Quick Thoughts Between Final Assignments

I'm reading a lot about jokes right now. Many jokes, and especially the ones I'm researching, center on unsavory topics. Racist, sexist, sexual, offensive jokes.

I wonder if jokes, like The Aristocrats and dead baby jokes, that seem to aim to be as horrible as possible, are an attempt to appear bullet proof. "No. Not that. Not even that will bother me." If I laugh at it, it can't hurt me.

When people can't take a joke, they are accused of having no sense of humor, ridiculed even. The joke teller hasn't hurt them. They are allowing themselves to be hurt by not laughing. But, just yesterday I read that although it is human to have a sense of humor, it is also human to be offended (Paul Lewis in A Decade of Dark Humor).

Life is hard. It is probably good that we can laugh most things off. But we aren't bulletproof. A few barbs sting. (I've been finding my own amidst the many I've been reading.) I say, let them. It is human to be vulnerable.