That's Not Funny!

WHO THE FUCK is Ed Koch anyway?

I can picture this old fart squirming out of his bed after his Bengay rubdown, strapping on his Depends and sitting down at the kitchen table with a newspaper in one hand and a red pen in the other. In between sloppy gulps of Ensure, this pasty coot goes through the paper, angrily marking off all the things you can and can't say, deciding the limits and lines of free speech.

On April 26, the New York Sun reported that the former mayor had sent letters to New Jersey governor McGreevey and Rutgers University president Richard McCormick skewering them for their "inaction" against a Rutgers humor rag. The rag, almost entirely scatological and filled with shock humor, ran a cartoon on its cover depicting a carnival dunking pool. Only it wasn't a pool, it was an oven. And the person to fall in was a Hassid. Oh, and it had a terrible caption saying, "Knock a Jew in the oven! Three throws for one dollar!"

President McCormick responded by saying his hands were tied by that pesky First Amendment, pointing to a 2000 Supreme Court decision protecting college newspapers from censorship.

"Frankly," Koch replied, "I don't understand your point of view."

Of course, Koch may just be using this recent news story about the publication in question, the Medium, for the sake of publicity. Hizzoner was recently tapped by the Bush administration to lead the American delegation to an anti-Semitism conference in Berlin, and speaking out on a topic recently blitzed by the media raises his profile. It's just one of those things politicians do.

As for conflicts of interest, I must admit to having one: I'm the managing editor of the Medium. Furthermore, I'm the sophomore journalism student who made the decision to run that cover.

Let me explain a few things. About 15 years ago, the Medium switched its format from being a news and commentary magazine to one that, as a former editor called it, is "a true medium for anyone to be able to publish what they wanted, often to perhaps test out whether freedom of speech and expression really existed for us, and if so to what extent it existed."

As he put it, "It's one thing to be told you have 'free speech,' and another to try and find out if it's true."

For 15 years the Medium has been a campus voice for any and all views, a complete venue for the ultimate and most sacred kind of diversity—diversity of thought. It often shocks and offends. It's often humorous and edgy. But it always provokes thought—at least for those open to thought. We never say, "No, you can't do that."

People ask how I could have seen that cover and not deemed it "wrong." But consider my familiarity with the paper's staff: I know that these are among the most open-minded, diverse kids imaginable; the thought that this cartoon could be anti-Semitic never crossed my mind. Additionally, looking at the cartoon and seeing the ridiculous instructions in the background, I could not see how the cartoon would be taken seriously. Indeed, the last step, depicting the Hassid joyfully falling into a smiling, cartoon oven with the word L'chaim—Hebrew for "to life"—tipped the scale completely toward irony and absurdity.

As a journalism and media studies student at Rutgers, I learned a few things from being at the center of the media storm that followed. Firstly, if a story sounds more scandalous, sensational and conflict-driven without context and perspective, rest assured the journalists will leave out context and perspective. In my case, our newspaper is the most popular on campus, with more than 15,000 weekly readers—readers who know what we do and what we stand for.

The media did, however, manage to point out that I "happened to be Jewish." Happened? They make it sound like I tripped and fell on a yarmulke. My being Jewish has nothing to do with the story, even though they offered up the fact as if it were good for my defense.

Another lesson is that blogs are modern-day lynch mobs with intellectual thought as their victim. My favorite blog during this debacle was littlegreenfootballs.com, where as one scrolls down the page, the rapid disintegration of rational thought is on display. Starting with the predictable condemnation of a newspaper they've never before seen or read, the contributors then compound and validate one another's viewpoints, whether right or wrong, and become more extreme and more irrational and more certain that they are right. Some of my favorite lines:

"[The] campus atmosphere…openly espouses Arab-financed and Arab-inspired propagandistic defamation of Zionism, Israel and Jews."

"Islam" and the "liberal/leftist establishment…are targeting Christians too."

"The Freedom haters attck [sic] the Jews AND they [sic] aim is to attack all the non-islamonazis."

"If we had some really good cheap rockets we could launch…all [Muslims] into space and they can jihad all they want on the Moon!"

As the media and some blogs tried to shame me for making fun of the Holocaust, saying it was off limits, I had my own personal dilemma not reflected in the media, as I struggled to defend the paper, with weak, shameful defenses even I didn't believe, without a chance to sit and think about it myself.

There is Holocaust humor that is completely and entirely successful at both being funny and making a point. Not only that, it floods popular culture. Take, for instance, the enormous amount of cartoons and comedy shows that depict certain peoples forced into Nazi-style work camps—and in some shows actually worked to death.

Exhibit A: a South Park episode featuring the tolerance camp, where kids are rounded up for supposedly being "intolerant" and have tolerance shoved down their throats—Nazi style.

Exhibit B: Mel Brooks managed to make it funny in History of the World: Part One, wherein he showed Jews singing as they were tortured during the awesomely terrible Spanish Inquisition.

It wasn't until after the initial media blitz subsided that I allowed myself to examine my anger. What hypocrisy—these swine called me intolerant, yet refused to engage in any sort of debate. They stood firm on the fact that they're right and we're wrong, shouting down any and all dissent.

These are the real fascists, I thought. It was people like this that caused the Holocaust to begin with. And you never should apologize to such filthy, spiteful hypocrites.

Still, I was left with the nagging feeling that there was something wrong with that cover. If I were wrong, though, wouldn't it be hypocritical to issue an apology in this case, when during past controversies we refused to? Surely, it would seem insincere—as if we were just buckling under pressure from the Hillel, the most powerful, well-funded and media-savvy organization on campus.

Then I received an email from the former editor of a Dartmouth humor paper who'd faced similar troubles. Two lines stood out: "College humor is where future comedy writers learn how to walk the line between funny and offensive," and, "The apparent inability to take a joke is usually the result of a joke not very well told."

In the end I learned a few things:

First, if you make a joke, make sure the intent comes across as best you can. We failed at that.

Second, you'll never make the right decisions at 3:30 in the morning while wrestling with a ridiculous hangover.

Third, if you run a campus humor rag, don't fuck with the most powerful, most well-funded and most media-savvy group on campus during finals week—it's just a bad idea.