Brutus1964 said:
Yes liberals can be very funny, but not when the humor is directed at them.
Which is why Christians, despite the Catholic priesthood scandal, the statistical prevalence of children abused by Christians, and the Christian-political obsession with sex, don't appreciate humor that casts them inappropriately. Catholic priests fantasize about and abuse other people's children. Protestants fantasize about and abuse their own. These are clearly two different processes. So casting all Christians as fumbling, farm-boy date-rapists for mere humor's sake is as inappropriate as casting all Christian men as boylovers.
However, when it comes to problematic issues like the inequality of women, it's a lot harder for Christians who aren't part of the Promise Keepers or Southern Baptist Convention to disavow beliefs that are Biblically-based.
To reiterate my initial response to this topic:
No conservative I've yet met is creative enough to go delving into an obscure but briefly-famous Canadian pop band that, in making a silly song about the culture around them, accidentally tapped into something that is American liberalism's quiet problem. Hint: they opened for Duran Duran once upon a time ... Hint #2: the album was produced by Todd Rundgren.
Now, a smart, obsessed conservative should be able to figure out what song that is, even from that scant information. The problem facing most conservatives is that American politics in general doesn't usually run so deeply. The key isn't visible in that paragraph, but any objective examination of the liberal political spectrum in the United States that overlooks this vital point is either myopic or not objective at the outset.
Seriously, I'll give it 'til Friday.
And no, liberals in general shouldn't bother guessing; they'll embarrass themselves just as badly. However, I will say that the only people I know who think deeply enough to figure this still-superficial riddle are liberals.
So any self-described conservative who brings me the title of that song gets a free pass on the obsession count and the pride of scoring one up on the liberals. All the insidious pleasure and none of the guilt.
Any self-described liberal who brings me that title is merely meeting a basic--but not minimal--expectation. We must not only think and conceive and invent on such an intellectual level, we must also be smart enough to figure out how to dumb it down for conservatives.
• • •
Let's pause and think about this for a minute.
A Jewish Dictionary
(Disclaimer: First off, this is an example intended to show a certain argumentative value about "humor". Secondly, principle suggests I shouldn't even have to make this disclaimer, but experience here at Sciforums advises strongly otherwise.)
"subhuman" - Arab
"target" - Muslim
"bonus points" - Awarded for killing Arab or Muslim children
"double bonus points" - Awarded for killing Arab Muslim children
"lunch" - Foreskin
"peace" - Everyone who disagrees is dead
"Amalek" - Yasser Arafat (Jews everywhere were disappointed when God called Arafat home before the Israelis figured out a way to blot Muslims from the face of the Earth.)
Inflammatory enough?
Some people actually think that shit is funny. And it probably was, at some point, for the same reason as my favorite racist joke. (I'll skip the recital.) The sheer absurdity of the "joke" reflects something very amiss about human perception. But it has no substantive value.
Of greater concern, though, some people actually believe it true.
Oh, and the Amalek bit came from a now-defunct, American-based, pro-Israeli page. There are some discussions of Amalek scattered on a couple of pro-Israel websites, but the really offensive one, which the entirety of the Amalek "joke" is based on, has gone the way of the off-switch as far as I can tell. I'll see if I can dig it up again; it would be
funny, except for that little thing with Muslims killing Jews and Jews killing Muslims.
That disclaimer might be a little more necessary. The rest can be picked from various facets of the ongoing Israel-Palestine argument, and also American Neo-Nazi propaganda.