Is making puns around the holocaust funny or just crass?

Question

please do not report with question just let it be seen and we can all make our judgements about the questioner

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070823074041AAZyLGP&r=w&pa=FZptHWf.BGRX3OFMiTNdWMBqCQDo3AyIyzk44rmCSZH1yzEPrA--&paid=answered#EIFZLGu8NDi.togFtiR7

Answer 1

Tradgedy+Time=Comedy.
But Maybe we need to give the holocaust a little more time...

Answer 2

Holocaust Puns

Answer 3

As humans we wear species blinders. Slaughterhouses have always creeped me out, and the asker was trying to raise some awareness of what we do to the animals under our dominion, and yes, slaughterhouses are killing factories just like the concentration camps. Obviously, what matters most to humans is other humans, and that is as it should be from a human perspective. To cows, however, if they weren't so stone-dead stupid, this would indeed be their "Cowschwitz." I don't think the asker was making puns about the Holocaust, he was making a comparison. What humans do to animals is not much different from what humans have done and still to -- treat other humans "like animals." If it needs to hit closer to home, consider slaughterhouses during the Great Depression, where they killed dogs for food. Seeing such a slaughter facility in operation might hit home more if it was sweet little trusty-eyed doggies being brutally put down, but what is the difference between one four legged creature and another? Intelligence? Whales are slaughtered, and whales may actually possess an intelligence exceeding the human brain. My point is, I'm no vegetarian but I think humanity as a whole, myself included, ought to be. First we have to stop killing each other, though, then we can work on the finer points of peace and love in the universe.

Answer 4

Penfold,

This is indeed vulgar, however, there number of people answering that seemed to take his reference means that it's in the venacular there as animal death camps. Although intention and outcome are rarely the same thing, I don't believe this guy intended to desecrate the memory of the death camps. I think that yr and moley's posts might have put the thought in his head.

In Y!A I've seen crass September 11th jokes and comments, crass hateful/hurtful religious comments, some downright WTF? racist questions, crass people blasting my country, crass people blasting my parents homeland, crass handicap comments; as we all have. But I went to school during the PC era and I don't believe--and I think you agree--that the trolls with the truncheons shouldn't be roaming our halls at every moment. If this goes beyond the limit for someone, I'm sure they'll report him.

In this case I vote crass. (At the moment I'm listening to an Morrissey cooning "Please die" to Margaret Thatcher. This is crass but contextually correct.)

Answer 5

It's not punning about the Shoah which is the problem. I remember reading a novel by Robert Bober, What News of the War (takes place in Paris after the war) in which one of the characters is called Abramowicz, and his friends call him Abramauschwitz. It's survivors' humour, or whatever you may want to call it. In the question posted, the problem is that of the comparison. I am sure there are other ways of denouncing cruelty to animals.

Answer 6

The use of the "pun" was deliberate and makes a point. It was not to be funny or crass. Just because it's animals, it isn't as bad as the holocaust? Maybe not quite as bad, but bad enough to draw the comparison.

I guess I'm saying it depends on the context.

Answer 7

I didn't get the reference, but I personaly think puns about the Holocaust as a rule would be in poor taste. On the flip of this there has been a debate from time to time if giving Hitler credit for being a masterful manipulator and a great speech giver/writer is in good/poor taste.

Answer 8

I understand the point that they were trying to make, and I believe the intent was not to be funny, but to invoke a similarity between the holocaust and cow slaughter

I'd call this usage crass and uncalled for.

Answer 9

bc everytime something bad happens u have to let so much time go by and then people start making jokes about it (it becomes funny) example Michael Jackson has been gone for what 2 weeks? and the Jokes are already out there. If it hurts ur feelings just ignore them and pick on them for something =)

Answer 10

I don't have any problem with it in that context - the writer wasn't trying to be funny, but was referencing a nickname for a particularly nasty factory farm. The name was intended to draw a _comparison_ between the farm and Auschwitz, and was a valid juxtaposition within the mindset of radical vegetarianism.

Answer 11

Take it up with Mel Brooks.

And my original intent was not to be funny. That word is actually used in describing that place and if you've ever driven past it you would know why.

It is not a comparison between cows and people. It is a reference to the fact that that feed lot is a cruel and terrible place.

PS Do you think it's fair to block somebody and then post a question attacking them?