I didn't say it was a good joke, or even a funny joke. It may have been a harmful joke and delivered at entirely the wrong time by entirely the wrong person -but to a liberal like me, that doesn't matter all that much.

I don't suppose she would've made a similar joke about lesbians and LGBTQ+ rights or a similar joke about touching as womans health - but here's the thing, I'll come out swinging for jokes of all kinds. If she was to make a joke about sexual assault during a discussion with LGBTQ+ women then I'd expect her to be lambasted by a niche interest group. I'd also come out to defend her. I came out to bat for Jason Momoa when he was accused of making a distasteful rape joke and I came out in defence of a racist and his Nazi saluting pug. Our own tastes (and neither of those things are to my taste) do not factor into something as precious as the right to comedic free speech, whether it's funny or not is a matter of taste. It's a bitter pill to swallow and I'm lucky there aren't that many offensive jokes about penguins.

If we start dictating what constitutes offensive then we very soon begin worshiping at the church of subjectivity. Or as one of my favourite comedians puts it. "People like the idea of freedom of speech until they hear something they don't like, It's a good thing to not be racist and sexist and homophobic. But it's not a good thing to not be allowed to make jokes about those things, because you can tell a joke about race without being racist," he added. "I'm happy to play by the rules. It's just that the 200 million people watching have different rules. That's the plight. When people say, 'He crossed the line,' I say, 'I didn't draw a line, you did.' It's relative. It's subjective." (Ricky Gervais)

This woman doesn't sound like my cup of tea - and she doesn't sound particularly funny - but that's the price we pay for living in a Western Democracy. As always, I'll argue when I think I'm right and I think I'm right on this one. That could be because Penguins weren't the target of the joke - and my feelings haven't been hurt by it. Only time will tell - there's not enough bird bashing on American TV.