Osama Bin Laughed At
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Osama Bin Laughed At

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What I find interesting is how such jokes and quips seemed to unite people on these social media platforms. It doesn’t seem to matter how brazen the humour gets, everybody pitches in and feels part of a global meme. 

 

Taking the piss out of a recently deceased mass murdering terrorist appears to be morally okay with everyone, at least from a Western perspective. It’s difficult to imagine anyone would take offence to a joke about Bin Laden’s death. Not even his mother could credibly say, “I’m deeply hurt that people are making such jokes about my son just after his death. Sure he brought terror upon many innocent people around the world, but he always remembered to wish me a happy birthday.” Point is that there aren’t a lot of people on the internet getting uptight about Bin Laden death jokes.

Yet I wonder if death should ever be laughed at or celebrated.

For me this question is difficult to answer because bin Laden was a symbol of hatred and violence, not just a man, and certainly not an innocent one. Hence it may be morally viable to celebrate the demise of what he represented, yet still be reverent toward the fact killing had to take place. Many feel that a force for terror in the world is now gone and that this is worth celebrating even though assassination was the catalyst.

So the next question is, if we take Bin Laden as our metaphorical waypoint for morally acceptable death jokes, where should the line be drawn?

Patrick Swayze copped a lot of death jokes when he passed away, yet unlike Bin Laden there was at least some backlash in the social media world. Many may feel that it’s okay to make a death joke about an evil person, but not about an innocent one. Others could say all death jokes are immoral. Others none.

It becomes a very convoluted process to distinguish between death jokes that are right or wrong.  Ultimately, anything you say about anyone could upset someone somewhere. Making death jokes about any human being amongst friends, in a private e-mail to colleagues or on a public Twitter feed is essentially the same act performed to audiences of different sizes. So I think it is morally okay to say what you want, but the balance is that the wider your audience, the more people may judge you for it. This at least addresses the social repercussion, but your personal view on human life is another matter.

The comic in me says that any joke can be made because humour is just another way individuals cope with the world, while the humanist in me says that how I respond to suffering of any kind defines my personal integrity and value of humanity. These two parts of me are currently having a lightsaber duel in my subconscious (yes, I’m writing this on May the 4th: Star Wars Day).

As for Bin Laden gags, well, the current Western unity against the very idea of this man means that negative judgement on your character is unlikely. It just comes down to how you feel about reacting to both the demise of a symbol of violence and the killing of a human being.