Geez, Aries, way to go getting all reasonable and stuff. :rolleyes:
Think before you post? Who’da thunk it?
You would think it would be an easy concept but apparently not…as I think **Uncle Beer ** is pointing out.
Life may be short buttonjockey308 but puerile hypocrisy is apparently going to last until the end of time. All the pleas I have seen here to “lighten up” are essentially demanding some kind of moral or esthetic dispensation to beat the on the on the poor white underclass, or so called “white trash”, like a bass drum in order to mock and denigrate them for being poor and uneducated and well, just plain “trash”, because God knows it’s just too damn much fun, and who is anyone to deny you your precious bread and circus.
Just so I can “lighten up” please explain to me the precise moral and esthetic distinction between mocking, humiliating and denigrating the poor white underclass as “white trash” and mocking and denigrating blacks, or gays with “nigger” and “fag” jokes, because somehow the moral distinction that is so clear to you, is escaping me.
I guess what I’m wondering about this thread is how IDBB would react if we started a full out six page rage fest making fun of Goths. I mean, I could do three pages myself.
There isn’t much, when you really think about it.
But that in itself brings up an interesting question-- If you saw two gay guys, or two black guys, standing together sharing a joke that denegrated themselves, in one way or the other, would you feel the need to go up to them tell them how wrong, both morally and ethically, they were for saying those things?
Why or why not?
If not, like I suspect, why do you feel the need to do it here?
I personally see it as having fun with sub cultures which makes it different from bigotry. I see sub-cultures as people making choices. White trash are people who choose to wear mullets, spend more on cars than houses and so forth. Making fun of them is not bigotry against white people. In the same vein, making jokes about Players’s (Black dudes who wear shorts around their knees, gaudy jewelry and expensive shoes) isn’t something I have a problem with. They made a choice to live that way and if I find it amusing I’ll make fun of it, It’s far different than making nigger jokes. Making a joke about queens(flamboyantly, over the top gay dudes) isn’t the same as making jokes about fags because they choose to live in a way that strikes me strangely. Frat Boys, Princesses, Ivory Tower academics, Dance Hoochies, granola-heads computer geeks goths etc. Are all valid targets because it they are elements of subculture, and every sub-culture has a lot of bullshit and absurdnesses that are part of it. And if pc makes it so we have to pretend those absurdities don’t exist, then count me out babe.
The most important thing is whether it’s meant in good spirit or malicious, and it’s damn clear to anybody(at least anybody who doesn’t have to look throught their abdominal wall) that this thread was meant in good spirit.
Damn you wolfman!!
I was on a slow build to essentially what you said. You ruined it for me!
Bitch.
However, I might have handled this line a bit differently…
Or stereotypes… whether or not they’re true.
Come on, fall into my trap!! You know you see it.
She beat you to it… http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=204324
Wonder if this one will end up in the Pit too? 
I agree totally, Zoe. My problem is with how some posters choose to “voice” their offense. They tend to climb way up on their high horses and demand that the offender cease giving their opinions because they personally are offended. How is that giving them (the offendor) the right to express those opinions? I’m not talking about outright bigotry, (I’d rather not open that can of worms, even though it does apply) I’m talking about redneck jokes and the like. Sure, you can tell them their opinions are wrong, that’s your right, but telling them not to express them period is another.
Why does your right not to hear something you consider offensive (that many others don’t) that you don’t even have to read trump my right to say it? This is why I get so pissed at the Offenderati. It’s also why I had to comment on Diane’s post. She straight out said, it’s okay to laugh at people, just not to post it. She’ll be the first to march in on the high horse, but admits to doing the same thing herself. And CnoteChris, I “let her off the hook” as you put it because experience has taught me it’s pretty much pointless arguing with her. She holds way too high an opinion of herself and will simply throw out personal insults galore and stomp off to talk shit with other posters off board. I don’t know why I bothered saying anything in the first place.
I agree with wolfman to an extent. I wouldn’t put white trash jokes in with “n” (I won’t type that word) jokes because of the choice involved. The white trash person chose to don the wifebeater and grow the mullet. The black person didn’t choose to be black. The yuppie chose to buy the beamer. The gay person didn’t choose to be gay. You see what I’m getting at?
In a perfect Utopian society, no one would make fun of anyone else and life would be sweet, kind and boring as all hell. If telling redneck, yuppie, white trash, playa and the like jokes were considered hate speech, 90% of comedians would be out of work. Being able to laugh at oneself (and yes, I get California, vegan, politician jokes all the damn time) is an admirable and necessary trait to have. Life can be a pretty dismal place without it.
So the cohort of what we consider to be “white trash” is * choosing* to be poor and uneducated, which leads to all those delightful white trash “sub-culture” antics. Mmmm… Yeah
No, it’s bigotry and against poor and uneducated people who happen to be white, and whom we feel we can characterize as “trash” and get away with it.
So… some niggers and some fags can be valid objects of scorn they are sufficiently and amusingly niggery and faggy enough in their chosen sub-cultural behaviors.
Somehow I don’t think making fag and nigger jokes (assuming sufficiently faggy and niggery behavior by your criteria, to move them into the “sub-cultural choices” category) would be taken by blacks and gays as “being meant in good spirit” regardless of how fancy the “sub-cultural choices” “mean in good spirit” tarantella you dance around it woud be.
By the way ‘absurdnesses’ is a white-trash version of ‘absurdities’ 
Jack on Will and Grace is an example of the ‘queen’ type of behavior and most of the damn show is based on the humor about it. Most of the gay people I know find it fairly funny. Chris Rock makes fun of a black sub-culture and goes so far as to call the group Niggers(which is something I don’t do). So some blacks and gays understand exactly what I’m talking about.
I’d quote your whole post lezlers, as singling out one line wouldn’t do it justice-- the whole thing was dead on, but let me just say… you have some fans here.
Good job. Good post.
Astro
You’re obviously confusing subculture with race and/or economic standing.
I know plenty of white, poor, undereducated people who wouldn’t fit into the white trash category. It’s not just race and annual income that place someone into the catagory.
Wow, thanks CnoteChris! That’s so nice to hear, I often feel very much alone in my opinions here.
[sub]blushing, shuffling feet[/sub]
Am I on everyone’s ignore list?
Sheesh!
Doh!
Thanks lezlers.
Like wolfman said, the most important thing is whether it’s meant in good spirit or malicious, but the most important way to determine whether it’s meant in good spirit or malicious is to confine such joking to close friends who know what is meant. Make the wrong joke in front of the wrong person, and you offend someone (otherwise known as hurting feelings), give someone an inaccuarate picture of you, or risk having a clueless bigot jump in with mouth running.
By your criteria, they do not fit into the category. Others may place them in there–others may pounce on any little thing, like a wolf t-shirt or a mullet or an accent, in order to shuffle them into the category-- so the fact that the stereotype is given credence may hurt them.
Closed at request of the OP.