“Not like they’re voting Republican,” he said in the interview with Frank Rich published in Vulture, “but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody.”

Could Rock be right? I find the possibility disturbing, since I enjoy topical humor.

I marvel at comedians as varied as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Dick Gregory, Freddie Prinze and Joan Rivers who manage to make us laugh about race, gender, religion, ethnicity and politics while dancing on the edges of our touchiness.

But Rock detects a new uptightness in today’s campus audiences. He blames a social culture that has taken hypersensitivity overboard as we try to protect kids from insults and other painful realities of life — like race relations.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.