Can there BE a Politically Incorrect Joke?

I had the bad taste and poor judgment recently to forward to members of my writers' group a couple of jokes I received online from some rather outspoken friends. I thought they (the jokes, not necessarily the friends) were pretty funny. They were OBVIOUSLY intended as humor. I thought "writers" (of all people) would appreciate a joke -- the more outrageous and politically incorrect the better. I certainly wasn't endorsing or advocating the content.

Imagine my surprise when a couple of these literary colleagues put on their Holier-than-Thou hats and took me to task. It seems some of these incredibly articulate and smarter-than-everybody-else wordsmiths have pretty thin skins when it comes to people taking playful jabs at their sacred cows.

Well, I'm a writer, too (and therefore, in my own opinion, smarter than everybody else)(what the hell is a "writer", anyway? Can't everybody do it?), and I intend to keep on sharing my own notions of humor, tasteless as some self-righteous people might find it. That's why there's a "delete" button on the desktop, Your Collective Holinesses.

Of course, we can keep up the dialogue, too, as long as we keep personalities out of it.

Yeah, RIGHT...