That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore?

When I was a kid, or more accurately an adolescent, Eddie Murphy was everywhere. Eddie Murphy began as a player on Saturday Night Live and exploded from there with two feature length stand up routines: Delirious and Raw.  Eddie then continued his blitz with some very funny movies: Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America and of course Trading Places.  Nowadays Eddie shows up in decidedly family friendly fare like Dr. Doolittle, but then he was as R-Rated as they come.  He describes in one of his stand up routines listening to Richard Pryor records in secret, and hearing words, bad words, used with an effect that was eye opening.  Eddie obviously imitated Pryor, as Chris Rock and others have, but he was the first that did it in a way that, while vulgar and not suitable for work, was still a little more tame than Pryor had been in the 1970's.  Eddie walked the line of comedy pretty well, and in the 1980's we actually had a pretty good consensus about where that line was.  George Carlin helpfully recited all the words you could not say on television and kept us on the right side of decency.
But bawdy comedy always has a place in our hearts doesn't it? Go back: Benny Hill, Redd Foxx, Milton Berle, The Three Stooges, oh yeah and if you don't think that's far enough how about William Shakespeare? You will need to decipher some Elizabethan euphemisms, but you will find lots and lots of genital humor amidst even the tragedies like Hamlet and Othello, not to mention the more outright stuff in the comedies.  A good playwright slips things in here and there to make the audience chuckle or even groan a little.  The Muppet Show and more recently Spongebob Squarepants, inject adult jokes into kids shows just to get a chuckle out of parents who are forced to watch with their kids. But humor requires us to understand the context, and in doing so, we get to be "in on the joke."
One of the funniest things I have ever seen sketch comedy-wise, were from Chappelle's Show, they were Charlie Murphy's stories about the years when his brother Eddie was a rising star and he was a part of his brother's entourage, out and about interacting with celebrities and artists like Prince and of course the unforgettable Rick James.  The recreation of several incidents involving Rick James is absolutely hilarious, but not at all PG rated so be warned before you google them (I'm not even linking them here).  Charlie Murphy recounts some outrageous behavior on the part of James and then when you are already laughing, Chappelle has sure enough gotten James himself to comment on the events.  James at first denies the veracity of such stories, but then admits that perhaps they did happen and laughs to himself: "Cocaine is a hell of a drug."  The stories are all that much more hilarious because the subject of them is present and can laugh at himself.
Another great moment in sketch comedy was the Key and Peele series about Obama's Anger translator Luther.  One of them plays the normal, straight up and restrained Barack Obama, and the other plays a loose canon who "translates" what Obama says into more emotive language. Barack Obama, not only found the sketches funny, he actually referenced Luther in the last days of his presidency, mentioning that Luther could now take a bit of a vacation.  Whether it's Rick James or Barack Obama, being able to laugh at yourself is an important part of being a healthy, fully differentiated human person.
Comedians are supposed to push our ability to do that, and being human, sometimes they fail.  In the movie Hannah and Her Sisters,Woody Allen plays his usual neurotic struggling artist and Alan Alda plays his foil, his brother in law who is already successful and more than a bit pretentious about it.  Alda's character goes on these little monologues about how comedy works: "If it bends, it's funny, if it breaks, it's tragedy." Woody Allen has often played around with the line between those two places, and in so doing discovers the fact that different people have different places where bend becomes break, but his success over the years despite it all, indicates that he generally found that same place that Murphy and Chappelle both found: the place where we can all agree that it is actually funny, even if it's not the kind of funny we happen to enjoy.
Our ability to laugh keeps us sane, which is why I am actually rather worried about our collective psyche right now. I'm worried that so much of the news cycle over the past few days has been about Michelle Wolf and what she said at the White House Correspondent's dinner. I'm worried that late night comedy shows seem to have had to take up the mantle of national truth teller (and I'm worried that Jon Stewart remains stubbornly retired). I'm worried that people are treating some insulting jokes like the end of civilization, and I'm worried that those same people actually support a guy who is President, not a comedian, who says much worse things almost every day.  I'm actually worried that the thread of rationality has been lost.
How can we not distinguish between Dave Chappelle playing Rick James and the actual person? How can we not distinguish between Jordan Peele pretending to be Obama and President Obama? (I am linking to this despite some PG-13 language because it's worth hearing)
That's a real problem. On one hand we need to get our sense of humor back and stop being so super sensitive about everything.  On the other hand we need to understand the difference between being funny and just being mean. Sometimes things that might be intended to be funny can be mean if the person at the center (Rick James or Barack Obama for instance) are not allowed to be "in on the joke." You can question whether or not handicapped or disadvantaged people have the full opportunity to be "in on the joke" that is told about them, and thus this type of humor is sort of out of bounds.  When it comes to full grown adults in positions of significant authority (like say Donald Trump or Sarah Sanders) the line gets moved though. It's not that there is no line, but they have adequate internal and external resources to shrug/laugh off whatever you might say about them. I don't feel like we should be needing to protect some of the most powerful people in the world from a cable television comedienne.  There is a line, but in the case of a White House Correspondent's dinner I think that line is really hard to cross.
We need to have comedians dance around that line.  Eddie Murphy can be funny in movies you watch with your kids and also be funny in things you shouldn't let your kids see until they are old enough to drink.  So can Chris Rock and Jon Stewart, and George Carlin (he plays the conductor on a kids TV show about trains and he gave us 1001 dirty words).  They're comedians, it is their stock and trade to play around with the line between funny and offensive, they help us see where that line is.  In that way, comedians these days function in somewhat of a prophetic role.  They show us the absurdity of life, they show us the vanity of our pride, they might just give us enough of a jab in the ribs to get our attention.  If they cross the line sometimes, so be it, that's their job, and they do it so that the people we really need to be serious and in charge don't have to.
If Michelle Wolf is mean to a couple of full grown women who have chosen to be visible public representatives of a mendacious and mean spirited administration, so be it, that's her job.  That the administration itself should be mendacious and mean spirited is the problem, not the comedienne who calls attention to it.