I wasn’t planning on posting for a few days, but something has come up that I have to call attention to. I don’t want to damn all liberals, but some of them have some pretty thin skin. What follows will be my rant on why this kind of overreaction is dangerous. I hope you enjoy.

First of all, I can’t speak for my fellow blogger Carl (who wrote the “offending” post), but I personally saw nothing wrong with it. I agree with the sentiments expressed here. It was a totally appropriate use of sarcasm; not anti-semitic at all. And I’m glad that he used sarcasm. It’s great to see others using my preferred type of humor. Humor plays an important role in our magazine, and an even bigger one on this blog. So don’t act surprised when you see us trying (emphasis on trying) to be funny while writing about some issue big or small.

Now that that’s done with, I can discuss something more important. People take everything too damn seriously nowadays. Here’s one comment posted on CalStuff:

What is wrong with you people? Do you have no sense? The Patriot post was completely inappropriate and it perpetuates stereotypes and prejudice, regardless if it was done sarcastically or not. It is not appropriate to invoke racial and ehtnic slurs/jabs in order to be funny. It is called ignorance…

If we went by this standard, about 99% of all comedy would be gone. Comedy Central would have clown acts during the day and Regis Philbin at night. William Hung would be just another Cal student. And black comedians would be out of work. Whoops, there I go perpetuating stereotypes again.

Really, who has never tried to make a joke about stereotypes? Asians good at math? Blacks good at basketball? Nerdy EECS majors? Braindead, God-fearing, gay-hating Red Staters? Hedonistic, out-of-touch, socialist Blue Staters? These are all stereotypes, and I challenge anyone to say they’ve never used one of these before. I win.

This kind of humor is funny. I enjoy watching Dave Chappelle’s Show, South Park, and Drawn Together, a new personal favorite. They try to be as offensive as possible, and I salute them for it. I think I’m mature enough (TV-MA mature) to know not to take this stuff seriously. I’m pretty sure that these shows aren’t produced by ignorant racists. Maybe Chappelle is being secretly funded by the Klan, but I doubt it. The key difference between Dave Chappelle and David Duke is intent. When one of them makes a racial joke, we laugh at the joke and at the hypocricy of racism; when the other one makes a racial joke, we roll our eyes and give them the finger. I hope I don’t have to explictly point out which is which.

My next target:

whatever the context or the intended meaning, it is unacceptable. perhaps if anti-semitism wasnt actually a real concern and problem, this comment could simply be a poor attempt at sarcasm. But anti-semitism is real and it isn’t funny. Furthermore, there is no place for you gentiles to be deciding when it is and isn’t okay to say “damn jews” as if the degree to which it is humorous ignores the acceptiblity of such comments that it continues to perpetuate, funny or not.

Don’t decide for us wheter or not we should be offended.

Yes, master. Of course anti-semitism is a real concern and problem. A whole lot of problems would be solved in the Middle East and elsewhere if this were not the case. But people joke about a lot of things that are real and are problems. Once again, it all comes back to intent. There are always going to be people who are offended, so unless we want to bring every comment up for a democratic vote on acceptability, we’ll just have to live with it.

Which brings me to my conclusion. We’re lucky to have the First Amendment, even as it comes under attack from both the left and the right. Other countries aren’t so lucky. Take the U.K. for example, where they are trying to limit what can be said about religion (and race is already taboo). At least they have Mr. Bean to defend what is right:

“There is an obvious difference between the behavior of racist agitators who can be prosecuted under existing laws and the activities of satirists and writers who may choose to make comedy or criticism of religious belief, practices or leaders..,” Atkinson said in a statement.

There it is again: intent.

Could this ever come to America? Hopefully not, but with the attitudes I’ve seen recently… The jerking of a thousand knees is a powerful thing.

Oh yeah. Dave Chappelle = funny man. David Duke = racist bastard. I hope I didn’t need to spell that out, but I worry sometimes.