Stew politeness!

What I read

According to Annabel Rackham in "Should Family Guy 'phase out' gay jokes?" (2019), while some support the move by the long-running TV cartoon show Family Man to move away from jokes making fun of gay men through the character of Stewie, often portraying them as stereotypes always looking for sex, others, even some gay people, argue that it is acceptable to make such jokes, about gay men and others in the LGBT community along with other minority groups. The change was suggested in a recent episode which starred a cartoon version of US President Trump, and has been confirmed by the shows producers, who explained that evolving social standards have have prompted them to revise how their show presents minority groups, including gays. 

This summary paragraph is 123 words in two sentences. It took me some time, and revision, to write.This is academic writing, which follows formal rules for style and using sources. The title above is bold, and is a link to the source that I chose to summarize. 

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My response 

First, a confession: I've never watched Family Man, so I don't know what sort of jokes the show makes to offend people, and the BBC article didn't include any examples. I guess I could look for some on YouTube. But the article caught my interest because of a couple of the gay men's comments state an idea I agree with. I don't think that merely being offensive is a good reason to ban something. If everything offended some group had to be banned, there would be nothing not banned! The members of most religions, for example, are offended by the competing ideas of other religions, which is why religion has been such a powerful force for war in history, as violent conflicts around the world today still show us. For example, the terrorists who a few days ago bombed the Thai owned Dusit Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya were a militant Islamist group who said they acted to kill innocent people because US President Trump was moving the US embassy in Israel to Jewish Jerusalem, which Islamic Palestine claims as their capital city. And an example nearer to Thailand it the violence that Buddhist monks in Myanmar incite against the Rohingya people in that country. Historically, at least since the Christians invaded the Roman Empire in the 4th century, the West has been fighting religious wars with each other. Should all religions be banned because their teachings offend other religious groups? 

I also liked the comment that one gay man made that the important thing in comedy is whether the jokes are funny or not. He complained that Family Man isn't actually funny, partly because it's a boring repeat of things that straight, white, middle class men find funny. I also liked his idea that you don't have to be a member of a group to laugh at that group. Comedy, making jokes, even offensive jokes, can help us to see that however important people take themselves, they are just human beings like all the rest of us. And that reminds me of Harvard's University's Steven Pinker, who explains that dictators hate comedy and want to censor free speech that mocks them others because they know that laughter is a healthy human activity that supports democratic respect for all by smashing the mindless respect that dictators demand.   

This response is much longer than the summary. There are two main responses, hence two paragraphs. These paragraphs were written much more quickly than the summary. Although the style is formal, as we see in the examples of writing in online discussion boards on page 9 and as Skillful suggests on page 66, this is not academic writing: it's more relaxed. For example, it's more personal, and it's OK to go a bit off topic as new ideas come to mind. 

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My question

Is it OK to make rude jokes about gays, women, beggars, Jews, or other groups in society? 

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Reference

• Rackham, A. (2019, January 15). Should Family Guy 'phase out' gay jokes? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-46878017

• This is a correctly written APA style reference citation. When we use ideas from any source, which every summary does, our academic work must cite that source. Basic information must, therefore, be included in the paragraph, and we need the full reference citation here.