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From: ph@wucec2.UUCP (Paul Hahn)
Newsgroups: net.jokes.d
Subject: Re: Offensive humor
Message-ID: <1304@wucec2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 31-Jan-86 20:30:10 EST
Article-I.D.: wucec2.1304
Posted: Fri Jan 31 20:30:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 20:41:29 EST
References: <428@mmm.UUCP>
Reply-To: ph@wucec2.UUCP (Paul Hahn)
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis
Lines: 26

In article <428@mmm.UUCP> mrgofor@mmm.UUCP (Michael Ross) writes:
>	The question: Are ALL jokes offensive in SOME way to SOMEone?
>Can anyone supply a joke that is completely inoffensive to anybody
>(yet still funny to someone)? 

	    Well, I think so.  As soon as I get done with this article
	I'm going to post a couple of jokes that I think qualify.  On
	the other hand, the most reasonable theories of humor that I
	have seen (see the discussion in this very group a couple of
	months ago) argue that to be funny, a joke must inevitably be
	at least unsettling, if not offensive, albeit in a very subtle
	fashion.  Or, as Nessus (the Pierson's puppeteer, not the
	centaur) succinctly put it, humor is associated with an
	interrupted defense mechanism.  In order to be interrupted,
	the defense mechanism has to first be activated, and for that
	there must be something to defend against.

>	The second question - are feminists more prone to taking offense
>than other groups? If so, why?
>The corollary to this question: where on the scale (not offended ... outraged)
>SHOULD feminists be?

	    I'll pass on these; I have no idea.
						--pH
/*
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