The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #96423   Message #1887836
Posted By: Little Hawk
18-Nov-06 - 03:31 PM
Thread Name: BS: Borat film exploits Romanian gypsies
Subject: RE: BS: Borat film exploits Romanian gypsies
The crucial thing with humour, and with judging the merits of humour, is its quality AS humour...what it reveals about the human situation...whether or not it has a point to make that is relevant in some way...whether or not it is funny, witty, effective in some way AS humour....whether or not it enlightens, makes aware, or stimulates laughter effectively...

...NOT who makes the joke and about whom.

Therefore it is a complete red herring and a diversion driven by political correctness to complain about humour being made about any group of people by a person who is not a member of that group of people. There is no reason why a member of one group should be censured for making a joke about a member of another group...unless the joke itself deserves censure for some reason.

It is not the source of the joke, but rather the joke itself that should be judged on its own merits.

And therein lies the hypocrisy of a society that at present absolutely will not tolerate, for example, anyone but a Jew making jokes about Jews...or a black making jokes about blacks...or any similar situation to that.

There is a lot of fear out there. Fear is not a good basis on which to establish a free society with people who are capable of thinking for themselves. Matter of fact, it establishes the opposite: conformity and predictable knee-jerk reactions as people judge the book by its cover, not its content.