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Tuesday, March 27, 2007-9:15 A.M.

Political correctness is for the birds.  Stereotypes are true.  To be fair, some are more true than others, but if they weren't true at all, they wouldn't have gotten started now, would they?

I worked this week in San Antonio, Texas, at the Rivercenter Comedy Club, which is mostly a tourist venue.  On the weekend, however, the locals come out, and a good percentage of the local population is Hispanic, specifically Mexican-American.

Now, right out of the gate, I do a joke that plays on the stereotype of Mexicans riding around in cars with as many Chicanos squeezed into them as possible.  I've never personaly witnessed this, but the stereotype seemed so pervasive, I wound up writing a joke about it (I am, at my core, an evil white man...I suppose).  I didn't want to be an asshole (or be rejected) by doing such a joke, especially since it ocurred so early in my show, so on Wednesday and Thursday, I cut the joke out.

In retrospect, it was a chickenshit move.

On Friday, I was walking around and happened to be near the mall where the comedy club is, and I saw a car pull up, and several Hispanic teens came spilling out, and when I say several, what I mean to say is that it was like a fucking clown car....they just kept coming!  I was pretty sure there were one or two in the glove box and maybe one huddled in the well where the spare tire was supposed to be.

It was then that I arrived at this epiphany...perhaps truth is a defense.  And more than that, if I can't do a joke in front of *everyone,* then perhaps I shouldn't do the joke at all.

So I broke the joke out.  In front of a large group of Hispanics.  And it killed.

Now, I didn't just come out of nowhere with it...I warmed up the crowd with enough material that they got to know me, and I pride myself on being very soft in my stage presence...I'm not confrontational, by turns I think I'm almost cuddly.  So I'm getting them to like me, and then BOOM!  And it was like magic.  The truth of the comment was so pervasive, it became a thing of beauty, and they ate it up with a spoon.

I'm not advocating the use of ugly stereotypes...certainly, every ethnic group has traits that are not flattering and there's no use to dredge them up, especially when you're not a member of the group; which by the way, seems to be a blanket permission to use those stereotypes, and isn't that just as inherently wrong?  But I also think that it's phony and false to pretend that differences don't exist where they clearly do, and that's probably more racist than pointing out areas in which our ethnic extractions diverge.

My wife is half African American, and I certainly comment on that.  The jokes (and there's only two of them) are both stereotyping, and never fail to get the laugh.  I joke about being Italian and use maybe half a dozen jokes in that area.  So if it's o.k. in those instances, it's only o.k. because the stereotypes are mild (and true) and the jokes are presented in the interest of fun, told with a smile and not with a scowl, and that is where comics have room to err.  If a joke is told with a matter-of-factness, a smugness or an air of superiority, it will be met with rejection and anger (instead of the laughter that was intended).  All the while when I unfurled my little standup comedy act in front of ethnically generic audiences, I figured I was getting laughs because of ignorant white people enjoying the unfair portrayal of ethnic groups. 

God must have had a plan when he made us all colors and many languages and traits and allowed different cultures to develop...I think it was to teach us something, and I may have learned a little this week.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY