I've written posts before about the flexible nature of sensitivity.
Like how it's somehow okay to have a toy version of the Titanic even though, when it happened, it was a national tragedy.
I read an article when the toy came out asking how people would feel if a hundred years from now there was a twin towers toy.
People were outraged by the idea. To think we could ever be that insensitive.
But the thing is...
We already are.
To prove this, I tried a little experiment of my own.
I told a joke about Abraham Lincoln's assassination. People laughed.
I told the same joke, but replaced Abraham Lincoln with John F. Kennedy. One person giggled. Most felt uncomfortable.
What's the difference?
Time.
But is it any more insensitive to laugh at one joke as opposed to the other?
It's not like anybody I told the joke to personally knew J.F.K.
When American Horror story did a school-shooting themed episode, some people--who were of the Columbine generation--felt that it crossed a line.
But how did it cross a line anymore than the Black Dahlia episode?
A friend of mine who happens to be a history major says that nothing is history until everyone who has experienced it has died so it be viewed in an objective way, but does that mean we don't have to be sensitive to history once there's nobody left who lived through it?
My argument is the same as it was when I wrote about the Titanic toy--
There shouldn't be an expiration date on sensitivity.
If it's in poor taste to make fun of a President being shot, then it should be in poor taste no matter which President you're joking about.
But if you want to hear a good Taft joke...
Like how it's somehow okay to have a toy version of the Titanic even though, when it happened, it was a national tragedy.
I read an article when the toy came out asking how people would feel if a hundred years from now there was a twin towers toy.
People were outraged by the idea. To think we could ever be that insensitive.
But the thing is...
We already are.
To prove this, I tried a little experiment of my own.
I told a joke about Abraham Lincoln's assassination. People laughed.
I told the same joke, but replaced Abraham Lincoln with John F. Kennedy. One person giggled. Most felt uncomfortable.
What's the difference?
Time.
But is it any more insensitive to laugh at one joke as opposed to the other?
It's not like anybody I told the joke to personally knew J.F.K.
When American Horror story did a school-shooting themed episode, some people--who were of the Columbine generation--felt that it crossed a line.
But how did it cross a line anymore than the Black Dahlia episode?
A friend of mine who happens to be a history major says that nothing is history until everyone who has experienced it has died so it be viewed in an objective way, but does that mean we don't have to be sensitive to history once there's nobody left who lived through it?
My argument is the same as it was when I wrote about the Titanic toy--
There shouldn't be an expiration date on sensitivity.
If it's in poor taste to make fun of a President being shot, then it should be in poor taste no matter which President you're joking about.
But if you want to hear a good Taft joke...
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