the damage that "groupthink" can do.

No idea why the Jerusalem Herald is making a fuss. That was just my take on it.

I think you're right. I was misled a little by the title of the thread. My answer to the title question is Yes, she should 'be able' to make tastelss holocaust 'jokes' (quips might be a npbetter description) regardless of whether she is Jewish herself. Nothing anyone could say could ever be as bad by several orders of magnitude as what the Nazis DID to other human beings.