Riddle me this, Batman: How come everybody found it so acceptable to make fun of Terri Schiavo?

I don't understand any of those posts you picked so I can't really say. are they supposed to be jokes/funny? I can't tell. I'm mystified that anyone would find such fault with my assertion that an awful lot of humor is based on suffering - it's not like I'm the first person (much less the first comedian) to make this observation. Any routine where the comedian is making fun of themselves (Seinfeld, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, ad nauseam) is clearly based on the comedian's perceived "suffering". Cruel jokes about other people (Terry Schiavo, the Pope, Michael Jackson) are clearly based on their suffering. Slapstick = suffering physical pain. Racist humor is clearly based on humiliating/making light of the suffering of others. There's tons of routines about people enduring various indignities which are obviously based on turning their own suffering into comedy... I could go on and on...

I'm just saying I don't think there's anything wrong with this, per se - whether you find any of these things funny depends entirely on your personal distance from the subject. Terry Schiavo, for example, was pretty distant from me on an emotional level - she was thrust into the media spotlight and quickly became a caricature - as such, I found a lot of the photoshop stuff hilarious, and I don't feel any need to apologize for it. It's personally reasonable that other people who DID feel some sort of emotional resonance with her story to NOT find that stuff funny... but that's no justification for telling other people not to make those jokes or not to laugh. Humor is relative, if you don't think a particular subject is deserving of humor, DON'T READ JOKES ABOUT IT.

I don't understand any of those posts you picked so I can't really say. are they supposed to be jokes/funny? I can't tell. I'm mystified that anyone would find such fault with my assertion that an awful lot of humor is based on suffering - it's not like I'm the first person (much less the first comedian) to make this observation. Any routine where the comedian is making fun of themselves (Seinfeld, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, ad nauseam) is clearly based on the comedian's perceived "suffering". Cruel jokes about other people (Terry Schiavo, the Pope, Michael Jackson) are clearly based on their suffering. Slapstick = suffering physical pain. Racist humor is clearly based on humiliating/making light of the suffering of others. There's tons of routines about people enduring various indignities which are obviously based on turning their own suffering into comedy... I could go on and on...

I'm just saying I don't think there's anything wrong with this, per se - whether you find any of these things funny depends entirely on your personal distance from the subject. Terry Schiavo, for example, was pretty distant from me on an emotional level - she was thrust into the media spotlight and quickly became a caricature - as such, I found a lot of the photoshop stuff hilarious, and I don't feel any need to apologize for it. It's perfectly reasonable that other people who DID feel some sort of emotional resonance with her story to NOT find that stuff funny... but that's no justification for telling other people not to make those jokes or not to laugh. Humor is relative, if you don't think a particular subject is deserving of humor, DON'T READ JOKES ABOUT IT.

As for the "pissing in my chicken" thing - some people WOULD find it funny (ever seen a Farrelly Bros movie? A South Park episode? TV Funhouse?), and it would be funny because of my reaction to it/how I dealt with suffering the humiliation, etc. Would I personally be laughing? No, obviously not, but that's because it would be happening to ME and not someone ELSE (ie, no emotional distance).

that is not why seinfeld stuff is funny. "it's funny cause it's true" ring a bell?

re: racial jokes, you can't say a particular joke is funny cause racial stereotypes have hurt people. okay you can say that, i'll just think you're full of shit. again "it's funny cause it's true".

but this is just an extension of exaggerating the absurdity of whatever daily-life minutiae (in this case toothpaste) is being targeted. "its funny cuz its true because toothpaste really IS fucking bizarre! what's up with that!"

plays on language = nonsense, obviously. See Lewis Carrol. Or Ogden Nash.

(yes, I know I'm being reductionist in my analysis here - but only because complaining about offensive jokes cuts to the heart of why people find anything funny at all.)

Another analogy. Your wife/child is about to die. You can make a pact with the devil to keep her alive. It's a bad choice, but you might be tempted to make it, for the right reason.

They were using ever resource available in a life or death matter. I don't think they made wise choices, but I do think their ultimate intentions were for their daughter and not to be media whores.

But your point is well taken that they did make horrible decisions.

Assuming facts not in evidence. 90% of Seinfeld isn't funny to me.

(and fwiw, I don't find Seinfeld funny at all. But I can see why other people do.)

A friend of ours who owns a house in West Oakland heard gunshots last month and later found out there was a shooting in the house over the street. Then a week later, they heard gunshots in the house NEXT DOOR and it turns out that a 15 year-old girl had witnessed the first shooting, so they broke into her house and shot her through the hand and the foot in retaliation.
He's thinking of selling.

-- Airtube (adamr...) (webmail), April 1st, 2005 1:44 PM. (nordicskilla) (later)

*but you aren't.

uh, have you SEEN the last episode of Seinfeld, where they all get thrown in jail because they've been such assholes over the duration of the entire show? It's not all observational humor - a lot of times it's about taking those observations to an *ahem* absurd level and making other people (or himself) suffer as a result.

but this is just a premise, not a joke. Now, say you were a porn-chasin, booze-drinkin, pathological liar robot and we're halfway to a TV series...