matthearn.com

Let’s chat about humor for a moment. I’d just like to take the time to address a big problem in the world, and that is that a surprising number of people have a misconfigured sense of humor. Oh sure, some things are universally funny:

• Fart jokes
• Actual farts
• Reference to the sex lives of the Amish
• That story your dad tells every time he gets hammered about the time he took a dump in a mailbox
• Any joke involving a priest, a rabbi, and a 300W rainbow-colored marital aid
• Covered wagons, aka Dutch Ovens

The laughs never end, when those topics get broken out at parties. Particularly if the party as at my house, and the participants have drunk between 5 and 17 bottles of homemade Continental Pilsner apiece. But certain topics seem to make certain folks laugh, and other folks whine in great dismay.

For example: my wife is in the business of assisting the differently-abled. (They used to be called “handicapped,” and before that, “crippled;” by 2015 they’ll be called “Judiciously Improved.”) I fully support this, except that the Political Correctness Brigade has now weaseled its way into my very home. During my adolescence, it was perfectly acceptable, when someone did something stupid, to call him “retarded.” And mirth would result. Now, I have to expend great amounts of brainpower trying to not say that word in front of my wife and her coworkers. (In a similar vein, we were allowed to call anything we disagreed with “gay,” as in “Dude, homework is totally gay,” or “Bobby and Jimmy kissing behind the school was so gay.” No longer. The internet has invented a substitute word, “ghey,” which is totally gay.)

As far as I can tell, the word “retarded” is no less funny than it was in 1993. And yet nowadays people get their undergarments in a SEVERE bunch if you break it out anywhere but a hockey team’s locker room. This is a disturbing indicator of the path we’re on, in which I won’t be able to say things like “Dude, your new subwoofer has a totally fat sound” without some overweight ninny saying “What did you say? Fat? How dare you!” and then attempting to kick me in the nards but failing because her thigh-fat precludes any actual upward motion of her legs. (Note: this would actually be HILARIOUS to witness.)

And lest you think I’m just some completely irreverent buffoon that would laugh at a baby’s funeral, let me show you the depth of my intellect: I have seen the other side of the coin, albeit for a totally retarded stupid reason. Last night I was watching David Letterman, something I normally avoid because Paul Shaffer’s voice makes my ears bleed, and they were doing the top 10, which was something like “top 10 ways you can tell that gasoline prices are out of hand.” #3 was, “Anna Nicole Smith married a Texaco franchisee.” My initial response was “Damn, that’s cold. Her bloated corpse is barely cold yet.” But then I realized that, due to the Writer’s Strike, all the late shows are in re-runs until like 2009, and the joke dated from 2005 when Anna Nicole was still barely alive. Why did the fact that she’s dead make the joke seem less funny and more mean? It’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around; now that she’s dead, it’s not like she’s gonna hear about it and get pissed off. The joke is just as funny as it was in 2005, which is of course to say that it’s not funny at all and never was. (Brian will probably have a heart attack, but I’ve always found Letterman (and all the late-night guys since Johnny quit) to be pretty overrated when it comes to bringing the funny.)

I got to thinking about this, because a few weeks ago I set my Facebook status message to something like “Matt Hearn is wondering how people can confuse ‘they’re’, ‘there’, and ‘their’; is it because they have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?” Which you have to admit, if you don’t have FAS, is pretty funny. I still got some irritated messages about it. If you do have FAS, it might be perceived as insulting, but 1) if you have FAS and know the difference between those three words, then obviously the joke isn’t directed at you and 2) if you have FAS and don’t know the difference between those three words, then perhaps my little jibe will inspire you to go to school and study hard. It’s win-win! And if you don’t have FAS, but have a problem with sand in your vagina, just go to the bathroom and rinse it out. Stop annoying me because Uncle Gropey took away your girlish laughter.

It’s hard to avoid being insulted by certain jokes. I think the secret is not to flip out about it. If you hear a joke that offends you, just laugh along with the rest and tell your own insulting joke right back. Note: this may only work with minorities.