With all respect to Barry Humphries, I just don't see the jokes in Barry Spurr's emails. Satire may exist to illuminate truth, but surely there's got to be more to it than simply acting exactly like a real-life racist, writes comedian Ben Pobjie.

One of the most frustrating things to come across in a debate is someone with whose point you agree, but who has chosen to use a woefully inappropriate example to illustrate it.

Like when you hear someone say, "I wish politicians spoke their mind more often," and you start nodding, and then they add, "you know, like Jacqui Lambie," and you heave a deep sigh of regret.

I heaved a deep sigh of regret when reading a letter from Barry Humphries to The Australian. In this letter, Humphries, one of our most-beloved comedic exports and a man with considerable laurels on which to rest, expressed the view that "there are a lot of Australians these days who are totally bereft of a sense of humour". He also said "the new puritanism is alive, well and powerful".

Now, with these sentiments I take issue not at all. The humourlessness of the Australian public, and the Australian commentariat - particularly when there's a good froth of outrage to be had - vexes me greatly. The speed with which large segments of the population take offence at anything they can get their hands on suggests that they're doing it more for their own personal pleasure than any public-minded impulse. The misguided belief that there exists a right to not be offended has spread like a virus.

Humphries, therefore, has an excellent point. It's just unfortunate that the illustration, and seemingly the trigger, of his missive was Professor Barry Spurr of the University of Sydney, who has recently been outed by New Matilda as the author of emails that some might call "politically incorrect" and others might call "full of fairly pungent racism and sexism and a few other flavours of bigotry thrown in to spice things up".

Humphries says that the terminology bandied about in Spurr's emails "would be offensive if they were not so clearly jocular". But here lies the crux: how "clear" is the jocularity of the slurs? New Matilda hasn't just hinted at the contents: they've published quite a lot of them, so we can judge for ourselves.

Before those transcripts were published, I was reserving judgment, quite aware that, indeed, offensive words can be deployed in the service of comedy, and moreover, that I've written plenty of things, both publicly and in private correspondence, that would be incredibly offensive if they weren't done for humorous effect.

I know this because most of the time when I write something for humorous effect, there will be at least one person who doesn't realise the fact and is incredibly offended. When I first heard tell of Spurr's exposure, I thought of this, and of the many emails I would really prefer never saw the light of day, and I harboured some doubts.

But now I've read the emails, and with due respect to Humphries, who has been doing comedy for a lot longer than I and whose opinions should not be lightly cast aside, I'm not getting that whole "whimsical" vibe that Spurr wants me to get.

To be clear, I'm not saying "they're not funny". Whenever comedy causes a public kerfuffle, there will be certain people so determined to make idiots of themselves that they say things like, "the problem is this just isn't funny" or "this can't be satire - satire is supposed to be funny!"

There's no dumber argument, firstly because funniness is an utterly subjective judgment that varies wildly from person to person, and secondly because it's completely moronic to judge the offensiveness of a joke based on whether it's funny or not. Comedy is not "funny stuff": it's stuff intended to be funny. You can't know if a gag is funny until you do it, and it would be just absurd to call one person a bigot and another one a non-bigot just because the latter is a better writer.

So no, if Spurr's jokes are offensive, it's not because they're not funny, it's because they're not jokes. In one email he refers to an Aboriginal family as a human rubbish tip: I searched through that email, its references to "your and my money", its bitter sarcasm about apologies and white guilt, and I just can't see where the joke is. I promise you I am completely open to having it explained to me, but I can't see it. I can't spot any comedic devices, no satirical sting, no irony, absurdity or, in Dame Edna's words, "jocularity" to be found. Satire may exist to illuminate truth, but surely there's got to be more to it than simply acting exactly like a real-life racist.

Likewise, commenting on a video sent by a colleague, Spurr refers to "Abos", "Chinky-poos" and "Mussies".

Now of course there is a joke here: the joke is that "chinky-poos" is a funny thing to call Asians. But again, if the intention is to mock racist language, I declare myself flummoxed as to what Spurr is doing to that end beyond simply using it.

It goes on and on. Spurr rips into Adam Goodes, he rips into Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, he has a go at Tony Abbott for liking Abos too much - which admittedly is pretty funny - he slams the Mussies and the chinky-poos a bit more, he snarls resentfully about women, and suggests one "needs a lot put in her mouth, permanently, and then stitched up".

I don't think I'm particularly inept at spotting humorous intent - mine has been misinterpreted so often I like to give others the benefit of the doubt - but in the strange case of Spurr, I just can't identify it, and I am forced to suspect that the venerable Humphries has either taken Spurr's word for his emails being jokes, without actually reading them, or he has become so exasperated with humourless political correctness that he's willing to defend anything that upsets people purely because it upsets people.

Often the question is asked: "Where is the line with comedy that we must not cross?" I generally incline towards Bill Hicks's view that that line doesn't exist - though there are those examples of the art form for which there is definitely a time and a place. I think it's quite poor form, when somebody makes a joke, to react as if they were being serious.

But the very important caveat to the above is that they actually do have to be making a joke. And although Spurr's emails do betray a certain wry amusement at the fact that races and genders different to his own are vastly inferior, actual jokes seem to be desperately thin on the ground. And I gotta be honest with you: a man who berates others for using his first name in correspondence and gets his panties in a tangle over failure to address him as "Professor" is not a man whose personality is screaming "fun-loving japester" to me.

I might be wrong. It might be that I've totally missed the point of this sophisticated comic critique of society's prejudices. Or it might be as Spurr says: a "linguistic game" where the aim is to be as outrageous as possible and the joke is that the correspondents already know how terribly far removed from reality are their bigoted e-personas. He does seem to have been playing this linguistic game an awful lot, and with quite a few people, but I guess you never know.

And of course, even if I'm right, there are questions about the propriety of publishing private emails, and what consequences should come down on the head of a man who holds such views, and those questions are worth thrashing out thoroughly.

But if the claim is "he was just joking, innit?" I must say I will take some convincing. I don't see it, and I don't think Humphries is doing any service to those of us who would like a less censorious attitude to joke-making, by choosing as his example a man who really just seems to be extremely angry about all the darkies and bitches getting in his way.

Ben Pobjie is a writer, comedian and poet with no journalistic qualifications whatsoever. View his full profile here.