Read My Lips - the blog

Laughing at adversity is not normally naturally disastrous

Putting aside the irony of a black hip-hop station having ads pulled by McDonald's

for airing what some say is a racist satire of the tsunami tragedy in Southeast Asia to the tune of 'We Are the World,' a song created in the 1980s to fight hunger in Africa - source

When does humor cross the line?Recently, a hip-hop radio station took a show "Miss Jones in the Morning" off the air following complaints about a comedy segment.

"What happened is morally and socially indefensible," said Rick Cummings, president of Emmis Radio. The station is owned by Emmis Communications Corp. "All involved, myself included, are ashamed and deeply sorry. I know the members of the morning show are truly contrite. They know their actions here are inexcusable," Cummings said in a statement.

The piece used racial slurs to describe people swept away in the disaster, made jokes about child slavery and people watching their mothers die. - source

"You can hear God laughing, 'Swim you b**ches swim,'" was one line in the song, sung by staff of the show.

Across the Atlantic, Rodney Marsh, an English sports commentator, was fired for making light of the tsunami disaster.

In Chapter 2 of the book How to Write, by Jim Foreman, we are told:

One of the oldest foundations to play humor against is conflict. I don't mean conflict which leads to blows, but simply mental of situational conflict. It can be man against man, man against machine or even man against some outside influence such as weather, government or society.

(Well, tsunami jokes seem to fit into this category, and one of our readers did suggest that we might buy a manual on writing.)

And how much worse is such humor worse than cruelty jokes, which have been around for years?

Q. What did the little moron do when he learned that he was going to die?
A. He went into the living room.

Q. Why did the little moron drive his car into a tree?
A. He wanted to hear its bark.

Q. Why did Moona drive the rent car off the road?
A. ????? I'm sure Tig will think of an appropriate answer.

The writing manual previously quoted also tells us,

Humor, like love, usually comes from a situation in which a person is not only physically interested but is also mentally involved. Like love, the pleasure of humor can be experienced again and again if it is applied properly. In humor, there is always the right time and the right place for it to happen and should one of those two parameters be missing, there is little chance that the desired response to humor will result.

It's my take that humor should be included in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. What I have not decided is whether I receive more pleasure from laughing or from making someone else laugh, but then, that's the way it is with gifts. What I do know is that the most pleasant relationships in life are those in which people can laugh at themselves, at each other, and at situations in life which would otherwise be unbearable.

Santa didn't have time to visit Asia this year so he just gave them a wave as he he passed.

Fairy Liquid have donated a million bottles of detergent to the tsunami appeal, they heard that there were a lot of Asians washing up on the beaches.

Ellen Macarthur's bid to circumnavigate the globe in record time has failed...She was beaten by a Sri Lankan on a deck chair.

Did you hear the Billabong surfing Pro Am this year was won by an Indonesian on a kitchen table.

Posted by Susan R at January 27, 2005 05:51 PM