the awesome/terrifying freedom

rhonda writes in with some insights on humor:

Regarding your questions and analysis of why you laughed at the Special Olympics joke and not at the Auschwitz one - perhaps it has to do with how disconnected you feel to the actual tragedy. Maybe you feel more connected to the Jews wiped out in the Holocaust because you know that Hitler was also trying to wipe out gays (assuming you aren't Jewish yourself). Maybe you laughed at the Special Olympics joke because you are not retarded yourself, nor do you expect to be the parent of a retarded child.

As someone who is Jewish and also has a child who isn't retarded but does have special needs, both those jokes make me cringe. However, I can see the humor in jokes that don't "involve" me. In those cases, sometimes it feels good to me to let down the Political Correctness meter and just laugh at something; other times, I want to at least try to be sensitive to other people's feelings.

Maybe it's like someone putting down your mother or the house you grew up in. YOU can trash it along with your siblings, but you'd want to punch anyone else who did.

i think you've nailed it - it's all about distance. i'm emotionally closer to the persecution of a people than i am to the disabled. i think there's another element - the difference between a joke whose humor hinges on superiority, and a joke whose humor is based on hate. the holocaust joke was glorifying death, where the special olympics joke, although extremely crude, in the end has a grain of truth to it - yes, it would be better to be totally healthy. no morally admissable truth can be found in the holocaust joke. no amount of 'letting go' of my political correctness could ever make me find that joke funny. to make that punchline funny, the joke would have to be changed to 'how many butts can you fit in a volkswagon?' and even then - pretty lame ass joke.

but the grain of truth argument doesn't explain my penchant for dead baby jokes. so maybe i am just plain evil. i'm so negative.

it gets really complicated.. like you said, closeness to the subject matter can also make it okay to laugh. like the rent-a-negro website; is it 'okay' to laugh at it because it was written by a black woman? how does knowledge of a joke's origin inform it's humor-value? i guess knowing the origin of a joke sometimes changes it from a hate joke to a superiority joke. i'm reminded of 'the producers' which is loaded with holocaust and homosexual humor. is 'the producers' only funny because it was written by a jewish man and the gay jokes are mostly spoken by openly gay actors? when we watch it do we go 'well, they're laughing, so i guess it's okay if i laugh?' i think the humor in 'the producers' is superiority-based (a good portion is also crotch-based). mel brooks has said over and over that making hitler a laughingstock is his best revenge. as a jewish man, he's using the humor to assert his superiority over the nazi mentality.

here's another one from the program on trio, a joke probably told all over playgrounds in the bible belt: "why are there no muslims on star trek? because it's set in the future." while i sort of appreciated the crude cleverness, i definitely didn't find it funny. hate based.

something i became aware of while watching the program was that almost no thought process went into whether or not to laugh. i either did or didn't, and then i had to sit and think for a moment about why i had or hadn't done it. it might have been different if i was watching the show with a group - if other people laughed, i might have taken a split second to decide if it was 'okay' to laugh before allowing myself to do it.

sarah silverman is my hero. i think she walks the line so expertly, but not everyone agrees. her shows have plenty of walkouts:

'i'm going out with a guy who's half-black, who's totally going to break my heart......oh my god. i can't believe i said that. i'm so negative. he's half-white.'

'the writers of sanford and son were so brave in bringing their program to television. i mean, working with all those black people!'

'i saw my father naked once . . . but it was okay . . . because i was soooo young . . . and sooo drunk.'

sometimes a joke is not funny because time has rendered it innocuous. my dad told me about a joke, really an anecdote he found particularly fascinating as a child. he read it in a 50's issue of his mother's 'reader's digest,' probably in one of the 'humor in real life' sections. someone had overheard the conversation and sent it to the magazine, thinking it was a gem. it went something like this:

two japanese mothers were talking about their children's upcoming weddings. 'i'm so disappointed in my son,' one mother said to the other.
'why?' the other mother asked, 'isn't he marrying a nice oriental girl?'
'yes, he is..'
'then what's the problem?'
the first mother shook her head and said with shame, 'she's chinese.'

i love the sociopolitics of this joke! it's a sad revelation of general american ignorance at the time. when my dad first told it to me i sat there waiting for the punchline... then had a slow realization that 'she's chinese' was the punchline. then i thought 'oh, it's about the friction between japan and china.' then i realized 'no.. it's not about that at all', it's about total ignorance of that conflict altogether. it's about 'how ridiculously silly it is that this mother should be concerned her son is marrying a chinese woman when all asians are exactly the same! oh ethel, it's brilliant!' to see 'she's chinese' as a punchline requires viewing the joke from a completely different perpective - i didn't realize how much cultural understanding i take for granted. my grandparent's generation did not have the same kind of basic world cultures education i got in elementary school. listening to it now, it doesn't even seem like a joke. it seems like a setup.. like the joke should continue:

the second mother recoiled in horror. then the first mother said, 'there's more...'she' is their biggest opera star.'

i can tell that joke because i'm gay and half-asian. god, i'm so negative. i meant to say half-white.