Dr. Blank
Internet and
Humor
I
know that the way I was raised would be considered as a mix of old-fashioned
and a little unconventional; I was raised to hope for the best but expect the
worse, I was not allowed to listen to any popular music until I was a teenager,
and one of the biggest things that I was taught was respect the dead and to not
make a tragedy into something funny. I guess that is one reason that I have
problems with humor about death and how quickly jokes begin to pop up after a
celebrity dies. I can remember when Amy Winehouse died and a joke began to
quickly circulate because of her trouble with drugs and alcohol. "What was
Amy Winehouse's biggest hit? Her last one." I can also remember when
Michael Jackson died and jokes began to circulate about his music, his legal
history, his criminal trial, his medical history, his children, and his life in
general. "Since Michael Jackson is 99% plastic, they are going to melt him
down and turn him into Lego blocks so that little kids can play with him for a
change." "On the bright side, Michael Jackson had so much plastic
surgery, he can be recycled!" "Michael Jackson’s death is only a PR
stunt. At the funeral he will jump out of the coffin and sing Thriller."
I also remembered some jokes like the one
below.
Another joke about Michael Jackson
also included the death of Farrah Fawcett. "We lost two legends a few days
ago. One was one every young man wanted to sleep with. The other wanted to
sleep with every young boy!"
Celebrities
are not perfect by any means and mass media does make it easy to point out and
joke about their flaws, especially after they are dead. But there are also many
jokes about famous people that are still alive. There are many Bill Clinton jokes
that I could use but the one that I remember the most is this next paragraph.
"A
man died and found himself in Heaven and sees that it's full of clocks and God
was standing next to the man. The dead man asked about the clocks and God replied
that everyone in the world had a clock, every time you told a lie your clock
advanced a second. The man saw a clock that was hardly moving and when he
remarked about it, he was told that it was Mother Teresa's because she rarely
told a lie. The man saw another clock that moved slowly but just a little
faster than Mother Teresa's and was told that it was Abraham Lincoln's clock
because he did lie but not very often. The man then asked where Bill Clinton's
clock was. God replied "It's in the kitchen, we're using it as a ceiling
fan."
The
reason that I keep talking about these celebrity jokes is because the internet
and mass media has made it very easy for jokes to spread. Many people have at
least one gadget on their person that has access to the internet and so news,
rumors, and jokes can be spread rather quickly. The internet and mass media is
a double-edged sword: it can be a great way to keep in contact with other
people and to spread news around quickly but it can also be used to bully
people or to poke fun at others at their own expense. It is easy to target
celebrities because they are more well-known and they also have what many
desire: fame and fortune. But does that really give anyone the right to make
fun of them because of their decisions? Does anyone have the right to poke fun
at celebrities when something tragic happens to them or if the celebrities
break the law? Or if celebrities are caught being human, such as having a
breakdown or struggling with addiction? Or do people just enjoy schadenfreude,
the feeling of joy and/or pleasure when one sees another fail or suffering
misfortune, that much?
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