ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

[T]he thing about political correctness is that it starts as a good idea and then gets taken ad absurdum. And one of the reasons it gets taken ad absurdum is that a lot of the politically correct people have no sense of humor.

Because they're scolds?

Because they have no sense of proportion, and a sense of humor is actually a sense of proportion. It's the sense of knowing what's important. In my stage show I tell jokes that make the audience roar with laughter, jokes about the Australians or the French or the Canadians or the Germans or the Italians. I make all these jokes and everybody laughs -- and we don't hate those groups of people, do we? Take this joke: "A guy walks into a bar and says to the barman, 'You hear the latest Irish joke?' The barman says, 'I should warn you, I'm Irish.' So the guy says, 'All right then, I'll tell it slowly.'" That's funny! But if you tell that joke and replace "Irish" with "barman who isn't very intelligent" it isn't funny at all. Why should we sacrifice laughter to the cause of politically correctness if that laughter isn't rooted in nastiness? This actually reminds me of an idea I had: Every year at the U.N. they should vote one particular nation to be the butt of the joke.

"This year, all cultural jokes will henceforth be made at the expense of the Danes."

That's right. They would just have to accept that they're the butt of the joke for a year. People find it hard to believe this, but unless we're talking about puns and wordplay, all humor is essentially critical. So to eliminate jokes that are at the expense of other people is to eliminate most jokes. If you laugh at someone, it's because his behavior is inappropriate. That's why you can't really be funny about Jesus Christ or St. Francis of Assisi, because everything they do is pretty appropriate.

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