It's open season on comedians yet again. Except this season is lasting all year. The latest standup in the firing line is Jimmy Carr, who has the tabloids fulminating over a joke he told at the 2,500-seater Manchester Apollo on his current Rapier Wit tour: "Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."

Reports suggest that there were no mass protests at the gig, but afterwards the usual platoon of politicians and compliant interviewees were marched out to call for Carr's court martial. Patrick Mercer, Conservative MP, said: "This man's career should end right now. There are certain subjects you just can't make fun of and one of those is the sacrifice of our troops – especially this close to Remembrance Sunday." Carr has dropped the gag and apologised.

While his apology is understandable, I wish Carr had kept a dignified silence. It was a good joke, and a defensible one, not least because it had a political subtext. Carr was not mocking war heroes, but underlining the horrific injuries of young soldiers on the frontline. And I'm bored of these red top witch-hunts that pluck a line out of an act – and often out of context – and try to whip up controversy. Take comedian Stewart Lee, who this summer was doorstepped by the press over a routine in which he imagined the violent death of Top Gear's Richard Hammond. Has no one at the Mail heard of satire?

Since Sachsgate, the press is quicker than ever to smell blood and a possible circulation boost. Yet even before Ross and Brand, comedians offered easy pickings to lazy hacks. Ricky Gervais was in trouble for making light of prostitute murders and Billy Connolly was hauled across the tabloid coals for joking about hostage Ken Bigley. I was at gigs where both gags were told, and while they did not get particularly big laughs, there were hardly outraged howls. It was the media – well-skilled at taking offence on other people's behalf – that fanned the flames.

Carr, of course, has already had his own mini-Sachsgate, when the BBC apologised for a joke he told on Radio 4's Loose Ends. That joke was broadcast – as was Frankie Boyle's recent crack about Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington; the amputee joke was told at a live show. Surely anyone who buys a ticket for a Jimmy Carr performance knows what they are going to get? He's hardly your regular family entertainer. His repertoire variously takes in rape, blow jobs, anal sex, erectile dysfunction and domestic violence.

And surely most battle-hardened soldiers are thick-skinned enough to laugh at a joke like this? Certainly, the comments on the online forums that are the cyberspace equivalent of the barracks suggest that most soldiers have heard harsher gags – and told them too.

After all, if the tabloids think they can have a negative effect on a comedian's career by going after them, they're wrong. Look at the comedians mentioned above, they don't seem to be struggling professionally. In fact, compare their careers to the brilliant yet uncontroversial comedian Milton Jones, who never tells cruel jokes and rarely pops up on the box. If he could swap the clean-cut shtick for something sicker, and get the tabloids annoyed, maybe he could fill the Manchester Apollo too.