Humor doesn't have to be satirical. It could, you know, just be crude for the sake of being crude.

[Drunken Irishman]

Family Guy nowadays gets away with this. They're not satirizing society - they're just making crude jokes at the expense of groups - whether gays, Jews, Catholics, Irish or whatever.

It's not really satire. It's a joke. It might be a crude joke. It could be an offensive joke. But its only objective is to get a laugh. Some will laugh. Others won't. But that's comedy, I guess.

If you watch Family Guy, you'll quickly notice it pokes a lot of fun at the Jews - specifically one character, Mort Goldman, who's the town's pharmacist. They portray him as cheap, odd, sexually awkward, somewhat feminine and I don't get the sense they're doing it solely to show us the truth about how we look at Jews.

He's just there for a cheap joke - in more ways than one, since most jokes about him revolve around him being really, really cheap.

It's not original, right? I mean, that's what we've heard about the Jews since pretty much ever.

But it gets a laugh.

They also make fun of fat people and Christians and gays.

There is one episode where, for no real reason, they recite a song about AIDS.

)

Is that offensive humor? I'm sure it is to someone. It's not very smart or satirical. It's crude and cheap. But it got a lot of laughs I bet.

You can call it dumb ... but that's a type of humor. It works apparently since the show continues to be popular.

Sure, there are times where their humor will be smart and a play on today's society and practices. But often times it's just there to get a laugh at any expense.

There are also episodes where they portray Jesus as a player who preys on women pretending to be a virgin for the sole purpose of getting laid.

That angered some.

No one died, tho.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Satire is a very rare breed of humor and most humor is

just jokes.

Besides cartoons, look at any episode of Two Broke Girls, Modern Family, Mom or a whole bunch of others and it's a gaggle of cheap laughs. The laughs are usually pretty good ones with fairly strict boundaries set to avoid outright bigotry but cheap laughs nonetheless. Not good satie.

Are there people who complain even about this Vaudevillian stuff? Sure, but you can't please everyone all the time.

And you don't go in shooting people over it.

[Cha]

2. I don't like that "humor" as it's called. It's awful.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. South Park and Chappelle do it better

Dave Chappelle doing a skit on different groups in America and what kind of music makes them get their dance on is funny. Or as Clayton Bixby. Or the Do You Know Black People game show.

South Park has spent 17/18 years laying waste to everything in their path. Xenu, Tom Cruise, making fun of themselves with two black characters . . . They've even had an forest animal based satanic nativity. The devil, Jesus, God, gamers (that online gaming thing is getting to be like a religion), animal rights activists, wal mart, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Spielberg, etc etc.

I've never "got" The Family Guy - I just don't get the humor. I've watched it a few times but by and large the jokes are cheap - they don't have the nuance and depth and don't make me laugh at myself.

Maybe that's it? I can relate to token in South Park? I can laugh at the black cop in the Chappelle dancing/music skit because like him - I can't help rocking out to a Poison song because I grew up in the burbs?

[deutsey]

10. That Chappelle skit on race and music

is one of my all-time favorite skits. Damn, I nearly have a stroke every time I watch it, I laugh so hard. The whole thing is brilliant, but the heavy metal/punk part in the fancy restaurant and the Hispanic part in the barber shop (with Dave yelling incomprehensibly into the bullhorn) get me every time. I'm laughing now just thinking about it.

Like you, I can't get into Family Guy. I just don't find much of it funny (and I've seen a few episodes because my kids recently went through a phase watching it on Netflix). There are cheap-shot jokes in other movies/shows (Mel Brooks' stuff comes to mind), but they're tossed in among other styles of humor so they're not so overwhelming like they are in Family Guy and shows like it.

It just grows tiresome to me.

[JustAnotherGen]

11. I have Every Rose Has It's Thorn

Going through my head right now!

[deutsey]

12. So do I

[JustAnotherGen]

14. Awesome!

Now go make some pancakes!

[deutsey]

21. Chahlieee Murphaay!

What did the five fingers say to the face?

SllllllaaAP!

[get the red out]

4. all publications could use good taste

Maybe it would help for a minute, until any commentary inspires some to violence, then without commentary, negative (to some) news causes problems, then unapproved, individual conversations must stop or people face consequences if overheard.... Rabbit hole that could devour a semi.

[hack89]

5. And satire doesn't have to be funny

it also encompasses ridicule and irony.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Western satire is the only kind of satire acceptable in the world and all the world must accept the

slanderous cartoons as great satire, not hate speech, and must also laugh and understand no harm or hate was meant. I have yet to read about one person who thinks the satire funny, isn't that the point of satire? So what was funny about these vulgar csrtoons?

How would anyone get slander or hate speech from those harmless drawings insulting a religion using gross sexual drawings and pornographic imagery of the prophet of Islam?

"The future must not belong to those that slander the prophet of Islam".

President Barrack Obama, September 25, 2012.

The magazine may not have been a hate speech factory, debatable, surely it was slander of the prophet of Islam.

[Scuba]

7. Satire does not need to be funny to be satire.

Ridicule, for example, may be satire without being funny.

sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī ə r/
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
synonyms: mockery, ridicule, derision, scorn, caricature;

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=satire

[Fred Sanders]

8. These cartoons depicted serve no other purpose than hate and they were religious themes, not political.

And what is the topical issue then....religion is not topical.

[Scuba]

13. "religion is not topical"

I doubt many people agree with that.

[Fred Sanders]

15. Then those disagreeable people would be in error about the definition.

top·i·cal
ˈtäpək(ə l/
adjective
1.
(of a subject) of immediate relevance, interest, or importance owing to its relation to current events.
"a wide variety of subjects of topical interest"
synonyms: current, up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, contemporary, recent, relevant; More
antonyms: out-of-date

[Scuba]

16. I think that definition fits religion very well.

[Fred Sanders]

17. Then "topical" has a brand new definition...we should add "religion is always topical"?

[Scuba]

18. I think religion is always topical, because it's applied constantly to political and social issues.

[Fred Sanders]

19. Have a pleasant day.

[Scuba]

20. I'm having a very pleasant day, thank you. Same to you.

[MohRokTah]

22. Religion is ALWAYS topical.

Religion drives a lot of human behavior, so it is always of immediate relevance.

Hell, yesterday PROVED that!

[stevenleser]

23. When you are a major political or religious figure that influences billions of people, too bad.

At that point, you've earned the right to intense scrutiny and very tough satire. You've even earned that if you are a fairly low level elected official.

[randome]

9. That's a Western world construct that we insist on imposing on the rest of the world.

However, the three gunmen chose to live in a multicultural world and accepted the consequences for that. Until they decided otherwise.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]