[AngegepeM]

In general, I am not. I also laugh loud at some. For that matter I also enjoy some ethnic jokes. But I will or will not tell them, depending on my objective and the audience.

In most circumstances, the objective is to pass on a good joke that you heard.

And I suppose you know all the hangups and quirks of your audience?

Where was I wrong? (Please quote me and highlight my wrong statement. I want to learn from you also.)

In the whole thrust of your discussion. Humour is a basic facet of humanity and with "the poking fun at others" being a major (if not the major) underpinning. It may not be immediately obvious but it is there. Take the previous joke pertaining to the laundry, you a have a number of elements there that poke fun at; the immigrant, the immigration officer, the system that was in place at the time that was degrading to many! And the sheer fact of picking a chinese and polish immigrant subtly insults a good chunk of the human race.

Well, this is true. Though other reasons why we laugh include : surprise, superiority, biological inclination, incongruity, ambivalence, releasing tension, and filing in configurations.

Agreed, laughter is not just a reaction to humour but this discussion is about humour!

Quite frankly, I used to indulge in a lot of insult jokes during my college days, when I was involved in school politics. It was so sweeeeeet to dish out those jests at the expense of my political opponents. Now I have understood why I savored them that much.

Aghh, a political animal, that explains you current views LOL

Did you ever tell a joke that you would consider an ethnic slur just because it was funny ???

As one writer explains, "There are two ways to feel superior...and one of them is to publicly criticize the accomplishments of others. This deflates their prestige and focuses attention on ourselves.."

Not much of a quote, I would contend that there are many ways to feel superior; intellectualy, monetary, birth, location, physical, etc.

Anyway, this discussion is going nowhere. It's very similar to another thread that dealt with the word "Farang". I noted then that it is not the word that is insulting but the the context and the way it is spoken. The same goes for jokes.

The same joke told in different ways can elicit totally different responses. I would suggest that you be very careful how you tell a "biker" joke in a bar that is filled with "Hells Angels" as the response you get can vary from a bunch of drinks to a knife in the gut. (And as an aside, this paragraph can be considered an insult but absolutely none was intended. )