Everybody agrees that having a laugh is a good thing. Doctors, psychologists, pundits of every area, agree that having a good disposition makes one live longer, and better lives. Sometimes, this good disposition comes through in our love for certain things or people, and sometimes our capacity to find humor in a number of situations.
However, times are changing.
It seems that in the age of political correctness, you might become a pariah if you dare to laugh, or find humor, in certain types of situation. I have some bad news for you. Humor, jokes in general, things that draw laughs in other human beings can always offend somebody, somewhere. People think twice about laughing at a joke that involves a mentally retarded individual, however, if you are a democrat, you find it nice, normal and dandy to share a great joke about the latest Republican blunder, and vice-versa. Political-correctness infused individuals, many of whom shun religion, actually find jokes involving religion, or religious figures, or backward-thinking religious people to be just swell.
Well, you get the picture. If you laugh at a drunken person acting up, that is just as bad as laughing at the mentally retarded joke I referred above. I know, people will say "the mentally retarded guy did not choose to be that way". Well there are some researchers that believe that alcoholism is just as genetic as any other type of chromosome induced flaw, so laughing at the drunk is the same as laughing at a person with Down syndrome, after all.
The race card...It seems that in the US, jokes about minorities are a no-no, jokes about whites OK. Well, for bad or for worse, whites, or the majority in the USA are also people, and jokes about whiteys, honkies and blanquitos should be just as frowned upon as jokes about any other people.
Even American's Funniest Home Videos would be considered nasty, after all, laughing about a person taking a nasty fall in a backyard is not nice! Laughing at an embarrassed person is naughty! Even laughing at a baby throwing up in somebody's face is not very politically-correct.
The bottom line is, sooner or later, as this political-correctness permeates every facet of society, laughing will come into disuse, for the very nature of humor is slightly devious. Nobody laughs because somebody got a promotion at a job, was cured of cancer or won a Court case. One might smile a lot, but not laugh.
There might be a laugh police these days, which will investigate people who tend to laugh a lot. They must be up to no good, these nasty-people-hating-no-politically-correct-laughing animals.
Consider this - whenever we laugh at a joke, ANY TYPE of joke, we are laughing at ourselves. We are laughing at the human condition, mainly its flaws. Since we are all part of the human race, all humor is self-deprecating, and should not really be considered prejudiced.
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