Didja hear the one about Katrina?

NEW YORK — The joke rattled through e-mails across the country, even as lives hung in the balance after Hurricane Katrina: What’s President Bush’s position on Roe vs. Wade?

Answer: He doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.

The shock and sadness that muted comedians after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks hasn’t been repeated four years later, largely due to some easy targets. This time, joking about a tragedy comes as a welcome relief from the pain, tension and emotion.

“The anger that fuels comedy has built up,” said Stephen Hill, executive producer of the upcoming BET comedy awards. “We fully expect Katrina to become part of the comic lexicon of the show.”

BET gave only a “fleeting thought” to canceling the show, which airs Sept. 27. And producers of Sunday’s Emmy Awards -- an event that in 2001 was postponed after 9/11 -- promise a mix of laughs and calls to help victims, hosted by comedian and New Orleans native Ellen DeGeneres.

Comedy can help heal a nation’s wounds, said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. He likened it to “a sorbet to cleanse the palate.”

“People watch four or five hours of coverage of a very sad story. Humor has always been a way to smooth that over,” Thompson said. “It’s one of the ways you can process things.”

Conan O’Brien joked that Bush, when told it would take 80 days to drain floodwater out of New Orleans, said, “That’s almost half a vacation.” Jay Leno said the Federal Emergency Management Agency head recently came to his door and said, “I’m here for the earthquake damage you had back in ’94.”

As Hurricane Ophelia neared North Carolina, David Letterman said that “the Bush administration is getting ready to ignore it.”

“One thing that made this comic territory was that there was very quickly somebody they could go after, and somebody they could go after in a separate, safe kind of way,” Thompson said.