Dir Abramovich, Jewish humor, Jewish comedy, and give me some more of the deeply offensive laughter ...

(Above: Mel Brooks didn't just give the world Get Smart! Talk about bad taste).

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum (book Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, music and lyrics Stephen Sondheim).

I read Dir Abramovich's This Family Guy isn't funny, just offensive, and I knew it was wrong, and deeply offensive in a funny kind of way, but I didn't know how to respond.

First a confession. I have a taste for what - for want of a better word - might be dubbed American Jewish humor. Bring on Seinfeld, love it. Bring on Curb Your Enthusiasm, love it, a half hour of cringing, but I love it (did I mention I live with Larry David, only without the Seinfeld royalties, and the mansion?)

Do you remember the season four episode The Survivor? Larry and Cheryl plan a tenth anniversary vow renewal, and as a result of a misunderstanding, the Rabbi conducting the ceremony brings a Survivor from the TV series to a social occasion, while Larry's father brings a Holocaust Survivor, leading to an argument over who's the better Survivor.

It's cringe inducing in spades, and it toys with one of the worst events in human history, at least up there with god bringing on the flood, wiping out humanity, and leaving Noah in the boat with a lot of two by twos.

But it's funny. Go figure.

And don't get me started on The Producers, which is my favorite movie about musicals, and which celebrates in the most perverse way, Hitler in spring time.

But then I grew up reading Philip Roth, so what would I know.

Anyhoo, I was thinking about scribbling about what a stick in the mud Dvir Abramovich sounds like, and how silly his commentary was, and how deeply unknowing about humor he is, and what a joy it is to see the deep rich strand of Jewish humor that's constantly mined in the United States for all to enjoy. Subversive, edgy, clever and funny, and give and take, and cut and thrust and payback, and if you're not as sharp as a cut-throat razor, you'll get cut.

Oh yes, Lenny Bruce started off with the name Leonard Alfred Schneider in New York:

"To me, if you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish", he once said. " It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you are going to be goyish if you're Jewish."

Which reminds me of another Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, where Larry David discovers he's been adopted, and flies out to visit his newly discovered parents, who turn out to be ardent Christians from the mid-west (series five, episode ten, The End, in case you go looking). David has fun with both Christian and Jewish stereotypes, and manages to walk the tight rope of offensiveness as he indulges in church, fishing and having a few beers.

But enough already. Back in those days, Mike Nichols, Mort Sahl, Elaine May and a host of others were Jewish. And they were funny, but none funnier than the deeply obscene (for those days) Lenny Bruce.

But I digress. Because I don't have to write a whit or jot about killjoy Dvir Abramovich. It's all been done for me, by Alex Fein, in The Holocaust is no exemption from satire.

What a clever, sensible young thing. So all I have to do is provide you with a link. Oh and a quote to go on with:

We need to be suspicious of anyone who sets parameters for what can laughed at. Abramovich intimates that because of Jews' past suffering, they should be exempt from the satire that every other ethnic group experiences.

When his arguments are reduced to their essence – that the uniqueness of the Holocaust makes the Jewish position in popular culture untouchable – they transform the Holocaust into a religious phenomenon. Consequently, all cultural product pertaining to Jews that is not sanctioned by his worldview is deemed heretical.

Unfortunately, Abramovich does not realise that the profane exists to be laughed at.

Oh, and a few one liners from Lenny Bruce, even if the man can only be really enjoyed doing a rap live:

The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
If you can take the hot lead enema, then you can cast the first stone.
I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up.
Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
The "what should be" never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no "what should be," there is only "what is".
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha - ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.
The only truly anonymous donor is the guy who knocks up your daughter.
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

Now for a little Larry David, and Australian snakes, and cringe time. And away with Dir Abramovich and his silly willingness to take offence when he seems deeply reluctant to take the gate.

If it's funny, it flies, and if it isn't funny, it sinks like a stone. So it goes, and so it should be ...