Tab. BOO!

It's come to my attention recently that you can't make a joke about rape without getting flayed alive.

I guess that's because rape isn't funny.

Then again, who decides what's funny?  Individuals do, of course.  But then there's groups.  There's probably individuals out there who'd find poodle-in-an-electric-socket jokes funny, but I'm willing to bet that groups like PETA and the SPCA wouldn't-- officially and on-the-record.

Although maybe there's a quirky, young, just-a-bit-off SPCA intern out there somewhere pushing papers and trolling on blogs who'd laugh at a joke like that.  Just, you know, once he clocked out and got home.

Matthew Inman, creator of "The Oatmeal", a blog whose penis is a thousand times huger than this blogs'll ever be, made a rape joke.  And everybody freaked.  The joke, for the three of you who still read this blog and the two of you who haven't heard yet, featured a small F5 key running from a large and scary beast and the caption reads, "Every time the internet does not perform as expected, I rape the shit out of my F5 key".

I'm guessing nobody would have said anything if Inman had written I fuck the shit out of my F5 key.  Oh, words... you're so weird.

Comedy, which frequently uses (weird) words, is weird-- we learned that from my last post; 4 seconds, you know-- and it's also very, very dangerous.  It's much more dangerous than being serious, because being serious is just so obvious, it's so out in the open-- there's nothing more to being serious than being serious.  There's lots more to comedy.  It's loaded, and we all know loaded things are scary.  Don't point that rape joke at me.

A friend of mine showed me a clip from the Louis C. K. show where he's helping his young daughter brush her teeth in the bathroom.  The daughter innocently tells C. K. that she loves Mommy (they're divorced) more and likes being with her better.  C. K. appears wounded, but takes the insult in stride and continues helping her brush her little child-fangs, and then she rinses, spits, and leaves the bathroom.  When she does, C. K. angrily gives her the finger once she's safely exited and out of view.

It's funny to give your young daughter the finger, right?  No.  But I laughed.  And I don't even like Louis C. K.  I think he's obnoxious.  Still, I laughed.  So it must have been funny-- to me, anyway.

You might not have laughed at that, and that's fine, because a joke (whether it's a good one or a bad one or even an appalling one) gets sent out there into the ether and whomever reacts reacts the way that they do.  A joke can either be

1.) hilarious

2.) really funny

3.) funny

4.) kinda funny

5.) not funny

6.) in poor taste, but still kinda funny

7.) offensive

Do you have the right to get offended by something?  Sure!  It's America!  Let's put on our "Number 1 Dad" aprons, barbecue the shit outta some dead animals, crack open a beer and get offended!  Getting offended is our right, goddamnit!  But do we have to raise such ire, unleash such forceful condemnation that we lambaste some hapless schmeck who stuck his foot in his mouth-- should we be shaming and castigating and ending careers over this?

I kind of wonder about that.

I kind of wonder about people in glass houses and all that bit.  Who among us is without sin?  Who has never said something ill-conceived, or even ill-meant?  I wonder if the rabid denizens with the pitchforks and torches out there, broadcasting their righteous indignation to the wicked world are as lily white themselves as they purport to be.  Are we a bunch of tightly-corseted Victorian frailties crumpling down upon our tufted fainting couches?  Or are we big boys and girls who can see and hear something appalling, identify it for what it is, get out all that vitriol by penning a status update or two about it, and then move on to what's for lunch?

There's lots of things out there that I shouldn't find amusing, but I do.  Maybe my soul is as twisted as a barber's pole.  Maybe.  I don't really know what that says about me.  I don't know what it says about my upbringing or my parenting abilities or my effectiveness as a father or a behavioral healthcare provider or even as a human being.  What I do know is that, while my sense of humor may be as warped as old glass, I'm not the kind of person who would seek to couch my own inferiority and frustration and flaws by attacking some idiot behind a microphone or camera lens who said something cheap or dumb or disgusting.

Who cares?  Fuck 'em.

Remember-- you can always change the channel.  You can always set phasers on "Ignore".  You can choose to govern your own tongue so you do not commit such an egregious verbal solecism yourself.  Because, in the end, you're all you have any control over anyway.

All humor is derived from pain, it's just a matter of degree.  I suppose the only joke that doesn't hurt somebody is a knock-knock joke, and if that's the society we want to be, where we can only do what's safe, I guess comedy clubs and films and television are going to be replete with jokes about chickens crossing the fucking road.  I get taking out "redskin" in "Peter Pan", I get changing "nigger serenader" to "banjo serenader" in "The Mikado".  There is a difference, though, between hate speech (which, I hate to tell you, is as constitutionally protected as a game of peek-a-boo) and poor taste, and I worry that certain sectors of our society are equating the two, which is more dangerous than comedy itself.  Because then, if those two irrevocably different entities are equivalent, how will we truly ever know the difference?

Rape isn't funny-- but, in my mind, if you want to go ahead and do a dumbfuck thing like try to make a joke out of it: it's America-- go ahead.  The Holocaust isn't funny, and lynchings aren't funny, and, frankly, Polish jokes and blonde jokes aren't funny either, but the fact of the matter is this: you've said something horrible, you've written something disgusting and shameful and dreadful, whether you've done it in the privacy of your living room or on Myspace 9 years ago or at the dinner table and your father freaked, you've done it too, so, basically, have your reaction, get it all out so we can all move on, and while you're at it, shut the fuck up.   The other fact of the matter is yo mama's so nasty the deodorant threw up on her armpit and thought it was her pussy.