Top Ten Videos of 2009: 4. “Sarah Silverman Solves World Hunger”

Are there things that cannot be joked about? It’s the question at the center of a debate that has been going on for quite awhile. In fact, I personally hope it never stops being debated. It goes to one of the best things about comedy—its ability to help us understand one another. I say that at least in theory, there is nothing that cannot be joked about. It’s all about context and intent.

Case in point: the video that comes in at number four on my list of the top ten videos of 2009. It was made as in interlude for Real Time with Bill Maher, and features Sarah Silverman with a solution for global hunger.

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I imagine there are probably a lot of catholics who would find this video offensive. It may even rub some of Silverman’s fellow jews the wrong way as well. To be clear, I would never try to convince someone who doesn’t laugh at this piece that they were mistaken or wrong not to do so. The late film critic Gene Siskel said that you can’t hold someone to account for what they find funny, and I think the reverse is also true.

I find this video, and Sarah Silverman in general, to be hysterically funny in part because her humor begins with poking fun at herself. Her comic persona—an overprivileged, underinformed, hopelessly shallow Jewish Californian Princess—gives her the necessary setup to be quite pointed from her fundamentally inappropriate worldview. Like, say, solving world hunger not because it’s the right thing to do, but because she doesn’t want to look at the images of starving children on relief-agency ads. It’s not as if the Pope and the Catholic clergy are the only ones getting skewered here.

Am I wrong? Is there a justification for the Pope living in old-world royal opulence while preaching humility and storing your treasures not here on Earth? Do you find Sarah Silverman as funny as I do, or do you (like some others) think she’s irritating and lowbrow? Let’s hear about it in the comments!