Our everyday sense of humour

I love comedy and I love to laugh. How about you?

I recent weeks, I’ve watched a number of comedy programs on our national CBC network. One was the very last episode of “Royal Canadian Air Farce”-a long running comedic treatment of current news and Canadian culture. As they have posted on the website, “After 35 years of laughter, we hope you enjoyed the flight.” On another program, there was a comedian doing a monologue in Winnipeg before a packed house. And then, there was a program with a series of “ethnic” comedians doing routines on their own ethnic groups.

I’m curbing my TV time but was particularly curious about these programs. One of them caused me such discomfort that I turned it off. There are different types of comedy and they hold appeal “to each his own” sense of humour.

The one I turned off was at a place where the Canadian comedian was making fun of an American political figure. The two countries are so close in so many ways but I found the “humour” to have crossed a line. The comments were disrespectful of the person and I further questioned what entitlement a comedian has at making people laugh at the expense of a person from another country.

This is not new. I can think of a number of routines where comedians have featured characters from other cultures and countries. I wonder if I am being over sensitive. Knowing that, in the one program, the ethnic comedians were telling stories about their “own people” was not offensive. It seems that they have some entitlement. When is it that comedy has crossed a line?

I could leave that question aimed at the case of professional comedians playing the audiences but is not also a question about how we exercise our sense of humour everyday?