Ok, so I have had the desensitization of society on my mind for a while, but it pairs nicely of how sensitive people are. Even if a person wasn't directly involved with something if it is referenced in a joke, they are still very liable to blow their lid and take it as a personal affront. I think it goes to the sentiment that we are coddling everyone in society and people are extremely thin skinned. I have been taking those joke/insults for years (half insult but half joke) because that's my friends' style of humor. Its helped so that I am thick skinned but a lot of us are coddled and can't take a joke. I think this is why people don't like Gilbert Gottfried anymore. He always makes politically incorrect jokes and it ruins his career even though objectively as a person who enjoys comedy, they are often hilarious.
For example, yesterday was 9/11 and I knew someone who as their status posted a joke. The joke read "When does a pentagon have only 4 sides" (answer) "When it crosses a plane". This is not just a 9/11 joke but at its base is a math joke. Would you call "I wish I was a derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves" a sex joke? No, I consider it a math joke at its base whose double entendre involves sex. Also, if you approach the joke as a pragmatist, you are at worst joking about one tiny plane crash that happened to be on the same day as 2 huge ones that killed thousands of people. Its not the most P.C. joke, but there are worse and people are taking it as if it was a joke about all of 9/11.
Another joke i like (listed by Coed magazine as their most offensive joke of all time) is "how do you make a dead baby float?" "1 scoop of ice cream and 2 scoops of dead baby". Whatever your opinion is on dead baby jokes or how disgusting that is, its hard to deny that it was a clever joke.
Onto the joke that got me thinking about this. It was a Family Guy joke that I found quite clever about Pan Am Flight 103 (or as its also known the Lockerbie Bombing). So Stewie was watching a kids show, Jolly Farm Revue, and he mentioned how "ring around the rosie" was is supposedly about the Great Plague and yet children sing it. Then they sing a song about the Lockerbie incident It's raining luggage and babies and limbs and daddy doesn't come home. In england there was an uproar of this that called for Family Guy to be cancelled. These people either need to hear the context of the joke or grow a thinner skin. The lockerbie joke wasn't really the "joke" but the vehicle. The big joke here is that kids are singing songs about disasters and no one seems to notice (unless its overt).
Lastly, I want to point out a few word trends. First it was Shell Shock, then it was Battle Fatigue, now we have PTSD, and even now they say that's not accurate and its "Combat Stress Reaction". Just say that these guys had psychological damage from war, how hard is that? Another example. Venereal Disease, Sexually Trasmitted Disease, Sexually Transmitted Infection. Yes, now they are STIs. So now Sypillis is not a disease but an "infection"? God, there is no humanity left in words, but this whole issue is a whole other post in of itself.
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