Once upon a time that was also characteristic of Australians. I’d like to think it still is.

It would be pretty easy to reel off a long list of comedians whose jokes don’t have butts, or who manage to poke fun while maintaining a basic respect for other people.

Have a crack!

This is often said but it’s only partly true at best. It would be pretty easy to reel off a long list of comedians whose jokes don’t have butts, or who manage to poke fun while maintaining a basic respect for other people.

I too read about this in ML, followed its link to Blair, and in the post there he says he got a tipoff from Saint, so that’s the siccing part, skepticlawyer.

Not sure about the siccing - like Jason, I read Blair & ML and found about the stoush that way. If saint’s also indulging in humourless disquisitions, then we may be witnessing a dispute between two well-used kitchen appliances…

Trying to get people to tell funnies that uplift and never denigrate is like casting a spell on George W Bush’s ears in the hope that they’ll shrink. Humour comes from a very unkind place. I think it was Woody Allen who opined that Jewish jokes were the mortar between the bricks of the crematoria. Didn’t stop him (or lots of others, Jewish or no) for a moment.

Gilmae, next time you chide me about my devotion to an invisible pink unicorn, I’m going to set off a torrent of invective about your “racism” and misanimalia by emailing Helen. In the meantime you owe me a beer.

Taking Ken’s point at #11 seriously for a moment, I put it to you that showing up as moderately competent vis-a-vis Iemma, does not one competent make.

policing humour (here comes the libertarian, you’ve been warned) is even sillier than the silliest humour.

Agreed, SL — but was not Helen who was policing humour. It was, rather, the man who selectively sent round the email, ‘policing’ it in his unspoken censorship. Helen was not policing it, she was critiquing it. My own teeny-tiny libertarian streak tells me she ought to be allowed to do this, and to do it without all the flying monkeys in the world being cravenly sicked onto her by a third party and then sent swooping down on her, flapping their semi-literate spelling and crap logic.

Jack’s just a more verbose version of homer but with serious attitude towards Muslims. I love jack’s social movements screeds. They just go on and on and on.

I predict that they won’t be a comedian.”

Bingo! The funny depends on being able to laugh at others. If we’re all in on the joke, then there is no joke.

Does it really matter who created Birdy or John Greenfly or Jack Strocchi? Like possessed ventriloquist dummies in campy old horror movies, they’ve acquired a life of their own well beyond the tentative steps that their handlers initially put them through.

“Pull the strings!”

Any comedian who has the ability to be universally funny will be insanely rich.

I predict that they won’t be a comedian.

No one is more capable of hyperbole then me.

Lets see the evidence mate.

(Sorry that’s me - Jason Soon - gave you a scare didn’t I?)

Workchoices was the most evil piece of legislation ever to be introduced into an Australian parliament.

That’s the most preposterously hyperbolic statement ever introduced into a Missing Link selection. And ML has linked to Graeme Bird once.

The site motto seems apropos. “Where the Right isn’t right”. And neither is the Left.