Suck It Up, You Pussy!

A few years ago, my friend Josh, and I were hanging out, drinking beer, and joking about child molestation. Right in the middle of a particularly good Catholic joke, Josh's hyper-liberal, blue-haired, punk-wannabe roommate came in. This roommate, who we'll call Adam (because that's his real name), proceeded to yell at us because our jokes were offensive. He shrilly called us on the carpet, demanding to know if either of us had ever been molested. When we didn't respond, he told us that we had no right to tell sodomy jokes unless we had been abused. After this tirade, he stormed out, leaving the two of us feeling...raped. Now, I can't talk for Josh, but I attended a repressive Catholic boys school for a couple of years and had some experiences that...well...I don't really want to discuss. More to the point, I didn't want to wave them around like a flag for the sole purpose of arguing with Adam.

A few years later, I was teaching a class on satire. When discussing Mac Flecknoe, I discussed how John Dryden "rabidly" attacked on a colleague. One of my students, Maggie, raised her hand and said, with a perfectly straight face, that her aunt had died from rabies. I was initially taken aback, until I noticed that Maggie had started smiling. She explained that she didn't really know the aunt, and had found the discussion amusing.

It seems to me that people have increasingly taken the position that self-righteous offense is the ideal all-purpose response to any joke. The reasoning here seems to be that jokes can hurt people's feelings, so we should avoid any humor that smacks of controversy. Unless, of course, we belong to the offended minority, in which case we are "speaking out" and "owning our pain."

Frankly, this is total and complete bullshit.

Let me break it down for you. Imagine someone--we'll call him Crankster--who's mother was Jewish, but converted to Catholicism. His father was Episcopalian, and also converted to Catholicism. Now, Crankster was raised Catholic, but always had a strong awareness of his Jewish roots (the whole Episcopalian thing doesn't matter, because Episcopalians aren't funny). Now, as an adult, Crankster stopped going to church, making him a lapsed Catholic. So, can Crankster tell Catholic jokes? How about Jewish jokes? What about Episcopalian jokes (assuming he could find the elusive Episcopalian joke)? Can he only tell Jewish jokes when there isn't a full-blooded son of Abraham in the room? What if a priest walks into a bar where Crankster is telling a Father Nelson joke? Should Crankster stop telling the joke or should he just ask for an impromptu confession? Should he just get down on his knees?

Maybe this is a logic problem: If Crankster is on a train going West out of Cincinnati at 60 miles per hour and he's telling a Catholic joke...

Who is the final arbiter of taste and political correctness? Is there a U.N. commission on humor that Crankster can apply to in order to get a permit allowing him to tell Jewish jokes? Should he just whip out his genealogy when he gets called on the carpet, or does the fact that he's circumcised get him an automatic pass?

The bottom line is this: every joke is offensive to someone. Every joke. If you don't believe me, ask a severe autistic what he thinks of knock-knock jokes. Blonde jokes, Polish jokes, husband jokes, wife jokes, dirty jokes, Catholic jokes--regardless of the joke, I'm sure you can find someone who will take offense, if not for himself, then for a Catholic he knows, or a great-grandfather who was Polish.

So, unless we go with the whole U.N. commission on humor thing (which, by the way, was a joke) we're left with two choices. We can either stop telling jokes, in which case the world will be a colder and less enjoyable place, or we can all take a deep breath, pull our heads out of our asses, and recognize that humor is a way of relating to others, sharing ideas, and dealing with pain. And, yes, making fun of priests.