Brazilian Comic Sentenced to Eight Years for Offensive Jokes
Somebody ought to tell Rob Schneider that the real cancel culture is in Brazil. According to EuroWeekly, comedian Leo Lins has been sentenced to eight years in jail for inciting intolerance with his offensive jokes.
Earlier this week, Lins received his punishment for a comedy special that targeted — deep breath here — Black people, obese people, elderly people, people with HIV, homosexuals, evangelicals, Indigenous communities, people from the impoverished northeast of Brazil, Jews and people with disabilities. Lins wasn’t trying to simply win the game but was trying to fill the entire bingo card.
A federal court in São Paulo ruled that Lins’s right to freedom of expression was not absolute, and “cannot be used as an excuse to make hateful, prejudiced and discriminatory remarks.” His jokes had consequences, the court ruled, declaring that the comedian’s YouTube special helped fuel “the spread of verbal violence in society and promote intolerance.”
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Another court ruled that the special, Perturbador (in English, that translates to Disturbing), be removed from YouTube. You can no longer find it there, but the special racked up three million views before it was taken down. The mass dissemination of the jokes was considered an “aggravating factor.”
As for the jokes themselves? The translated versions seem more clumsy than thorny. Get a load of this winner, courtesy of Brazil Reports: “I’m fat! I love eating and hate working out. How am I going to lose weight? Get AIDS! Don’t you love eating everything? Go sleep with unprotected gay men! It’ll work eventually!”
Yeesh.
Lins’ attorneys are appealing the decision.“Watching a comedian receive the same punishment as someone convicted of drug trafficking, corruption or even murder, all because of jokes told on stage, is deeply troubling,” said one of the comedian’s lawyers.
In addition to jail time, Lins was ordered to pay a fine of 300,000 reais — a little over 60 grand in American dollars — to compensate for “moral damages.”
The comic has posted a 12-minute video on YouTube arguing his side of the story. My Portuguese might not be precise (blame Google Translate), but Lins appears to argue that he should be allowed freedom of expression and that jokes should be allowed to offend. He pulls a page from the Andrew Dice Clay playbook, arguing that “Leo Lins” is simply a character, a comic persona who tells edgy jokes. “Judgments are made purely based on emotion, and no one wants to listen to others anymore,” says the translated version of Lins’ rant.
Comedians in Brazil are just like ours, eager to defend the rights of funny guys to be offensive. “You might not find Leo Lins’s jokes funny — you might even detest them — but sentencing someone to prison over them is madness and harmful,” said Antonio Tabet on Twitter. “I hope this irrational decision is overturned.”
Comedian Jonathan Nemmer took a poke at Brazil, calling it “a country that takes comedians’ jokes seriously but treats politicians’ actions as a joke.”
“What was comedian Leo Lins’ crime?” asked comic Danilo Gentili. “Telling jokes in a comedy show.”
