Jokes. I see no harm in potentially offensive gags being told between CLOSE friends, but it surprises me when people post them publicly online or forward them to everyone in their address book, without stopping to think that some of the readers or recipients might be more sensitive than others about the subject matter.

I suppose it also depends on the kind of jobs the other people have. Anybody (/most professionals?) involved with death as part of their life (Doctors, Firemen, Police, Armed forces, etc) may have a kind of gallows humour as a defence mechanism, right? Indeed, soldiers sometimes refer to their fellow soldiers blown up in tanks as 'crispy critters' – gallows humour has its place. Other people are like this too, of course. Some use seriousness in the face of tragedy, others prefer dark humour; one way is not necessarily better than the other. Who was it who said that there is no topic so serious that you cannot make a joke out of it?

...I don’t know, but Orwell once said that a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. Like a lot of rebellious acts it can feel rather good and quite liberating. Of course, I'll forgive a tasteless joke a lot if it's funny. It's when they’re tasteless and (in my humble little opinion) NOT funny that I get upset. There's a fine balance and it's hard to judge which side of the line you're falling on.

Case in point? Let's go all 70s Brit TV. 'Rising Damp'. Funny. A little close to the bone, but funny. 'Love Thy Neighbour'. Not funny. Just... crap. Racist and crap. 'Fawlty Towers' is another case in point, although there are one or two scenes that make me wince these days. Many times those shows that appear racist are very often poking fun at the racists themselves by way of the characters, but those that are too ignorant (or unintelligent) to know simply berate the programme, or indeed take on the reverse stance and cheer on the racists. Compare the previously mentioned 'Love Thy Neighbour' with 'Till Death Us Do Part' - poles apart.

Many people would say a joke has to be funny first and foremost. This is true. However they would also say whether it is in good taste or not is pretty much irrelevant. How many jokes rely on a punchline against a particular social group, nationality or type of person? I can see this point of view. If you start banning jokes on points of taste then you're pretty much outlawing humour, except for the pie in the face gag.

Possibly.

It's a bit harder on the internet because you don't know if people are laughing or not. My take is that if they laugh, any claims of being offended are null and void. I remember once somebody online wrote "On a forum, if MOST people laugh then it's tough luck to those who were offended, because who are they to be the guardians of our taste and humour?" I'm so torn between that. I see both sides of the argument. In part I agree, but when I was on a forum previously there were a few rather horrible cancer and AIDS jokes flying about (by people who really should have known better). Now, I knew there was a certain member on the site who'd been affected by cancer (in the family). I just take the viewpoint that sharing those 'jokes' publicly to a lot of people you don't know is wrong, wrong, wrong, as I stated in my very first paragraph. By all means private message them to each other and have a good giggle if that's the sort of thing you like doing, but don't inflict them on the rest of us when you have no idea who we really are or where we draw the line.

Does this blog entry come across as contradicting itself, somewhat? Ah well, we can't always have things clear-cut, hey?