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Article: The prejudice against laughter Anthony Daniels discovers why it is acceptable to find ethnic jokes funny after all
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- October 6, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2002 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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The Mirth of Nations
by Christie Davies
Transaction, pounds 35.95, 360 pp
pounds 35.95 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222
THOUGH I resist political correctness as strongly as I can, I have
imbibed enough of it to feel distinctly uneasy whenever a joke about
a national or ethnic group is told. It is not that I fail to find
such jokes funny: on the contrary, I often find them very funny, but
that is precisely the source of my unease. Am I, unknown to myself,
harbouring some kind of deep national or ethnic prejudice that one
day, in the right circumstances, might cause me to participate in a
pogrom? This is what the politically correct who want us to exercise
self-censorship would have us believe.