Mintrude wrote:
Fair enough. I think in the case of the dead baby jokes, they're deliberately supposed to be as puerile and as offensive as possible. Therefore they're not offensive!
So are racist jokes, as it were.
And I completely agree with EI on this one. We live in too much of a victim culture- everybody is prepared to get offended at one thing or another, until everything but the most banal statements are allowed. "Don't use the word "barbarian" when talking about Germanic tribes- its offensive, call them "less technological people in comparison to the Romans with long hair who don't take baths". "Don't ever call anything in an anthropology report "primitive"- after all, clubs kind of require the same level of technological advancement as guns!" "Don't make jokes that could offend anyone- whether they're racist, sexist, or poke fun at things like teen pregnancy" (as I have heard people saying as they criticize Juno). Offense at this, offense at that, blaggity blaggity blah. It reached a ridiculous height when my professor of Roman history, when talking about Alexander the Great, was afraid to answer a question about whether or not he was Greek because he's had previous students raise a big uproar based on his answer. Silliness.
I won't post racist jokes if they really offend people that much. But I think, as someone who has experienced racism and knows what a horrible thing it is, that that only makes it all the more important to joke about. I also think that the posters on this board are intelligent enough to realize that the racist stereotypes embedded in most of these jokes are just that- stereotypes, and also that racist jokes can approach intelligence- as Monty Python's Life of Brian and South Park show. Hell, how is Monty Python's lampooning of Catholicism "Every Sperm is Sacred" and Anglicism in the conversation following the song (in The Meaning of Life movie, for all you uncultured sods out there) any worse than your average jew joke?