The bitter life of the joke

There is an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and an Italian… Alt, this joke doesn’t have to be told. Of course. Since Italian usually makes others look stupid, everyone would be offended, it’s not right, it’s not elegant, it’s not correct. And let’s not talk about other and more delicate susceptibilities, sexual tastes, skin color, physical characteristics. In the age of the Great Lament, topics are multiplying that it is better not to touch except with all the cautions of the humorously correct. The indignant specials are always there ready, with their little finger raised, to stigmatize and protest and finally to pillory anyone who says anything that may be even remotely offensive to anyone else. An exaggerated sensitivity that becomes exasperating when it comes to laughter: from “high” humor to heavy comedy, making people laugh is like dancing on the eggs of contemporary susceptibility. Let’s not talk about the more salacious and popular humor, plebeian and fescennino, in short, the joke, which also has its own glorious tradition. As children but already firmly perfidious, and above all insensitive to the sensitivities of others, we all had fun with the Russian dissident Andrei Koimasky or the Japanese pilot Chimafuso Lamoto. And so on with jokes and bad jokes about differently tall or variously colored (tanned, Berlusconi would have said) which today would cause generalized irritation, outcry, exposed to the judiciary, impeccably conformist editorials. Already in 2015, and right on the Foglio, Jerry Seinfeld of the sit-com of the same name lamented how political correctness was destroying the best of American humor. And punctually a few weeks ago the news arrived that Twitch, the platform owned by Amazon, censored his monologues for “transphobia”, in short, he also applied the cancel culture to the jokes. Will laughter bury you, as they said when satire was still thought to change the world? Not at all: now it’s the world that buries the laughter.