How Far Can Humor Go?

I'm writing this post after hearing the sensational news about Frankie Boyle's joke, talking about Katie Price and her son Harvey. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, this video will show you what all the fuzz is about.

If you wanna shoot without hurting anyone, don't aim at anyone.

I'm quite tolerant to most kinds of humour. I don't mind people making fun of groups of people, of stereotypes,... I'm visually impaired, but I can still see the fun in jokes about the blind, although I find it even funnier when they strike back.

However, if Stevie Wonder would break his legs by tripping over a cable or something, and Frankie Boyle would make fun of that, I wouldn't be as amused. In other words, when you're talking about a certain group, you're not really attacking anyone imho, whereas by targetting just one person ore family, the joke hits much harder.

Be warned, know what to expect

On the other hand, when watching a Frankie Boyle show, you should know what to expect, and tere are always notices about harsh content. When you think you're going to offend someone, give them a warning, so they can choose wether they can handle it. For example, in a debate on free speech, one of the founders of wikipedia talks about the controversy around images depicting mohammed on wikipedia. In this part of the debate, they're talking about wether and how these images, such as the Danish cartoons should be shown. Although in this case, they're talking about knowledge, and I'm just talking about humour, I still think part of the point still applies. People should be able to make jokes or listen to jokes about religion and other sensible subjects, but nobody should be forced to. Here's a link to the relevant part of the debate.

I know that a joke filter is quite hard to implement in daily life, but some common sense both in the case of the one who tells the joke, and the audience listening to the joke may get you on the right tracks. When you're in the middle of a group of black people, that you've never met before, don't know their history, and how tolerant they are to racist jokes, you probably shouldn't tell any. Whereas when you've been friends with a black guy for years, he'll probably know that when you tell a racist joke, you don't mean what you're saying. On the other hand, if you to a show from a comic who is known for not sparing people with different skin colors, when you can't stand racism, just makes no sense, and complaining about the contents makes you look like an idiot to me.