Are ethnic jokes inherently wrong, racist, or offensive?

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

jakelafort wrote:

Although it oughtn’t concern ya is that your place in Hibernia?

No, but I would swap if asked. Thank Satan the fronkeys are not particular about where they live once they have a swamp to gouge away in. I think it was taken in the south of Ireland and won a local photo competition.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Yes, the conservative right would play the automatic “call it socialism” card. In the long run these ideas benefit society. In economic terms the nation improves its labor force (factors of production) so the newly housed can now take up steady jobs and pay taxes back into the pot that gave them the leg up. They cost the health service less too. Society also becomes healthier as their “happiness index” goes up. Give it a few minutes thought and more benefits will spring to mind.

When I was in my early twenties I worked in a University as an economic forecaster and any modelling we did to predict “socialist policies” always had a positive outcome on the stats in the medium to long run.  At least these ideas are worth trying because the “war on poverty and homelessness” is not working because it is not being fought with the right weapons.

The “war on drugs” has failed yet the same right wingers continue with prohibition ideology and a punishment mentality. At one point the number of people in jail in the USA for non-violent drug offenses exceeded the total prison population of Europe (for all crimes). They are often paid a pittance to find themselves exploited into manufacturing goods as part of their “rehab”. (So Red, have you been rehabilitated?). I do not see this as Capitalism. It is a form of modern-day slavery where “greed is good” and the few get richer. Many of their “workers” are released with no skills and no path back to regular society. What happens many of them? They end up homeless and get into meth or opioids and become a serious burden on a less cohesive society.

What if some more places tried the Portuguese policy of decriminalizing all drugs? The Right would need a few shots of strong brandy to calm themselves down. Yet these policies do work. In the long run (or even medium) crime falls, police forces deal with “real” crimes, less HIV incidents, fewer needless deaths of young people and criminal drug trafficking gangs are, overnight, without customers (not quiet but close enough). Many of these people (when addiction is treated as a disease not a crime) recover and re-join society as taxpayers! Give it another few minutes and you will come up with more benefits to society and to the economy.

A similar type of case can be made for School and Education systems around the globe where many Savage Inequalities still exist and have decision makers in positions of power,  who  never seem capable of thinking “outside the box” and who have no concept of the Matthew Effect.

I am smoking a spliff at the moment. It is an offense here but most police don’t care. But if prosecuted I can be barred from traveling to the USA, where I travel to (pre-Covid), because I have a capitalist business interest in a Californian cannabis farm!  Traditional thinking has not worked. New ideas are not radical, they are just different, like imagining an ocean between the waves.

[jakelafort]

I guess Sagan wrote when he was high. Damn sure aint hurting your scribbles Reg.

Quite informative.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Thanks Jake, I enjoy the trains of thought I end up on. Maybe not “freethinking” but I never know the destination when I board the train 🙂

Can’t stop the traffic in my mind.

[jakelafort]

Yeah Reg, digression is the oxygen of intelligence.

Is it treason to derail flights of fancy, flights of reason…which makes me wonder whether the neural tracking is hampered or restricted by the untimely imposition of indoctrination? That is a rhetorical question.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

What is the point of rhetorical questions?

[jakelafort]

disguised assertions…

[Unseen]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What is the point of rhetorical questions?

A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying the speaker’s or author’s opinion on a topic. (Wikipedia)

[Unseen]

You can stop watching after the old Saturday Night Live Weekend Update segments if you’re interested in laughing.

[Unseen]

We seem to be taking a rather broad definition of “ethnic” in our discussion, so more Norm MacDonald, this time being mean to people who, in his judgment, don’t live up the conventional standards of beauty or handsomeness:

[jakelafort]

Unseen, that guy aint so funny. It is the kind of schtick any half-wit can do.

[Unseen]

jakelafort wrote:

Unseen, that guy aint so funny. It is the kind of schtick any half-wit can do.

A “schtick” implies he just does it as an act (that’s pretty much what a schtick is, isn’t it?). Norm is like that all the time, apparently. And he’s a god among comedians. A comedian’s comedian, you might say. Ethnic jokes are, generally, a schtick, aren’t they?

 

[jakelafort]

Schtick?

Hmm…never really considered the connotations. In a sense we are all actors on a stage with schtick. If it comes naturally is it deschticked? Yeah i suppose schtick does indicate some deviation from one’s normal persona.

In any event i don’t find him clever. He is the guy down the street that is sort of amusing for ten minutes. And think about it. How tough would it be to listen to Norm for an hour and then write the jokes for him? It isn’t clever. But hey that is just my impression.

[Davis]

Norm MacDonald has had some moments. But his comedy just doesn’t reach the level that someone like say, George Carlin does. The “everything is stupid” and “stuff sucks” thing can only work so long. He certainly was the best news anchor on SNL. Even amongst Canadians he isn’t particularly celebrated…nothing like Jim Carey, Mike Myers, Leslie Nielson or Dan Akroyd. In the last decade in fact, the best new comedians have been making films, including off the wall humour (Seth Rogan’s films), social comedy (The Big Sick) or social commentary on TV (Chewing Gum, Ramy).

[Author]

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