In social situations, it's hard to find a line to walk on that's thinner than the one that applies to the appropriateness of jokes based on social groups. And it's hard to find a silence more awkward than when one person tells a joke that everyone else finds ignorant or disgusting.
I figured that jokes based on race and religion would be something I left behind in the South. I know -- I was a naive freshman. But I figured that sort of ignorance was a relic that could only find a place as far removed from political correctness as my beloved hometown. I was in for a surprise.
The bawdy joke-tellers here have a few unique aspects of their own. A lot of people I know who shun inhibitions when it comes to telling jokes about race or religion do it proudly. They puff out their chest, saying that they are standing up for their right to free speech. They are moral crusaders waging a war against the stuffiness that is political correctness, against liberal namby-pambies and intellectual cry- babies.
And, as much as I hate hearing jokes that inevitably call to mind racial oppression or religious persecution, they certainly have that right -- just as the Danish newspaper had every right to publish those cartoons of Muhammad.
Personally, I've come to find pretty much all jokes based on stereotypes of ethnicity or sexuality tasteless, to say the least. While it is true that some humor based on uncomfortable topics can be used to point out interesting aspects of a given situation - particularly race relations - most of the time it seems that people are just playing off stereotypes to get a cheap laugh.
As someone who is ethnically Jewish, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of religious jokes. I'm sorry, but I don't really think the Holocaust will ever be a laughing matter. And no, I don't think jokes that are ironic because they reference the supposed frugality of my people are funny, either, seeing as how those stereotypes will forever be associated with a legacy of hatred and marginalization.
The most outrageous difference between the humor of borderline bigots in the South and those in Arizona may occur as a result of the existence of an entirely new group of people here in the West. After all, I knew a grand total of two Mormons before I moved to Arizona.
What is it that makes it okay to make jokes about Mormons even more brazenly than any other group? The jokes I've heard students and professors alike make about the Mormon religion in class and around campus are enough to make me blush at times.
We get it - Mormons have different traditions and habits than your own. It really isn't that funny.
Ironically, a lot of the people I hear taking part in Mormon bashing are Democrats talking about the conservative voting power of conservative Mormons.
Never mind the fact that Democrats are supposedly the ones looking out for minority rights, or the fact that Harry Reid, one of the most kick-ass Democrats around, is a Mormon.
It's hard to take a stand about cultural sensitivity these days without seeming like an over-reacting, oversensitive, out-of-touch liberal. But that doesn't mean we should stop caring about how our humor affects those around us.
Tell Ben Horowitz why he is a political-correctness sissy at benjamin.horowitz@asu.edu.
