Politically Correct Humor

Via Sense and Snarkability (“Jon Gabriel went to the Lefty gathering Netroots Nation, and discovered how humorless and boring the Left is”): Jon Gabriel has a great piece up at Ricochet.  He attended the liberal-blogger conference “Netroots” (sometimes known as “Nutroots”…) and reports on what they’re telling each other about humor and cultural engagement.

If their presentation on comedy is any guide, conservatives don’t have much to fear.

Not clear how much of Mr. Gabriel’s piece is itself tongue-in-cheek, but whether he’s reporting what he actually saw and heard or just riffing (or somewhere in between), it’s laugh-out-loud-funny, read the whole thing.

Halper expressed concern that far too many comedians cross the line with offensive jokes. . . . The audience had several questions about what they were allowed to joke about and even how comedy works. A white septuagenarian proudly stated that she no longer tells jokes to black people because that might expose them to unwitting racism. Camp and White sadly noted that her preface of “I’m not a racist, but…” confirms that she is, in fact, a racist.

Sure, it must be difficult to be freewheeling and funny in such a culture, but the solution is obvious:  Just have the government mandate that everyone be funny! It reminds me of a piece by the indispensable Mark Steyn:

. . . Colby Cosh, a rare non-expat Canadian [added,] “It’s not like Canadian medicare is related to the risk-averseness, deference to authority, and cultural greyness that makes all the funny creative people leave, right?” That’s a very pithy distillation of a rather profound point.

Read the whole thing.  Incidentally, it contains a very pithy summation of the moral case against the welfare state:

As Murray sees it, government social policy is intended to take “some of the trouble out of things”—getting sick, having a kid, holding down a job, taking care of elderly parents. But, when government takes too much of the trouble out of things, it makes it impossible to lead a satisfying life. “Trouble”—responsibility, choices, consequences—is intimately tied to human dignity. And thus the human dignity in working hard, raising a family and withstanding the vicissitudes of life has been devalued. And society is just a matter of passing the time.

 

Edits (July 27th, 2014):

• Added link above for “Just have the government mandate” (Obama on the individual mandate in 2008, before he made it a central feature of Obamacare: “Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”)
• Corrected title of entry (adverb ending in -ly followed by adjective does not constitute compound adjective, no hyphen needed)
• One (feminist?) musician awkwardly grapples with the accusation that “Feminists don’t have a sense of humor”: