No one wore shorts in my first grade class. I don’t know why. Just no one did. So when Charles showed up one morning sporting brand-new shorts, the class burst into laughter. Including, I’m ashamed to admit, me. Charles walked to his desk, sat down, and cried. We came quickly to our senses, stopped laughing, and were extra nice to him the rest of the day. Good thing there were no standup comedians among us, keeping it up, saying, “They’re just jokes.” When comedians target the marginalized, the audience laughs, laughs, laughs. Then everyone goes home or turns off the TV. What they don’t see? That somewhere is a Charles who walks to his desk, sits, and weeps. That’s if he’s lucky. If he’s less lucky, he gets publicly scorned, refused service, barred from a public restroom, or disowned. Or gets the shit beat out of him. Or worse. All emboldened by so-called “edgy humor.” To this day I wonder if Charles remembers that moment, if it still bubbles up and hurts him anew from time to time. It would me.
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RIDING HOME on the bus some years ago, I overheard a fellow several rows behind me regaling passengers with joke after joke to the effect that female students attending a local university were overweight, unsightly, or both. I’d already heard a good many of the jokes. I had, until then, even repeated some. Cranking my head around for a look at the source of the hilarity, I beheld about as overweight and unsightly a specimen as ever took a breath. Said specimen was in no position to joke about others’ looks. And, I realized, neither was I. With that, I was done with jokes of that sort. It took a little longer for me to figure out that “not being in a position to joke about it” isn’t really the problem. The problem is that the only difference between a group guffawing at “humor” of this ilk and a circle of playground bullies taunting an unlucky kid is that the unlucky kid isn’t physically present. It is nonetheless just as wrong-headed and, in the long run, just as harmful. No matter that the kid isn’t physically present. The taunting will find its way there in one form or another. Humor with a point to make or a target to hit spreads, bolstering the like-minded and helping to make converts of others. If the point is humane, all the better. But an inhumane point spreads and swells just as fast. All it needs to erupt and cause real harm, from discrimination to physical violence to inequitable laws, is for one bully to gain prominence and endorse such talk as “telling it like it is” or “saying what must be said.” And for comedians to offer flimsy excuses like “it’s just jokes,” “lighten up,” and the scoundrel’s perpetual whine, “it’s my free speech.” That bus ride was the beginning of my realizing that humor targeting appearance, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc., isn’t funny. It hurts people. I enjoy writing humor. One magazine even went so far as to make me its humor columnist. But the above-described epiphany meant giving up what I had thought were some great lines. I don’t miss them. • • •
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Welcome to Cunoblog... where I share thoughts about writing. I don’t consider myself a writing authority, but that doesn’t keep me from presuming to blog like one. Oh, and I reserve the right to digress when I feel like it. Archives
July 2024
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