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Here in the West, comedians have traditionally been given wide latitude. It’s why comics such as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart can poke fun at some of the most powerful people and institutions on the planet — including the president of the United States and the Catholic Church — without most people so much as batting an eye.

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He’s not alone. Many comedians would say the same thing. Perhaps this reflects nothing more than a desire for professional freedom, an intuition that, once a few “sensitive” subjects are declared out of bounds, the list will grow.

But I think it is more than that. I think it stems from an understanding that “offensive” humour is not an aberration, a warped version of the real thing, but rather that offensiveness of one kind or another is an intrinsic part of humour. Virtually all humour is offensive to someone; most humour is hurtful to some sensibility; much humour is rooted in pain and fear and the ugly reality of things.

Within hours of any natural disaster or other tragedy, you may be sure, the jokes will start: after the Challenger space shuttle blew up in 1986, for example, it somehow became common knowledge that NASA stood for Need Another Seven Astronauts. People tell jokes about the dead, and they tell jokes about the grievously afflicted: How did Helen Keller break her arms? Reading the speed signs on the highway.

Part of that is the natural human tendency to crack open taboos. The minute we are told we can’t say something, some element in us insists on doing so. But part of it seems to be a coping mechanism. Humour is almost always rooted in some sort of anxiety — about our bodies, about our place in society, about whatever — or more broadly the disjunction between what we want in life and what we get. As I’ve argued before, all jokes are an echo of the One Big Joke, which is that we are all going to die.