I was surprised by the disgust that I generated with my post about Saddam’s execution. People said they’d never read my blog again. Other people said they had lost all respect for me.
My reaction to this disgust was “Someone once respected me? Cool!” But I also spent a lot of time trying to understand exactly what the issue was.
Judging from the comments, the problem had something to do with the fact that killing a human being is not funny. At least not right away. You have to wait. Some of my favorite jokes involve people who got killed a long time ago:
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
“Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead, seeing his shadow and forecasting six more weeks of winter.”
The “killing” part of those jokes doesn’t seem so bad now because a lot of time has gone by. I’ll still burn in Hell for comparing Jesus to a groundhog, but that’s an entirely different issue.
You can also make jokes about generic people who might be dead soon. Here’s one of my favorites:
A moron calls 911 and says in his moron accent, “My wife just collapsed!”
The dispatcher says, “Calm down. Where are you located?”
The man says, “I’m on the corner of Eucalyptus and Pine.”
The dispatcher asks, “How do you spell Eucalyptus?”
There’s a long pause and then the moron says, “I could drag her to Oak.”
I’m assuming I won’t have to wait too long before it will be okay to make light of Saddam’s execution. Five years, tops. I suppose it’s the economist in me that wanted to get some immediate value from it. I’ll put it on my calendar. I like having things to look forward to.