Inside Mesa

We laugh at Jeff Foxworthy and his "You know you are a redneck if" routine, we roll on the ground listening to Chris Rock curse un-mercifully and use the "N" word with reckless abandon as he pokes fun at his race and others, and the new comedy hit on Comedy Central is the Mind of Mencia where we bust a gut laughing as Carlos Mencia does bit after bit on Latin Americans but hell hath no furry like a city manager who has an ax to grind when it comes to police officers swapping what he terms as "racially insensitive" emails.With the revelation that city employees and police officers are facing huge suspensions I want to focus on the racial component of this investigation. I realize that there are other factors but as I read the Tribune articles on the subject I found the comments of Bill Strauss who is the head of the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation league to be interesting, "Fueling that with racial jokes and messages that promote racial and ethnic stereotyping could be dangerous," he said, continuing he stated, "It actually could compel somebody to cross the line legally." Mr. Strauss and I disagree a bit on this one; I do think that sexually explicit emails are a bit worse and more disconcerting than jokes.I will say that I honestly don’t believe that work email should be used for non-work issues but I think that when we have crazy people like Bill Strauss running around saying that jokes could cause people to cross some imaginary legal line is like saying that if you eat watermelon seeds you run the risk of growing an actual watermelon in your stomach, it simply isn’t reality. Are there racists among us? Sure there is but this wholesale scare tactics isn’t the answer either. If you want to battle something learn to laugh about it, why do you think that all the comics I referenced above have made it so big, I can assure you that it isn’t because they are labeled racists, it is because they have learned how to find humor in everything. Live a little, learn to laugh at yourself, your race, your quirks and your malfunctions just don’t share it on your work email account… Here is a joke for Mr. Strauss, how many members of the Anti-defamation league does it take to screw in a light bulb? None because they just sit around and wait for someone else to change it so they can call them racists, I never said I was a comedian…