It all started with a fairly innocent holiday discussion. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=52747. Somewhere along the line it turned into a soap box for a lesson in religious tolerance wherein a jew (or a couple of jews, perhaps), a secular humanist (myself), and a couple of other folks were RAILED against by a self righteous buddhist (love that irony already, doncha?) for a statement that “reeks of bigotry”.
I was ready to let the whoe thing go until, as a parting shot, said buddhist proclaimed:
And thats where I draw the line.
Chas, don’t ever presume to explain to me what I need a lesson in, you self-righteous prick. People like you do so much harm the forwarding or tolerance because you don’t tolerate PEOPLE. or even live in the practical where like it or not, people are different, they look different, they wear different funny sacremental headgear, they speak different funny sounding languages, and they love differnet funny gods. Humour isn’t (always) some insidious, socially acceptable tool for opression and “ignorance” and “biggotry”.
Sometimes, as your hero Mr. Twain would probably explain to you, humour is a way to make us all step back and realize that, yes we have differences and yes, some of those differences are fucking hysterical. I’m so insulted by your laughably solemn intonations and air of importance that I’m tempted to give you a little autobiography just to show you how innane you accusations are, but ultimately who I am or what I have lived doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we look around us, and embrace and celebrate diversity, and stop being so quick to be the boy who cried “biggot”. It just makes you look silly when you so lightly throw such heavy words and misdirect your venom, you lose sight of the real evil out there, the real ignorance, and you spend all of your time playing “miss manners” and slapping wrists over jokes, plain and simple, j-o-k-e-s.
Life is celebration, celebrations are full of laughter. Do i tell “nigger” jokes (a word you introduced into this discussion, not me)? no. Do i think that we as ethnic and religious groups have funny peculiarities? youbetcha!!! Do i think less of them for those peculiarities? nope. When we laugh together at ourselves and the ones we love, we are actually celebrating the fact that we have more in common that we have dividing us. It startles me that I find myself explaining this to a “buddhist”. But oh well.
Levity, my friend, paint with many colors, not just in black and white. And don’t ever presume to speak to me that way again.
