Why can't we laugh at ourselves anymore?

Stephen Colbert has to close down a satirical foundation called: Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation of Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.


It was shut down because of outraged political activists who were offended by the gesture. If you were to read the name of the foundation out of context, you would probably find it offensive too.


With context, it makes much more sense. Colbert was making fun of Daniel Snyder, wealthy owner of the Washington Redskins, for setting up a foundation to support the team's controversial nick name.


I should probably care more about the Redskins name, but I am a Cowboys fan. I can only hope that their refusal to change the name brings for them decades of bad Karma.


What this latest incident shows is that Political Correctness run amuck takes the fun out of life. Colbert, John Stewart, Lewis Black and others like them, come from a long line of political satirists. Mark Twain and Will Rogers are two of the brightest and most engaging Americans to spin a yarn or turn a phrase. They would have found Colbert's response funny. They would have understood it for what it is...satire.


I have recently reengaged social media. Facebook is fascinating to me. Sarcasm, irony, and satire are lost, if not hard to come by, in this venue. I have developed only one rule. If I have to put an emoticon or a an "lol" behind something I write on Facebook, then it just does not need to be said.


We have simply lost the ability to laugh at ourselves. Why is that a problem? It means we take ourselves too seriously. That is arrogance in the most virulent form.


So I close with a joke. How many Baptist preachers do you invite to go fishing with you? The answer is two. If you invite one he will drink all your beer and claim to have caught the biggest fish.


As a recovering Baptist preacher I give you permission to laugh. A the great comedian Larry the Cable Guy says: "I don't care who you are...that's funny."