The hot topic on Twitter this morning: Daniel Tosh, who recently came under fire after an anonymous Tumblr blogger took offense to the comedian’s telling of rape jokes Friday night at the Laugh Factory.
While the large majority of today’s nearly 4,000 tweets mentioning his name have chastised Tosh for his stance on rape jokes, the Comedy Central star also has his share of supporters, including fellow comedians who feel as though Tosh has been misrepresented in the wake of his poorly received joke.
Their stance on rape itself is largely black and white: “It’s not funny,” Twitter king Rob Delaney recently wrote in a Reddit IAmA. “End of discussion. But you can do a funny joke about how people talk about rape, or you can juxtapose it against something else in a way that will evoke laughter and a ‘new’ way of thinking in people who aren’t monsters and/or rapists.
“So it’s all about the way the joke is done. Is your motivation/volition to help or shed light in a way that will (if taken to its maximum/mega-extreme) result in LESS rape in the world? Then please, talk and joke about it.”
That’s the sentiment that’s showing up in the tweets of Tosh’s fellow comedians this morning— that there’s a difference from their perspective between thinking the act of rape is funny and telling a rape joke in a comedy club. The Daily Dot collected many of the comedy community’s musings in the Storify below.
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