I laugh when people fall down. Home video shows abound on cable mostly because people laugh when other people fall down.  Or when dogs and cats fall down.

That is what Vaudeville was all about. falling down.

Cable protects itself by having people give some sort of oath that the individual or animal that fell down was not 'hurt' as a result of the fall. Now we can all feel better and laugh without mean intent.  Even though there never was any real investigation as to whether the person fell down and a year later had to undergo back surgery due to the fall.

Evel Knevel made a living breaking his bones.  I am willing to bet that his pain medication outstripped Elvis as the King of misuse of pharmaceuticals.

I have laughed at fat people. I have laughed at short people. I have laughed at people with cleft palates. I have laughed at people who live in squaller and stink and feign dignity.
All these people have been the butt of jokes for stand-ups, sit-coms and movies.

When John Goodman played Barbara Bush on SNL, I could not stop laughing.  If I see a rerun I start all over again.  I feel a little guilty.  But when Mrs. Bush surveyed the abomination in New Orleans and said something to the effect that the environs were not that good but that the refugees had come from squaller anyway, I felt freer to laugh at Goodman's performance.

Oprah at 200 pounds is funny to me.  I cannot help it.  One of the richest female entrepreneurs and she is a fatso.  She wears gowns costing thousands of dollars though, and looks alright.
But I am still laughing at fat people.

If Nick Nolte's booking photo is published after a DUI arrest, it is funny.  He is a rich and powerful man, he can handle himself and the picture is hilarious.

I witnessed a stand-up on the history of comedy remark that he uses audience interaction in his act.  He related an incident where he asked everyone to raise their right hand and someone in the front did not.  So he took her on and discovered much to his dismay that she did not raise her right hand because she did not have a right hand.  Now in this anecdote we feel for the comedian because there was no intent to do harm or to make fun of a crippled person.    

Governor Paterson of New York is a good man in my mind.  He is one of the only black governors in the history of the U.S.A.  He is partially blind and he looks the part.  It is not a hidden handicap. He reached his post fortuitously but he had earned the office of Lieutenant Governor on his own.  He is to be admired.

But the papers and the blogs are going after SNL for their depiction of the Governor on Saturday, in no small reaction to the Governor's attack on this depiction.

I have to admit, that SNL provided a very funny skit within its pretend news show and I even remarked how well the actor did in doing his impression.  The Governor is shown as totally lost, wandering the studio and blocking the camera and I could not stop laughing.

As humans we laugh at others.  We laugh at their defects, their handicaps their condition.  Many of these foibles are not the fault of the individual with these frailties.

I am not going to stop laughing and I am not going to carry around the old Roman Catholic Guilt as I did during my younger years.

But I have to figure out where the line is between humor and bad taste.  

On some other site, and I cannot remember where, I was commenting on the issue surrounding Hillary's seat-no pun intended-in the Senate.  Who will Governor Paterson appoint?

Some time ago, I went on and on about his options and I noted that no matter whom he appointed to the position someone, somewhere would remark:

WHAT ARE YOU, BLIND?

The site went kind of blank after I committed and the post was censured.

I felt embarrassed.

Do we really wish to live and laugh at it all?