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This week: The Line Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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There's only one true superpower amongst human beings, and that is being funny. People treat you differently if you can make them laugh.
-Jeff Garlin
I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand.
-Leonardo DiCaprio |
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The Line
There is a Line.
It's not a pick-up line, or a queue, but instead, it's the line between being funny and being an asshole.
It's easy to cross that line inadvertently.
It's harder to stick one toe across the line, tap it a few times, and dare people to be offended.
Now, don't get me wrong, here - we have no right to never be offended. Our reactions are our own responsibility, and some of us need to get tougher skins, it's true.
But as a humorist, you need to know where the line is between humor and offense, and it's not always easy to see.
I don't really want to fill this space with examples of jokes that crossed the line, but I'm sure you've heard them. Racist jokes, sexist jokes, jokes that widen the gap between people rather than doing what comedy is supposed to do, which is to give people a shared experience. Sure, in an audience of nothing but men, you can probably get a few laughs out of a sexist joke, and perhaps it's a bonding between them, but it also emphasizes any differences between men and women, and maybe some of the men involved will end up thinking "well, hey, there's a joke about it, so maybe women DO belong in the kitchen."
Of course, there are differences between men and women, and differences between people of various backgrounds, but it's one thing to celebrate such differences and recognize the contribution that people of a different world-view could have, and it's another thing entirely to dismiss their ideas because they're not in the local majority.
I'm not advocating rampant political correctness, here. There's no humor at all in that. But before you make a joke about someone's race, ethnicity, gender, or sleeping habits, just think - is it something that they actually have control over, like an addiction to video games, or is it something about what they are, like being gay, or black?
To me, that's how to find the Line. And if you find yourself having to think about it too much, maybe do some self-reflection before you alienate people. |
To make up for the decidedly un-funny editorial this week, here are some funny things:
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Comedy: July 30, 2014 Issue [#6460]
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