Gaither and Clean Comedy

Gaither and Clean Comedy January 20, 2012

I love comedy. I have a strange sense of humor (thanks Mom and Dad). I go around sampling Christian comedians all the time. Others have their particular favorites, but I always have trouble picking a favorite because I can appreciate each comedian’s unique style. There’s nothing I love better than a truly  hilarious joke told well. Unless… it’s off-color. Those kinds of jokes turn me off. I simply don’t find them funny or appealing. If you’re on a good clean roll, but you stop to drop a dirty joke, it takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.

By and large, the jokes you’ll hear at a Gaither event are family-friendly. Even though Mark Lowry will occasionally come out with something a little crude-sounding (e.g. “He’s little but fertile”), Bill makes a big show of looking embarrassed and disassociating himself from it all, which tends to mitigate any awkward effects and just make it a cute “There goes Mark again” moment.
But just occasionally, something slips in there that makes my eyebrows go up a little. For instance, there’s one joke Bill sometimes tells about himself and Gloria that I’m not so sure about. It’s the one where he says “The other day I asked Gloria, ‘Honey, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine that we’d be able to go out and work with all this talent and do this for a living?’ ” To which Gloria replies “You were never in my wildest dreams, honey.”
It took a while for that to hit me. Then when it did, I kinda went, “Hm.” Then, “Meh.” Sure, nothing’s stated outright, but what do you suppose Gloria is dreaming wild dreams about in the joke? Playing Boggle with her ideal man? I don’t think so either.
I hesitated about posting this, but I think it’s a conversation worth having. It makes sense to hold people we respect to even higher standards than those to which we’d hold the rest of the world.
Where do you draw the line?


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