America is becoming a society that is offended by everything. You can’t say anything about anyone without someone feeling offended. Comedy has always been society’s way of laughing at itself, but now it’s under attack. Thanks to social media someone always takes issue with a joke or light-hearted comment.
Sometimes people tell bad jokes with no intention to harm. Recently, Pete Davidson of SNL was vilified for making a bad joke about a congressman who lost an eye in war. Davidson said the guy looked like a porn star from the 1970s. It was a bad joke. It wasn’t done with malicious intent. People were mainly upset because he made a joke about a military veteran who sacrificed his eye in the fight for America’s freedom.
I understand people being a little upset but it was just a bad joke. Due to the uproar, SNL invited the congressman to come the show the following week to make jokes about Davidson. The congressman even wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post to make the point that it was nothing more than a bad joke. No harm, no foul.
This situation exposed a troubling road that America is going down. America is becoming angry and joyless. Are we going to become like the world portrayed in Fahrenheit 451? Will jokes be outlawed? Will laughter in public become vilified? We all know there are instances where people go too far with jokes or worse – they promote an “ism.” Those situations should be called out, but when society takes everything you say literally, you become nothing more than a robot – emotionless and inhuman.
Let’s use common sense before passing judgment and condemning on social media or anywhere else. You might find out it was nothing more than a harmless comment. And you might even laugh.