He reportedly joked that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there”
“In what was always understood as a private conversation James, the Home Secretary tackling spiking, made what was clearly meant to be an ironic joke - for which he apologises,” a spokesperson for Cleverly said in a statement.
So a self-deprecating, incredible obvious joke, told in private to friends, has people jumping to be offended!
People really need to save their outrage for serious stuff because being outraged over something like this minimizes actually serious situations. It’s like the boy who cried wolf(read: outrage).
Edit: is also fairly obvious that most of you just read the headline and popped in to be outraged. Merry Christmas!
Yeah, this is ridiculous. Imagine living in a world where you are afraid of joking because people will lose their minds.
Even if his joke was even worse than this, who cares? The people at the party would have thought, “Wow, this guy is lame,” and that would have been enough of a consequence.
What kind of puritanical, pearl-clutching, and judgemental society are we creating with these outrageous reactions. Get a life people.
If you wanna hate him, hate him for actual valid reasons. Don’t become a petty gossip-monger.
Cleverly made the joke to female guests while attending a Downing Street reception earlier this month.
Yikes! The added context makes it even worse.
You just can’t joke about anything anymore. The other day I went to church with my NAMBLA shirt on and the priests didn’t appreciate it at all.
The clergy have no appreciation for North American Marlon Brando Look-Alikes
Not A Moron But Lazy American? Never Ask My Brother’s Legs Anything?
What are you trying to say here?!?
“North American Man/Boy Love Association”
I had to google it… it’s apparently a group that advocates for removing age of consent laws.
Not All Men Bugger Little aBoys
Altarboys
Argh 😠 It was right there! 🤣
Neutering A Mongoose Brings Legal Anguish.
If the government has even the smallest modicum of dignity, he’ll resign or be sacked. It’s one thing to enjoy crass and offensive jokes, I certainly do, but there’s a time and a place for such humour. I mean he’s the Home Secretary for fucks sake! How in the world did he think that that kind of joke would go down well?
I’ve seen first hand the aftermath of someone’s drink being spiked… It’s not something I ever want to deal with again. Though I’ll bet it was far worse for the unfortunate victim of it.
I mean he’s the Home Secretary for fucks sake! How in the world did he think that that kind of joke would go down well?
And this assumes it was a joke…if I were his wife, I’d be looking for a way to tell if I’ve been drugged or not.
If you were his wife and you took that joke as a threat rather than a compliment, you’d be incredibly dumb.
“I drug my wife…”
Is a compliment? and speaking of dumb, i didn’t say it was a threat- in the “I’m going to harm you…” sense. I said, if i were here, I’d go have them run a tox panel to see if he was really doing it. There are certain truths to humor, one of which is every joke has some element of truth to it… and the joke is fundamentally about abusing his spouse.
Is a compliment?
No. But you also took it out of context in a blatant attempt to misrepresent it. If it were actually so bad, you wouldn’t feel the need to so grossly misrepresent it.
There are certain truths to humor,
Agreed. And in this case that truth could be that he thinks his wife is too good for him and he must go to great lengths to get her not to understand it.
the joke is fundamentally about abusing his spouse.
Actually, no, the joke was fundamentally about his spouse being too good for him.
So you don’t think drugging one’s wife…. Is spousal abuse.
Which was litteraly the joke. Drugging her. So she can’t escape.
Whose misrepresenting what, exactly?
Again, the joke is fundamentally about his wife being too good for him. If you won’t even admit that, then what’s the point of following your leading questions? You don’t care about actually being reasonable, you care about justifying your outrage.
Go read the fucking article. here. I’ll save you a click:
In case you’re wondering. Rohypnol is commonly used as a date rape drug. And he’s “joking” about dosing his wife “just a little bit” so she can’t leave.
Do please explain how jokes that are literally about dosing one’s partner with date rape drug so she can’t leave you isn’t spouse abuse. Also explain how I am being unreasonable here. Please, explain to me how I’m over-reacting and it’s “just a joke”.
According to the paper, Cleverly – a senior minister in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government – said that adding “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit.” He reportedly added that the secret to a long marriage was to ensure your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there.” His comments came on the same day that Cleverly vowed to strengthen British laws on the growing epidemic of drink spiking in the UK, according to the Mirror.
He should have been sacked when he described Stockton – a place ravaged by 13 years of Tory austerity – as a ‘shithole’ during a televised parliamentary session.
Not for calling Stockton a shithole (I love the place but it really is a bit rough), but for being the sort of politician that is so poor at their job that they say stuff like this in front of the public.
looks like cleverly isn’t very clever with his jokes
Neither is this comment section.
Glad he apologized.
For a dad joke he made in private with his own wife? He didn’t need to apologize
According to MBFC, CNN has bias by omission and consistently fails fact checks. Not sure why this story is allowed.
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He made a joke in poor taste about his own wife. Not like he advocated raping strangers. Not like he advocated raping his own wife, it was a poor joke. It was meant in a self-deprecating manor.
Jesus people, let a bad joke go. I’m quite sure he hates himself for it and is quite regretful. Or shall we beat his ass more?
When conservatives talk “cancel culture”, this is the kinda thing they point to. Don’t feed them ammo.
[I like to defend Spousal Abuse, and think we should just let it go]
There. fixed that for you. It’s a non-zero chance that it really was “just a joke”, and even if it was, jokes about abusing your spouse… is never appropriate. Would you find “The secret to a long marriage, I beat my wife so she’s too scared to leave” funny? I doubt it. Because it’s downright awful.
The fact that he thinks it’s okay to joke about this- to women- in a nominally public, government function… makes me wonder he does in private.
He’s a Tory. I very much doubt he feels bad about the joke, more likely just feels bad that he got caught. Last month in parliament if you believe his accuser he called a constituency a shit hole and if you believe his defence he called a fellow MP a shit hole.
quite sure he hates himself for it and is quite regretful.
He’s a Tory politician. He wouldn’t hate himself for selling his mom for an extra year of shitting on poor people and immigrants. He definitely doesn’t hate himself for this.
He hates that he was called out for it, but that’s it.
Plenty of people have been spiked by a partner in exactly this way. It’s not a funny joke. Someone making this kind of joke and thinking it’s acceptable is shitty. Someone who’s a leading politician, in a job responsible for crime and justice, at a political function in a government venue, telling this joke to a group of women… The unacceptable is off the charts there. I seriously worry about someone with that lack of judgement and humanity being in a job like that. Criticising and holding people in power to account for their actions is not 'cancel culture '.
