The Humor That Offends

We have all known people who didn’t seem able to pass up a bad joke or a cutting comment, no matter who was hurt. “Anything for a laugh,” as the saying says it — but often a laugh at a very high price. “The unpolite, impulsive man,” said Samuel Smiles, “will sometimes rather lose his friend that his joke… Spite and ill-nature and bad humor are among the most expensive luxuries of life.” The uses and abuses of humor are many: good and bad humor, kind and unkind humor, clean and unclean humor. “No mind is thoroughly well organized,” said Samuel Coleridge, “that is deficient in a sense of humour.” “The best humor,” as Thackeray observed, “is that which contains most humanity, that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness.” “The essence of humour,” Carlyle added, “is sensibility; warm tender fellow-feeling.” If it is clean and kindly, humor relieves and lubricates life and draws people closer and warms the heart. The sincere smile and gentle laughter are a blessing — but not giddy, light-minded laughter; not loud, harsh laughter; not laughter that is unkind, crude and cruel; not laughter that has evil overtones. There is a merciless kind of humor. And there is humor that is altogether evil in essence, false humor founded on immoral suggestiveness, on embarrassment; humor that would offend the mind of a clean man, supposed to be funny, but basically filthy. Kindly humor and gentle laughter do much to relieve the tensions of life, but there is no proper place for humor at the expense of hurt hearts; or humor from debased minds and morals. He who would “rather lose his friend that his joke,” as Samuel Smiles said, “may surely be pronounced a very foolish person” — for no man can afford the humor that offends.