It was always going to cause a stir when Ricky Gervais started casually throwing around the word ‘mong’ on Twitter – a word sometimes used offensively about people with Down’s syndrome. The director of the Down’s Heart Group, Penny Green, said the comments were, ‘Incredibly upsetting and distressing to families of disabled children.’ Combine Gervais’ ‘mong’ jokes with the pictures he posted of himself pulling ‘mong-faces’, and it’s not hard to see why.

This kind of controversy inevitably raises the question of whether comedians go too far, and just what ‘too far’ is. Has society become so used to cruel jokes aimed at its most vulnerable that it’s now second nature to accept the use of a word like ‘mong’ without questioning it?  It certainly seems so, when younger generations are rating just how sick the jokes on ‘Sickipedia’ are, using phrases like ‘that joke caused a ‘lolocaust.’’ They may not mean any harm, but isn’t it always going to be too soon for jokes about the holocaust?

So, at what point is it just not funny anymore? The person a joke is aimed at proves to be a major factor in how an audience reacts. The British seem to be much more comfortable when Charlie Sheen, for example, is the butt of a joke. At the 2010 Golden Globes, Gervais joked that it would be a night of ‘partying and heavy drinking or, as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast.’ He also called 85-year-old Hugh Hefner ‘the walking dead’ and joked that the award for special effects should have gone to the team who airbrushed the Sex and the City 2 poster – something I can’t help but agree with.

These jokes could easily have caused offence – in fact, they did cause controversy in the US; it seems the Americans are a lot more sensitive when it comes to satire. However, the British generally accept offensive jokes when they are aimed at the most privileged of society. That’s fair enough – Gervais’ joke that the acting in the film The Tourist was ‘two-dimensional’ isn’t going to change the fact that Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie were both paid millions for their performances. And, ‘walking dead’ or not, Hugh Hefner was still about to marry 25-year-old model Crystal Harris.

Material should not be censored, but it remains up to the individual to judge what is funny and what infringes on others’ rights by debasing them

The tone changes, however, when jokes are aimed at the powerless. Despite the sparkling wit behind jokes like ‘good monging everyone’ and ‘two mongs don’t make a right,’ insulting someone with Down’s syndrome is simply not funny. The situation is similar to the media storm Frankie Boyle caused with his comments about Katie Price’s disabled son, where everyone seemed to agree that he had crossed the line – fine, make jokes about Katie Price, whose whole life is a publicity stunt anyway, but don’t drag her son into it.

While Gervais has denied using ‘mong’ to refer to people with Down’s syndrome – though his use of it in describing Susan Boyle’s appearance seems dubious – the fact remains that ‘mong’ still carries certain connotations, even though, as Gervais argues, words change. When ‘mong’ is used as an insult, it inevitably associates the characteristics of Down’s syndrome sufferers.

Don’t get me wrong, there is such a thing as being too politically correct. A holier-than-thou attitude is no more welcome than a ‘mong’ joke. Humour is important but does not have to be taken too far to have an impact. Just look at Peter Kay and Michael McIntyre – neither are controversial yet they are two of the biggest comics in the UK. Comedians’ material should not be censored, but it remains up to the individual to judge what is funny and what infringes on others’ rights by debasing and insulting them.

Perhaps British comedian Tim Minchin had a point in a recent interview when he said ‘Compared to the storm, it’s a non-issue…we’re talking about this week while 20,000 more Africans die inSomalia.’ A lot of things become ‘non-issues’ when you take an example like that, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them. If we allow ourselves to grow accustomed to the casual use of offensive words like ‘mong,’ we run the risk of also becoming prejudiced against the groups of people who are the victims of these distasteful jokes.