Reply #36: I like Lenny Bruce a lot, but as you imply some considered him offensive [View All]

[deutsey]

He even went on with a scheduled show on the night of JFK's assassination, when a lot of other acts cancelled. He opened his show by walking out on stage, standing there quietly a moment, and said: "Poor Vaughn Meader" (Meader was a JFK impersonator/humorist who had developed a highly profitable album lampooning Kennedy during his first term).

By today's standards, what he said wasn't offensive, but going on with the show under those circumstances would probably still raise some eyebrows today

Humor is very subjective, but I think there are some comedians interested in some kind of catharsis through doing "offensive" humor and those who want to exploit it for shock value that feeds into the audience's prejudices. The former heals the psyche, the latter injures it.

But there's a very fine line between the two that's often hard to discern.