No humor in slurs

IN her review of Sarah Silverman’s movie, “Jesus Is Magic” [“Silverman Will Make You Cringe While Making You Laugh,” Nov. 11], Carina Chocano mentions that I’d criticized the comedian for “using an ethnic slur in a joke on network television.”

But Chocano says I misunderstood Silverman because, “The joke was not an ethnic joke, but a joke about the selective use of racial slurs. (There’s an unspoken hierarchy of acceptability, she suggests, which is mainly fear-based).”

This implies that only ethnic jokes are worthy of criticism.

I hate to quote Silverman, but in a routine in her film, she says, “If you have to explain it ... it’s not funny.”

So I guess it’s appropriate that I’ll spell it out for Chocano: Media Action Network for Asian Americans was upset that Silverman used an ethnic slur in such an off-the-cuff way because it gave people permission to use it in even less appropriate circumstances.

In her movie, the comedian may have explained that a network executive allegedly preferred she use a slur against Latinos instead of Chinese, but that didn’t change the nature of the joke and why we protested it.

GUY AOKI

Founding president, MANAA

Los Angeles