Humour BondBlokes View

Picking up, and running with BondWoman's theme "Blogging and Humour"; I don't think that it is quite so cut and dried. It really depends on which definition of humour we are going to use; as we know humour can cover a very wide range of topics:-

Satire

Political Humour

Crazy humour (i.e. The Goons)

Childish humour

Black humour

to name but a few. BondWoman says that "the key aspect of much humour is its closeness to embarassment" which is very true, but I think it goes beyond that; humour used in specific ways can also be thought provoking, for example Mark Fiore's cartoons.

The Danish Cartoons were dreadfully inept both in their artfulness and their publication; but the protests are not due to the hurt caused, but more about the fact that they are depictions of Mohammed who is supposed never to be depicted. The interesting thing here is that faced with a similar situation, say The Life of Brian for instance, the majority of Christians would shrug it of and ignore it; yes, I know that there have been recent Christian protests about the Jerry Springer thing, but that is quite unusual, and the protesters are not mainstream Christians but more fundamentalist. I also agree, to an extent, that as bloggers we have to be careful about causing hurt to those more sensitive souls who put themselves in the limelight, but we have to balance this with freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This is a very fine line that we are walking, and if it is any further eroded then it is going to get even finer, making it that much more difficult for those of us who legitimately want to protest, or draw attention to injustice, to have our say.

Apologies to BondWoman for muscling in on her thoughts...