The P.C. Police Are Getting Laughed Out of Town

Though the fact has been almost ignored because of the Florida voting mess, the American people, by popular vote, elected a Jewish vice president.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman’s religion did not appear to cost him votes. Rather, people seemed to warm to Lieberman’s convictions and admire him for proclaiming his faith. Though there probably won’t be a victory party, as far as the numbers are concerned, we elected a Jewish veep.

Yet while the popular-vote victory of a Jewish candidate has been ignored, so too has the cultural import of the Lieberman candidacy. This Jewish candidate made Jewish humor acceptable--not Jewish-flavored humor, but humor actually poking fun at Jews. And that, as much as the votes he won, is the significance of the Lieberman candidacy, for Jews and all Americans.

The new openness to Jewish humor reflects several trends, some that writers have noticed--like the waning of political correctness--and one that they have not: the inclusion of new groups, such as women, gays and now Jews, in the family of Americans secure enough in their place in society that they are beginning to tolerate humor that would have offended and worried them years ago.

First, two examples of what we’ll call the Lieberman Effect: Al Gore went on David Letterman to promise, “Vote for us, we’re going to work 24/6.” Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” proclaimed the Gore/Lieberman ticket “ready to build that bridge to the 59th century.”

The Stewart comment bears special consideration. For while he was poking gentle fun at his fellow Jew, he was also assuming a certain amount of knowledge in his audience. By referring to the Jewish calendar, Stewart was signaling that the American people could now rib Jews, and on Jewish terms.

But the mainstreaming of Jewish humor did not begin with Lieberman. Rather, American culture, and especially comedy, has been headed in this direction for some time.

Jerry Seinfeld did his bit: When Seinfeld accused Dr. Watley of converting to Judaism just so Watley could tell Jewish jokes, he was subtly airing the truth that it’s not always easy to tell who has permission to make fun of an ethnic group. Chris Rock’s famous riff on “black people” versus “n-----s” addresses this very question.

In 1997, the year of Rock’s HBO movie “Bring the Pain,” “Politically Incorrect” hit the big time by moving from Comedy Central to ABC. The ratings were astonishing, and the show had the cultural imprimatur of being preceded every night by “ABC News Nightline.”

That same year, Howard Stern’s film biography “Private Parts” was in the theaters, putting the inventor of shock radio and avatar of ethnic, gender and religious humor at the height of his powers. All of a sudden, the country’s savviest comedian, its smartest half-hour of television and its most famous radio personality were winning admirers by offending people.

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The history of the Lieberman Effect goes back further, and it is the history of the question: “Do you have to be of a group to make fun of it?” Lenny Bruce didn’t think so. He would shock his audience by calling them all manner of ethnic and racial slur. Rock critic Lester Bangs, who in his intelligence, compulsive honesty and drug abuse was the Lenny Bruce of rock criticism, called Detroit rocker Mitch Ryder a derogatory name for a Pole in the pages of Creem magazine.

Both Bruce and Bangs seemed to think that because they were critics, cool critics, they had license. That’s also the attitude of Bill Maher, host of “Politically Incorrect.” His guests aren’t always smart, but Maher is smart, and his show is cool, so he gets a pass.

This year, with the Lieberman Effect, linguistic laissez-faire crystallized into a new set of rules. Ethnic humor of the kind once reserved for “Saturday Night Live” hit prime time. But if “The Daily Show’s” Stewart is allowed to make Jewish jokes while John Rocker isn’t allowed out of his house, then what are the rules? How do we know who has permission and who doesn’t?

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Any guidelines will be suspect, but these three seem to have emerged:

First, there will always be circumstances when people within a group, talking to others within the group, have special permission. Gay men may refer to other gay men with words that are considered derogatory outside gay circles; women may refer to close female friends as, say, broads. This rule is not absolute, but in general, we may speak more freely among our kind.

Second, derogatory language or off-color humor can, sometimes, be justified by its political or critical purpose. George Carlin, Bruce and Richard Pryor, as well as Moliere, Voltaire, Woody Allen, Sinclair Lewis and others, have toyed with stereotypes and caricatures by way of offering satire and social criticism.

(Writer Jack Hitt once suggested that if black people wanted to deal with the Confederate flag in South Carolina once and for all, they had only to co-opt the symbol, much as homosexuals co-opted terms once used to debase them. If black people started wearing the Confederate flag and putting flag bumper stickers on their cars, Hitt suggested, the whites would abandon the symbol pretty quickly--a fine political use of an offensive symbol.)

Finally--and this is the important point that the Lieberman Effect demonstrates--sometimes a group will actually appreciate being made fun of because ridicule suggests privilege. In other words, Anglo-Saxon Protestants have always been fair game because they were perceived as so well-off and secure that names couldn’t hurt them. They probably appreciated that the writer Nelson Aldrich coined the term “WASP” to deride them.

For some time, stereotypes of the Irish American machine politician have been permitted in New England for the same reason: There are so many Irish Americans, with so much power, that they are fair game. If Jews can now be teased about aspects of their religious practice, it may be because they feel that they have finally arrived. Jewish jokes, provided they don’t seem malicious, are now evidence not of Jewish weakness but of Jewish self-esteem and security (at least in urban areas and high culture).

Deep down, we all want to be made fun of, for the ability to be secure in the face of an epithet is the ultimate sign of confidence.

But this doesn’t mean that anyone can say anything; passes are granted on a case-by-case basis. Except for those born into the group, poking fun is an earned privilege. If I may make fun of you, then I must either have a good reason (artistic or political, say) or have already established a certain closeness; my being permitted to tease you makes us closer still.

The Lieberman Effect will only grow; the rules are being worked out on the ground, by comedians and artists, by people in interracial friendships, romances and workplaces. The new rules could be worrisome and already are being used as permission for boorish people to say offensive things. Yet we are unlikely to reverse the trend toward verbal laxity.

Far better for us to understand the new rules than to keep playing by the old ones.