Free Speech: Dappers Laughs cannot be killed by the student censors
When Dapper Laughs was booted off the telly for making a rape joke at a club for his paying fans, we thought it a shame. Whan Daniel O’Reilly, for it is he, went on telly to say how sorry he was that he’d caused offence, we thought it tragic. Wear your ‘Too Bad for Telly’ as a badge of honour we urged.
As is the trend, students who would once have cheered for freedom and saying the unsayable now demand things be unsaid:
Earlier in the year, a show in Cardiff was cancelled following a petition by around 700 students who didn’t want him to perform at the university. Twenty-year-old student Zara Lindsay was behind one of them. She told Newsbeat she didn’t want Dapper Laughs performing on the University of Leicester campus.
She said: “Lad culture is quite prevalent these days. It’s especially bad on nights out with theme nights, drinking games and sports initiations. Plus there’s a general feeling that sexual assault is something that you should just take on a night out. Having people like Dapper Laughs holding gigs here suggests that this is an OK attitude and that sends out the wrong message.”
The wrong message? Lads are so thick they think rape is ok. They should only be allowed to watch things that have the ‘right’ message. What censorious bilge. What illiberal claptrap, trotted out by fearful prigs who want eveyone to comply with their own moral code.
Too rude for the TV – O’Reilly’s show was broadcast on ITV2- should be a source of pride. Big Telly kills the youthful edginess it craves. As soon as the BBC says something youthful and daring is ok – Glastonbury, for instance – it turns it into Wimbledon. ITV2 is just a training ground for pisspoor game show hosts of pisspoor game shows.
So. Dapper was killed. And now he’s back on the web. And he’s risen from the dead in pretty fine style:
Pressure increased after Mirror Online unearthed a video in which Dapper made light of rape.
Video from a performance at London Scala shows him telling a female audience member: “She’s gagging for a rape.”
Posted: 26th, December 2014 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
