“Ha ha, Pearl Harbor. Funny, and topical. Let me give it a try. Did you hear about the potential for the Fukishima Daiichi nuclear power plant to fail? The last time the Japanese have been this exposed to radiation was…oh yeah, Hiroshima. @#$K you, America.”

And two posts above yours was John’s quote. But you weren’t responding to John’s comment, you were responding to my post.

But just because you didn’t use that word, doesn’t mean that “they deserved it” is somehow not a racially charged statement.

“No. You don’t get to lay racism on me in the comments.”

Yes I do, because you’re the one that brought it up! It’s your point, seriously. Own it.

“Your post was about people putting down the Japanese. As a race. A culture. A nation.”

What? No it wasn’t. It was about people saying they deserved the tragedy. Nowhere did I say they were being racist; cruel, yes. Whether race plays into some of the reactions or not I didn’t even get into, because it could come from any number of places.

Which is the whole point.

I think what happened is you read what you wanted to read, which was outrage that I was comparing Gottfried – who was tasteless – with people like Pondexter, who was hateful. Which I did and didn’t do: I said “there’s also Gilbert Gottfried,” acknowledging that there was more ugliness in the reactions, even though the rest of the post specifically addressed the Pondexters of the world.

But again, it’s still ugly, and some would still argue ignorance might be a better excuse than a more conscious choice to make fun of the disaster (in the case of Gottfried).

Also, I can’t stress this enough: GOTTFRIED WAS NOT DOING HIS JOB. He was making a joke on Twitter and being an idiot about it. There are literally thousands of comedians who looked at this situation and said “there’s nothing funny in this and it’d be really d*** of me if I thought otherwise.”

And yes, it is absolutely fair to lump it in with abhorrent reaction to the tragedy in general.

Gottfried was doing his job. Yes, comedians are the ones who bring light to serious situations and major tragedies. Maybe it was “too soon”. Maybe that’s just BS political correctness. My point remains that it’s inappropriate to put comedy in the same category as people blaming the Japanese for a natural disaster.

I don’t know, what’s worse? Saying they deserved it because God was giving them retribution, or making a joke at the expense of the dead and grieving? Apples and oranges. Both bad. No excuse for either (though one could argue at least in the former that they have the excuse of ignorance; professional comedians who have been doing this for literally decades not so much).

For some more perspective, here’s what James Urbaniak – someone that actually is in the business of comedy and knows what he’s talking about – wrote on a similar situation involving another comic who took heat for a tasteless joke about the devastation:
http://jamesurbaniak.tumblr.com/post/3799944807/they-cant-all-be-gems-i-first-refer-you-to-the
http://jamesurbaniak.tumblr.com/post/3824151133/flailure-in-defense-of-thesulk-the-above