I'm no great fan of political correctness, but there are times when something akin to courteous sensitivity can give pause for reflection.

There are a number of folks in our local "Celtic" community who genuinely promote and encourage something between mutual respect and a "pan-celtic" view. We have hit a bump in the road that seems well along the way to resolution, but I'm curious and interested in how other 'catters might view the situation.

The situation arose when a person who is a member of several groups became offended at what they termed "anti-Irish, anti-Catholic and anti-Campbell" jokes told at a recent Hogmanay. It just happened that the offended person fit all three of those categories.

None of us believe that anyone intended to give offense, but the fact remains that they did. The question presented, now that initial hurt and anger have subsided, seems to be what and how can we learn from the incident. It's good that, for the moment, anyway, most of us seem to be talking among ourselves, and with each other, about the question of sensitivity.

There seems to be a fairly common view that a person can tell jokes about a group of which they are a member, but not about other groups. In its own way, I think that view is divisive rather than collegial or helpful, although I do recognize that it provides a degree of "safety" by avoiding topics or material that some might find offensive.

I believe that every balanced person should have the ability to laugh at themselves, in both an individual and collective sense, but I don't see that as a license for others to be insulting or degrading.

Thus, the question I'd like to explore is: "How, if at all, can we measure or define the boundaries between legitimate humor and insult or degradation?" I don't think that there is a bright-line distinction, but I do believe that most people have some innate sense of what's "permissible" or not. What are some of those flags that we use to give warning of going "too far?"