Racist Comedy?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>  > >"Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even
>>  >though the thing one is fighting is abominable." - Foucault
>>
>>  Foucault's counsel doesn't make sense, in that no one has ever said
>>  that "one has to be *sad* in order to be militant."  I'd think that
>>  one has to be *angry* against injustice, exploitation, or oppression
>>  (of at least some kind, even if s/he has yet to see the ensemble of
>>  social relations that creates & recreates it) in order to get
>>  involved in political actions.  Overwhelming sadness depresses you,
>>  making you inclined to turn inward & withdraw from the world,
>>  sometimes to the point of paralysis.  In contrast, anger -- if you
>>  are not consumed by it -- motivates you to do something about the
>>  object of your anger (e.g., racism).  The difference is rooted in
>>  biology: "when you get angry, your heart rate and blood pressure go
>>  up, as do the levels of your energy hormones, adrenaline, and
>>  noradrenaline.... Anger is a natural, adaptive response to threats;
>>  it inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and behaviors,
>which
>>  allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we are attacked" (at
>>  <http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/anger.html>).  The point is to control
>>  anger & use it productively.
>>
>>  Yoshie
>========
>Sadness is more intricate than you suppose in the above, but I'm not
>sure e-lists are good place to grapple with the issue.
>
>Ian

Does it make you sad or angry or both to see that freedom of speech 
in the USA is quite often reduced to a matter of freedom to use 
ethnic & racial slurs, to tell ethnic & racial jokes, etc.?  Well, if 
you don't like that, "you have no sense of humor."

Yoshie