Riposte!

While looking in my archives for the link to that Star Wars mistranslation thing, I stumbled upon a comment by some Korean. Here's the body of his comment:

Riddle me this:

What has two legs,
two arms,
two eyes,
one head,
10 fingers,
10 toes,
and is Chinese?

And I just now came up with a response:

Friday night super fun takeout special!

Bahahahahahahahahaha!!

Kids, let me remind you that ethnic jokes are unacceptable and unfunny.

Actually, that's a lie. Racial jokes are funny, mostly because many people deem them to be so unacceptable. Humour is all about defying or satirizing socially acceptable norms. Part of why these things are funny is because you know that somewhere, there are people who will get all huffy and upset over some comment about "Two Wongs Making it White" in reference to a Chinese laundromat.

Often, these people are in urgent need of medical care, to remove the various objects lodged in their lower intestines. This procedure is occasionally known as a Humorectomy. See? That's funny, because you just said "rectum." I could have said "stick-in-the-assectomy," but that would have been like me beating you over the head with a sack full of goopy turds: no fun for anyone.

The problem with racial humour is that so often the basic sentiment, that of poking harmless fun, is perverted by something more sinister -- namely: ignorance, thinly disguised hostility, or scorn. Note that all these things are characteristic of the phenomenon of racism itself.

Additionally, you get racist humour which is so artless and clumsy that it is offensive not necessarily on the basis of its subject matter, but because it is so patently unfunny. Take, for example, any Loony Tunes feature where someone gets blown up. The smoke clears, the character is covered in soot and has big swollen lips, then mugs desperately for the camera before waddling offscreen. Frankly, it would have been funnier if Elmer Fudd had been split in two by the blast, and lay screaming in agony in a pool of his own viscera, weeping for his lost future. See? It really didn't take much.

Doubtless, such scenes were at the pinnacle of wit and satire in the first half of the 20th century. Thankfully, tastes have changed, and we are now privileged to bear witness to such masterpieces of subtle comedy as "Stacked" on Fox.

Anyway, the point.

Humor is at its heart a little vicious, and a little mean. That doesn't mean that it can't be delivered and accepted in a spirit of goodwill, and through incendiary subject matter. Instead of hiding behind political correctness and trying to erase the things that make people different, all you pole-holes should be trying to understand why people might think these things are funny. Consider the possibility that not everyone is as small-minded or close-hearted as you assume they are.

And for god's sake,
LEARN TO READ
(Nedim and Han)
BETWEEN
(didn't quite get it on)
THE
(but they sure didn't get off my mom!)
LINES.


Wait... what?