Is there any such thing as a racist joke? If it's funny it can't possibly be wrong or offensive, right? Sarah Silverman strikes me as just one more comic capitalizing off the low-level racism our cable channels and movies are awash in. But more disturbing than the jokes themselves are the apologists quick to defend them, arguing that any of us who actually get pissed off are either prudes or tools of the Machine. While I'm not advocating for jack-booted thugs to carry out tv sets away, I have to ask if there really is something wrong with questioning the value of a show that jokes about rape and genocide.

Jokes about zebras and jokes about murder are not the same; to compare the two is patently absurd, just as it is absurd to claim that because you personally weren't offended by a joke there is no way that joke could be deemed as offensive. In my life I've heard plenty of all-out bigots laugh at jokes about blacks and Mexicans. But I guess if the bigots weren't offended, well, the joke must be unoffensive, right?

First, I must admit to never having heard Sarah Silverman but I certainly have been reading an awful lot about her. Perhaps, too, this is just a bias that comes from never having loved Polish jokes but loving Lenny Bruce. Part of what made Bruce truly remarkable was that he made a crusade out of his First Amendment rights and secondly he actually added something to the cultural discussions of the topics he cared to look at in his own humorous way. Now that we have, in a sense, the beneficiaries of his legacy among us, I begin to feel a little leery of taking them all that seriously because in true American fashion, I'm wondering what are you doing for me lately? I am not so sure that Zacharek is correct that Silverman is teaching us something. Precisely what that something might be escapes me? That we're a racist society? That we love the sound of awful words coming out of a woman's mouth? That we enjoy a certain form of intellectual exhibitionism? Perhaps those are the lessons, but if so, I have a feeling we already know these things. Again I ask, what is Silverman delivering, at what risk is that delivery being made and who is benefiting from this? I hope someday to learn the answers to those questions.

You know, I just can't stand a pretty girl with a sense of humour! It ruins the entire effect. The filthy things that come out of that woman's mouth - it's disgusting to think of them rattling around in her little head.

I hope she doesn't kiss her Nana with that mouth. Yuk - just imagine her in bed with Jimmy Kimmel! Go on, imagine it! Now imagine her in bed with Richard Pryor! Turns your stomach, doesn't it?

Boo!