Panel: What defines the line between funny and offensive?

Pieter Tolsma, Keo Frazier, Tom Rockman and George K. Gramer, Jr. weigh in on this week’s question.

Pieter Tolsma

What defines the line between funny and offensive? One of the hardest moments for me in my early 20’s was finding out with a dear friend that he tested positive for HIV. My friend and I fell apart, but after a few hours my boyfriend at the time asked my friend if he was ready to try and joke about it. He quickly produced HIV related jokes that belittled the disease and poked jokes at life’s challenges. It brought both of us to tears of a different sort.

I have never heard a trans joke that I thought was particularly funny. Honestly, I can’t say with any degree of certainly I have actually ever heard a joke about trans identities or issues whereas I have heard and told more gay jokes than I could possibly ever recall. I am not trans-identified, but I bet this population has some great humor to share with the world.

It is really tough to always maintain the line between funny and distasteful and regrettably, jokes cross over and become offensive from time to time. Jokes let us poke at ourselves and invite others who are different to experience a perspective on our personal worlds. Some of these jokes might cross the line but the levity is necessary and helps us call out our problems out of the dark corners of our lives to be cut down to size. Humor helps us live life more fully.

Pieter Tolsma is program coordinator of Denver PIQUE, a sexual health and social support program for gay/bi men in Denver.

George K. Gramer, Jr.

A rabbi, an imam, and a bear walk into a bar…

learly, someone is offended. I hate that. Why be offended by anything? I honestly believe that most liberals have very thin skin. Yes, I said that, most liberals have very thin skin and absolutely no sense of humor when it comes to jokes about their views. How many jokes do you hear about President Obama (who deserves more jokes than any other president since Jimmy Carter)?

I think we can all agree that “the gay F word” is not appropriate any time in a comedy routine. There are probably other words that have no place in humor, but having no sense of humor myself, I do not know what those words are.

Some things that LGBT people find humorous have no humor for me. Drag (which is a form of humor) does not interest nor entertain me in the least. Strippers can provide humor, but we should not laugh at their shortcomings. Thankfully, we have some great comedy brothers and sisters. Ellen Degeneres, Kate Clinton, and local favorite Chuck Roy all deserve credit for being out and funny without smashing our noses in LGBT sexuality. I think all LGBT folks usually need to take a chill pill before forming views on anything – comedy included.

Iowa native George Gramer, Jr. is the president of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans.

Keo Frazier

What defines the line between funny and offensive? Funny is causing laughter or amusement. Offensive is causing someone to feel hurt or angry. In human interaction we tend to blur the line the dictionary defines in our tastes, humor and ability to push the politically-correct envelope. Funny can be offensive and sarcasm can be funny. Knowing the line to draw and when, is mastered by understanding your audience.

Some audiences can take a joke that pokes at the truth in a stereotype or label, while other audiences get offended at the mention of the mere word ‘label’. Given the definitions of funny and offensive it is important to begin a joke by asking yourself if you are okay with hurting someone for a little gut wrenching smile. If you decide you’re okay with a little poke for a bellow, share away.

If you’re a sensitive type and don’t ever want to push the envelope, stick to the jokes that simply create happy smiles instead of gut wrenching laughter.

The one joke I know is a cocktail party favorite. It can be construed as funny, offensive or both. Why don’t you decide…

Two lesbian frogs are sitting on a lillypad, one turns to the other and says, “tastes like chicken.”

Funny or offensive?

Keo Frazier is a local entrepreneurial and business leader, and the fearless founder of KEOS Marketing Group

Tom Rockman

What’s funny is inherently harmless and humorous, and what’s offensive is blatantly derogatory and repugnant. According to Dan Avery of Queerty.com, the following comics have been inducted into the Homophobic Stand-Up Hall of Fame: Adam Carolla, Tracy Morgan, 1980’s Eddie Murphy, Gallagher, and Andrew Dice Clay. Two of these nutcases have publicly stated that, if they found their son or daughter in bed with a same-sex partner, they would stab them to death.

I would like to add Sam Kinison, a former Pentecostal preacher, to this list. His famous mantra was “It’s either cock or the cross.” The common denominator with these comics is that they purposefully conjure up hateful and malicious caricatures, and feed into and exploit class stereotypes — whether they be gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans*, black, white, Latino, Muslim, etc. — and they assign negative and mostly inaccurate attributes and blanket statements to each of these groups.

Since Billy Crystal (1970’s “Soap”), Robin Williams (“The Bird Cage”), and Hal Sparks (“Queer as Folk”) have played gay characters in their careers, these comedians have put forth more innocuous gay-friendly material in their standup routines. That is, they may poke fun at us, but their intention is not to harm, but to enlighten and elevate their audience with their wit and banter. For example, Denver trans* comedian Jordan Wieleba uses the art of self-deprecation and understatement to elicit laughs with her Comedy Works audience while Chuck Roy wryly cracks gay homeless twink jokes and shocks his audience halfway into his set with “Oh, yeah, I’m a gay bear!”

In 2008, “guy-next-door” gay comic Jason Dudey and lesbian comic Erin Foley teamed up to create the “gay, gay-friendly-who-cares-who-you-are-or-who’s-in-your-bed” COME OUT LAUGHING comedy tour — based at the Laugh Factory in Long Beach, California — brings straight and gay comics together to break barriers, to combat prejudice, and simply to laugh out loud and have one hoot-and-hollering good time.

Tom Rockman Jr. is a card-carrying Yooper, former flyboy, queer journalist, DragNation fanatic, comedy/horror/sci-fi addict, aspiring policy wiz and online provocateur.