Affection is necessary? Wow. That puts all the Hitler jokes on this board in a whole new light.
It’s not necessary, but it can make a difference when you are being targeted. If the target is some random person or thing, affection may or may not be necessary. But if someone is making a joke about me it makes a difference. My best friend or brother can make fun of me and it can be funny, but if a guy I met in a bar makes fun of me after 5 minutes it’s more likely to be rude.
Just like John Waters or Kathy Griffin can and do make gay jokes, but it’s known that it’s all in fun. But if Mike Huckabee made the exact same joke that one of them made, it would be a lot different, because we know he’s against gay rights.
There are different kinds of craziness, I guess. Some of them cause you to act in ways that are OK for you, but that other people don’t understand. Others cause you to systematically undermine your own aspirations. I have the latter. From my point of view, illness is the only reasonable way to conceptualize what I’ve got.
It’s interesting that we have opposite views on whether our respective conditions should be considered illness, but reach the same conclusion about the use of terms like crazy and lunatic.
On preview: for those who are imagining a Nazi telling Jew jokes, could you imagine listening to that Nazi telling any kind of joke and not feeling uncomfortable about it? In other words, how much is it the content of the joke, and how much is it just that you don’t like to think of an evil Nazi being happy about anything at all? Could you enjoy listening to a comedian tell totally innocuous jokes if you knew that he had formerly been a guard at Dachau?
Well the image of an actual Nazi from WWII telling Jewish jokes today is an absurd image, partly since he’d be at least 90 something, it’s hard to imagine my real world reaction to it. I believe Siam Sam was making a point with hyperbole. But for a more real world example like my other example of Mike Huckabee telling gay jokes, it would be about the content of the joke, but also what I know about his feelings towards gay people. I could imagine him saying jokes about other topics that could maybe make me laugh. It’s not like the idea of him being happy or laughing fills me with disgust.
Indeed they are just words. People can string words together for a variety of reasons, including making a joke or trying to cause hurt feelings. But how you deal with those words is up to you. You can give words as much or as little power inside your mind as you like, you have the power.
Just because I say you’re <insert insult here> doesn’t mean you are. And just because I say the sky is green or I have a million dollars doesn’t make it true. You have to decide for yourself. In the words of The Dude, “That’s just, like, your opinion man.”
Many times in life you are the only one who can stick up for you. And people often say hurtful things because they themselves are hurting and they lash out because of it. People who said deeply hurtful things in the past probably don’t even remember what they said. Life goes on, no use dwelling.
The problem with most of the ‘offensive’ words in the OP is that they’re not used to describe a mental illness, they’re used to describe someone with wild, self-destructive, or otherwise unpleasant behavior. The person may or may not actually have a mental illness, and it’s not the illness that’s actually being discussed.
I think the tendency to say ‘don’t call them crazy, say it’s mental illness’ does a great disservice to people with actual mental illness. Not everyone with a diagnosed mental illness engages in bad behavior towards other people, but using ‘mental illness’ as the label for crazy behavior implies that they do.
You know what pisses me off about this whole over-sensitivity thing? You never see anyone putting up a statue for the guy who killed Hitler!Talk about historical oversight!
The jokes about Polish being dumb is the one that offends me the most and I am italian. I have to wonder where this came from. My guess is that it probably started with unsophisticated working class poles moving into cities when they migrated here. Similar to southerners migrating north.
Sure, but the problem is, a lot of jokes aren’t made in good humor. A lot of jokes - particularly about minority or disenfranchised groups - are made to be deliberately hurtful. And it’s not always easy to tell the difference between the two. Sure, when it’s the friend I’ve had since the second grade making gay jokes at me, I know he’s just busting my balls, and doesn’t mean anything by it. When it’s my new manager at work, who I’ve only known for a couple weeks? Yeah, maybe it’s all in good fun. Or maybe this guy is going to start trying to run me out of my job if he finds out I’m queer. For my own self-protection, I can’t let that slide.
Probably. In North America, around the turn of the last century, the target of choice for the “this nationality is dumb” joke used to be - the Swedes. Probably for the same reason - immigration from the working class.
The “dumb Swede” theme was very popular, but has since died out so completely that it is an oddity when one comes across a reference to it (for example, in one of Robert Service’s poems about the Klondike gold rush).
And Belsen was a gas.
Puns. Everybody finds puns funny, right?
What?
nm.
But is it okay to convert to Judaism for the jokes?
This is the correct answer right here. You’re commiserating with humor, than you’re okay. You’re making fun of someone, belittling or bullying or oppressing them? Get the hell out.
I’m pretty sure the Irish got that treatment too in Boston.
Gotcha. No more making fun of, belittling, bullying, or opppressing Hitler for me.
Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy. After all, he did kill Hitler.
Touche, but there’s a difference between a joke about a specific person and a joke about unknown persons (where celebrities are a free for all). There’s also a difference between a joke and defamation.
I don’t tell people their children are ugly, even if they are, but if someone said that about my child I’d probably be okay with it.
Only if you’re a dentist.