“Anyone who’s offended, you can go and get fucked”: Jim Jefferies on lesser sacred cows
While plenty of comics don’t mind offending their audiences a little, Australian stand-up Jim Jefferies would likely mind it very much if he didn’t offend people on a routine basis. The apparently punchable Jefferies is most widely known for his savage, painfully funny attacks on religion and other moral hang-ups. But no matter how well he does that, it’s a bit like repeatedly shooting an elephant in the ass. Luckily, he knows how to dig into other targets. Before his show Saturday at Turner Hall, The A.V. Club scoured the video record for other, less obvious victims of Jefferies’ raffish scorn.
Oscar Wilde
Nevermind that this interview focuses on a 2010 Jefferies DVD called Alcoholocaust: The secret ingredient to really good irreverent humor is reason. At around 2:00, he attacks Oscar Wilde (“If I hear another quote from that cunt...”) as part of a broader argument that all humor has a finite shelf life. He even goes so far as to argue that his own comedy won’t be funny a few decades down the road.
Protectors of “spastics”
In this stand-up, Jefferies moves into more nuanced territory to defend himself from critics who claim to speak for cerebral palsy sufferers, known in British slang as “spastics.” To those who’d guard their CP-afflicted friends from Jefferies’ material on the subject, he retorts that the disabled actually appreciate him for having the balls to bring it up in their presence: “Anyone who’s offended, you can go and get fucked—I’m spaz-approved.”
British music-press darlings
Jefferies doesn’t really seem to have his comic bearings in this guest-hosted edition of NME News (sample joke: calling Ozzfest “Johnfest” because Ozzy Osbourne’s real first name is John). To be fair, he’s commenting on such oft-abused figures as Oasis and Amy Winehouse, and he’s clearly as tired of hearing about Arctic Monkeys as everyone else, but at least he gets in digs at some of NME’s target audience: “Indie kids have been accused of being a bunch of mopers. It’s now official!”
Bananas
It’s usually Jefferies’ job to make other people uneasy, but what puts him off? Bananas? Well, okay then. On this clip from Opie And Anthony, he cowers before everyone’s favorite yellow snack. Just the kind of ridiculous weakness a master of discomfort would have, no?
