But He's Not A Redneck!

The question at hand here is are people outside of a group allowed to make fun of those inside the group. One such example of this is the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. The Blue Collar Comedy Tour, now one of the best rated comedy shows on Comedy Central consists of four men: Dan Whitney, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Ron White.

While two of the four men fit the role of "redneck comedian", two others, Dan Whitney, and Jeff Foxworthy come from different backgrounds. Foxworthy, although from the south, also grew up just outside of Atlanta Georgia, hardly "redneck country". Whitney grew up in south eastern Nebraska. (It should also be noted that Engvall comes from a town of 50,000+ people).

So how is it that they are able to make these jokes?

Personally, I feel that any comedian is able to make a joke about anyone or anything, regardless of their standing in that group/role. However, there is a point where jokes are funny, and jokes are offensive. I do not find the Blue Collar Comedy tour to be funny at all (with maybe one or two exceptions per comedian). But overall, it's not funny, so I will switch to a different example.

Jokes relating to the LGBTQ community. As a member of the community, often I am searching for new findings and media related to the community as a whole. Sometimes, I find what I am seeing incredibly funny: Will and Grace (although that's a different story and another blog post entirely), Ellen Degeneres, Kathy Griffin, Margaret Cho, etc. Yet, some of those people are not part of the community, in fact, only Ellen identifies as such (at least openly, I tend to have my doubts about some of the others). So why are they able to make jokes about the LGBTQ community without negative repercussions?

It seems to extend from the fact that they are all incredibly big allies to the community, however, there also seems to be a different idea behind this:

As Shana Naomi Krochmal writes in her article (entitled: "Did You Hear The One About A Straight Man Telling A Gay Joke? It Was Funny") in the August 2007 edition of Out magazine, "what does it matter who's telling the joke as long as being the punchline doesn't require letting haters off the hook?". It is very possible that those within the community telling jokes are incredibly homophobic (internalized homophobia). Those outside of any given community are able to joke around about different issues, but again, to a point.

After thinking about whether or not someone needs to be within a community to be able to joke about that community, we need to examine the jokes being told.

Are the facts in a joke true? Is that what makes them funny?

More often than not, I would say that the "facts" in a joke are perceived to be true, or perhaps at one time were true. Take Margaret Cho's joke about gay personal ads compared to straight personal ads. She notes a difference in the two, where one is looking for a companion (the straight ads) and the other (the gay ads) are looking just to get sex. This is one of the common misconceptions about the LGBTQ community, that they are more promiscuous than the straight community. But yet, it's funny. I almost peed my pants while watching that clip. I think what accounts for the difference is the fact that (generally)(and this is what makes the joke funny) straight people are much more conservative with theie sexuality than those in the LGBTQ community, so rather than bouncing around the issue, there is a direct path, and it is known what people want.

This goes for any kind of joke.