Today my husband was bullied online for making spelling and grammatical errors. As it happens, the bully knows my husband in real life; he and his girlfriend attend a club where my husband and I are regulars. We are acquaintances, if not friends. That made what he said and did all the more surprising.
I was not entirely surprised by the pile-on of congratulations for his wit and such, because the people who did it didn't know Bear personally. However, one click of a mouse and a little read and scroll would have told any of them, had they cared to look, that Bear is dyslexic. He has it in his profile.
This really pissed me off. I wasn't sure why immediately. It felt like discovering someone you respected was a Truther, actually. Not merely a gap in education, but a willfully chosen solecism.
But as I sat and thought about it, I realized that probably they thought it was okay. Comedy works like that. "But it didn't always!" I thought. Me, I don't like much comedy, especially modern American comedy. Adam Sandler in a movie is a sure sign to me I will dislike it.
How did it connect? I didn't know. And then I realized how.
And I figured out what the internal rule is that I keep applying, and comedy keeps failing.
If it's not fair, it's not funny.
You can make fun of someone's political position. It's not fair to make fun of her teeth or his figure or her thinning hair or his ears.
You can make fun of someone's sense of fashion propriety (I cannot believe she went out in public dressed like that). You cannot make fun of her nose or the fact that she has gotten older and has not engaged in constant surgeries to keep herself looking eighteen. You can make fun of someone who has not observed his changing body and continues to dress it as though he were fifteen.
You can make fun of someone's hairstyle in relation to their face. You cannot make fun of the fact that they either cannot grow hair or have hair which naturally comes out of their head in a rarely observed color or unfamiliar texture.
You can make fun of the malingerer, but not the allergic. You can be sarcastic about the guy whose back keeps him from going to work but not putting a new roof on his house himself, but not the guy who walks stiffly and needs a wheelchair more than not. You can laugh about someone's egocentrism, but not their blindness. You can mock someone's standard excuse for their habitual lateness, but not their Deaf accent.
And that's why a lot of American comedy fails to entertain me. In fact, it excites in me the kind of uneasiness that I get watching someone about to seriously injure themselves. I can't watch the trainwreck. And I can't believe that someone thinks this is funny.
Where did it start, and when? I don't know for certain. It's always been an element of some humor, but it seems that all comedy films involve people being mean as an essential element of the comedy these days. And people are mean other places, too, in ways that weren't once part of public discourse. Random meanness keeps popping up as a constant theme all over the place. It's not just a joke. If it were, it wasn't a funny one.
If it's not fair, it's not funny. I only laugh at fair. To do otherwise is unjust.... and am I not someone who works towards just treatment for all people? I retain not only my Quaker desire for justice, but my habit of self-examination, it seems.
Do not view this as a censure of your own tastes. I may simply be oversensitive. But if it strikes a chord in you, perhaps you, too, should sit down with yourself and find out what you've been trying to tell you.