It’s often said that comedy is tragedy plus time, yet there seems to be no amount of time that makes poking fun at a wounded veteran funny. Enter Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live” and Texas congressional candidate for the Republican Party Dan Crenshaw.
“This guy is kind of cool — Dan Crenshaw,” Davidson said on this past weekend’s show. “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate for Texas and not a hit man in a porno movie.”
Davidson, unable to control his laughter, continued, “I’m sorry. I know he lost his eye in war — or whatever.”
Crenshaw was nothing short of classy when responding to Davidson’s joke, writing on Twitter:
Good rule in life: I try hard not to offend; I try harder not to be offended. That being said, I hope @nbcsnl recognizes that vets don’t deserve to see their wounds used as punchlines for bad jokes.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) November 4, 2018
Following this tweet, Crenshaw said he believes the “SNL” writing staff could’ve worked out something better, saying, “I think they should have rethought that joke a little bit. If you could even call it a joke.”
Now, while Davidson’s joke was tasteless and insensitive, he shouldn’t apologize for it.
Time and again, media personalities and politicians have to apologize for incendiary comments. During the 2016 presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump famously made comments about Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that could’ve been a joke but didn’t land.
But this is different. This is comedy. And comedy is supposed to push the envelope. It’s supposed to find the humor in things that are otherwise serious. There’s good comedy and there’s bad comedy. But here’s the thing: Comedy will forever be subjective.
And while a large majority of people might shun a particular joke, there’s a lesson to be learned in an episode of “South Park,” when characters debate depicting the Prophet Muhammad: “You can’t make a distinction between what is OK to poke fun at and what isn’t. Either it is all OK, or none of it is.”
