Fodder for Debate

Last week, looking to blow off steam, I visited the "Comedy Cellar," a comedy club in the West Village. The Cellar is known for nurturing talents like Dave Chappell, Colin Quinn and Dave Attel. Needless to say, the club's comedians aren't politically correct. Therefore, it came as no surprise, that after 15 minutes, one of the night's comedians was already headlong into a set about international politics. And he had a real snide tone.

He began a joke with these words: "Oh yeah, and will someone tell those Muslims that those cartoons --" however, he didn't make it to the punch line. Instead, a young Muslim girl in the audience cut him off. She had anticipated the nasty punch line about her religion, and she told the comic that, essentially, whatever we was about to say was "in poor taste." The comic, not too happy about getting cut off by a member of the audience, bit into her a little bit with a few jokes. He also rebutted the Muslim girl's comment by saying that he's "allowed to make fun of Muslims because, earlier in the night," he had already "made fun of Jews and Blacks." Why should Muslims be excluded, he asked?

But here are my questions:

A) Should she have cut him off in the middle of his joke?
B) Should comics avoid these issues during such emotionally tense times?
C) In a larger sense, how much self-censorship should the West practice when it comes to these issues?
D) Although the comic made fun of Jews and Blacks earlier in his set, he told those jokes with lighthearted irony. However, when the comic began to tell the joke about the Muslims, based on my analysis of his tone, there was this sense that he really didn't care too much for Muslims. In other words, he began to tell the joke about the Muslims with a "what's-wrong-with-these-crazy-people tone of voice. It was almost as though the Muslim joke was in a different category from the Jewish and Black jokes, because – again, through what I sensed in his tone – he felt that Muslims really were crazy. If this is the case, was the girl justified?