Child Abuse in Nexus. If you were scanning the magazine for that, I hope I caught your attention. If you even bothered scanning the vitaminC column, thanks for the vote of confidence. This column won’t contain any, but I was spurred on by some reader reaction we received over the break and I’d like to put my two cents in.

The puzzle-page before the break had a few reader-submitted jokes in it, and for reasons that don’t need to be listed here (largely because it is irrelevant to the matter) some jokes that fall in to the broader category of ‘bad taste’ managed to slip through the cracks both in the composition of the puzzle page and the final editorial review. Firstly, let it be known that if that page had the chance to be subjected to the regular vetting process, those jokes wouldn’t have made it to publication. There’s no defense to be made for their inclusion in a magazine intended for public consumption. An apology is certainly due to those who were offended (sorry!).

Some people, understandably outraged, have however claimed that publishing jokes about child abuse somehow implies that Nexus supports child abuse, by making light of it. I don’t want to see that claim go uncontested. Firstly, the fact that it is a joke should suggest that every word, idea or concept exists solely to frame the funny part. This is usually loosely defined as an unexpected truth – in a simple Question/Answer joke, the answer satisfies the conditions in the question in a way that the listener doesn’t anticipate. The appeal of bad taste humour is that it involves things that we don’t think or talk about in our everyday lives because, well, it’s just in bad taste. When our brain is suddenly assailed by a completely unexpected idea from left-field, we usually respond with mirth. Obviously when it comes to bad taste, personal context applies to this.

Nexus has been invited by Parent Line to visit their offices to learn about the realities of the horror of child abuse. I’ll try to follow this up on principle, but what the fuck? People don’t make bad taste jokes out of lack of awareness. It’s common to hear advocates for various issues fighting for awareness about discrimination or what-have-you. Awareness is not the problem that you are trying to fight, and it is also unrelated to this particular case. Society is well aware of street-crime but it hasn’t stopped, to make a barely-valid analogy.

Bad taste has been around for a very long time. Many respected artists have engaged in it through history. As mentioned before, subjects of bad taste don’t really appear in our everyday lives, except on the news. Commenting on events like murders, rapes and disabilities in a frank and lighthearted manner is in polite society seen as disrespectful to the victims involved. Observations that, while unfortunately true, are not particularly compassionate towards those experiencing grief or trauma is bad taste, and is usually the domain of some comedians. If you’ve read the book Watchmen, there is a character called The Comedian who is far from comedic. He uses his actions to illustrate the truths of the world that can’t be talked about. In real life, we have people like Bill Hicks, who by necessity offend a wide cross-section of people. Personally, if you’re interested, the peak of bad taste to me is joking about chopping up prostitutes, and I’ll casually drop awful jokes into everyday conversation. To me there is something fundamentally wrong with a world where it is somehow a run-of-the-mill headline that a woman who sells sex for money both exists and has been murdered and dumped in a river. Joking about it is the only way to bring it up, and maybe someone might stop and think about it. Mostly though, it’s just convinced friends and co-workers that I’m the Hamilton Rapist.