TLDR: that isn’t equality, it’s noblesse oblige in progressive clothes.
Ah, “punching down.” That ghastly little phrase, which sounds less like a moral framework and more like an instruction one might find in an IKEA manual for assembling an oddly-shaped ottoman. The idea, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase it badly, is that comedians should never make jokes at the expense of those with less power or lower status. Very noble. Very high-minded. Very - how do I put this delicately? - patronising in the extreme. We’re being told who counts as “up” and who’s stuck “down.” That isn’t equality, it’s a hierarchy disguised as virtue, and the moment you divide people like that, you’ve abandoned the very principle of treating everyone as equals.
And here’s the obvious truth: people are equal regardless of job, money, or social status. A duke and a dustman may move in different worlds, but both are flawed, both ridiculous, both capable of laughter. To declare one “fair game” and the other “off limits” is to recreate the very divisions equality claims to abolish. Shielding people from humour doesn’t honour them; it quietly marks them out as lesser, as fragile, needing special treatment.
I’ve met, in my time, any number of the allegedly powerless, and I’ll tell you what: many are sharper, wittier, and far more capable of puncturing pomposity than the self-appointed guardians of their honour. To exclude them from the rough-and-tumble of humour is to infantilise them. Shielding some groups from jokes doesn’t respect them, it sidelines them. It’s not kindness; it’s exclusion in a sanctimonious mask
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