Never Forget to Remember

While they say tragedy +time= comedy, there appears to be no such formula to figure out exactly how long is appropriate before it’s OK to joke about things. If there was it might be something like this:

Cultural impact of tragedy - amount of time that has passed = risk of “too soon” reaction.

Some examples:

Michael Jackson’s Death: Gave the World Thriller, but maybe molested young boys, happened 3 months ago= too late, most of the MJ jokes happened within the first week of his death and weren’t funny.

AIDS kills millions of people, but is no longer as big of a scare for middle and upper class people, and has been around for nearly 30 years. So an AIDS joke, while maybe not always in good taste, if done well is probably safe.

But what about 9/11? Less than 3,000 people died, eight years ago…. While people might not be ready to laugh about it, I do think it’s time we move on at least somewhat. After all, is suspending all other news coverage for a memorial service once a year a healthy thing as a nation? Is repeatedly wrapping ourselves up in mourning and tragedy productive? Is the constant coverage every year out of a sense of obligation, or just lazy journalism? A National Day of Service? A useful and noble idea. Not being able to get any other news once a year? The terrorists have won.