"we are not in agreement about the Schindler joke."
You think it's racist then?
Explain why
'in poor taste'
I agree Sen, all 'dark humour' is in poor taste Sen - that's why some people find it funny
There' a whole psychological science around why people feel certain things funny
MacColl and Seeger recorded jokes from miners for the programme 'The Big Hewer', at least half of them were about pit accidents and lung diseases.
A typical one from the North east was about the 'Bevin Boys' - young unemployed schoool leavers who were put to work in the pits during WW2 - remombered among miners for their inexperience.
It was the practice in the pits that if a fatality occured, the men would be given a day off in respect for the deceased
"Two of these Bevin Boys were sent down to help look for survivors after a pit-fall - they discovered two dead miners in the rubble.
One said to the other, "Tell you what, let's take one up now and leave the other till later, then we can have two days off"
The miners on the recording found that hilarious
There are dozens of these on a tape I was given by Ewan.
Trench humour even appeared in cartoon form during WW1 - I got dozens of 'dark jokes' from a WW1 veteran, the first time I ever went out with a tape recorder
Some of the Norfolk fishermen gave us jokes about sinking fishing boats
Folklorist, Gershon Legman, devoted a whole section of one of his book to necrophobic sex
I hear many from Jewish friends when I lived in Manchester
Maybe I might have found them offensive when told by non-Jews, but as jokes, they were a very strong part of Jewish culture among those I knw
All this is 'dark' stuff and not to e=everybody's taste - I think it is described as "survival humour" - a way of coping with dangerous occupations and situations - not to everyone's taste admittedly
Jim Carroll