Quote:
Originally Posted by Boomer
I think this one crosses the line, actually more than one line. . .
There are some things that should not be the stuff of jokes.
Boomer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
Our skins get progressively thinner and thinner.
Back in the day, just out of high school, I worked taconite plant construction on Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range. Tough work but the pay was good and for a young buck just getting out into the real world it was great. As you can imagine the humor among the workers was as rough and ready as the workers themselves. Jokes that made the rounds then would never be told today (at least in some places). Much of the work force were "Bohunks"; Serbians, Slovenians, Croatians. Lots of Italians there too, only we never called them that. I was a Bohunk. A standard joke was "how do you tell the (Italians) from the Bohunks?" "Simple. The (Italians) were the guys in suits looking down into the pit. The Bohunks were the guys with shovels at the BOTTOM of the pit."
It was funny, and regardless of ethnicity we all laughed at it. No one felt put down, racially slammed, etc. The Professionally Offended didn't exist back then. Today? Odds are that the thinner-skinned folks would be offended, or at least think they should be offended, at the joke.
I don't necessarily think that represents progress.
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Nope. Not thin skinned. Also, not surprised that I was immediately categorized. I knew what the reaction would be when I wrote that post this morning.
Here’s the thing — the example given by the first one to take umbrage with me — and quoted here above — is not the same thing…….
Ethnic jokes have been a part of our American Melting Pot forever and those kinds of jokes can let us laugh at ourselves — and laugh with others…..
For instance:
All those “how many (whoever) to change a lightbulb” jokes are funny to me. Those can be ethnic jokes. They can also be religious denomination jokes or regional jokes or job jokes. All in fun.
Anyway, I am not thin skinned. But Holocaust jokes cross the line where I am concerned. And I feel the same way about Helen Keller jokes. (There is no lightness, no snappy comebacks, to such jokes.)
Hope that’s not too nuanced to be understood.
Boomer