Throw Them in the Oven

James Glassman, a writer on The Ali G Show, reports from Edinburgh:

There have always been anti- Semitic jokes. But you know times are changing when you go along to a stand-up show at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe and you hear audience members shouting “Throw them in the oven” when the comic suggests kids should stop playing Cowboys and Indians and replace it with Nazis and Jews.

Stand-up comedy is as good a prism as any through which to look at the changing attitudes in our society. If my past few days are anything to go by then it is becoming increasingly acceptable to hate the Jews. Again.

I’ve seen two comics so far who have been happy to amuse their crowds with Holocaust gags. I’m not sure which to be the more concerned about.

One was a left-leaning angry Australian conspiracy theorist, Steve Hughes, whose show The Storm is an assault on all things Western. “I want to bash Condoleezza Rice’s brain to bits and kill that f****** Jew Richard Perle.” […]

For me, Hughes represents a growing trend among left-thinking people in this country and around the world to accept as dogma that those on the Left should hate Bush, Blair, American imperialism, Israel and, while we’re at it, the Jews. It is a cultural trend that I’ve found increasingly evident but never before has the Jew-hating element been so overt. This week has confirmed that my Jewish paranoia is not entirely unfounded. As the old saying goes: “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.”

Hughes wasn’t one for the odd remark or the clever comment; he waxed lyrical on how Osama bin Laden is far less of a threat than Dick Cheney, before defending Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, saying he has no intention of destroying Israel, he has just been misquoted.

Hughes now says he regrets calling Perle a “fucking Jew”:

Steve Hughes, an Australian stand-up, told The Times that he regretted describing Richard Perle, an advisor to President George Bush, as “that f***ing Jew Richard Perle”. The comment, in his show The Storm, offended audience members including Jamie Glassman, a Jewish comedy writer.

“I want to bash Condoleezza Rice’s brain to bits and kill that fucking Jew Richard Perle.” I suppose you had to be there, really.