Regarding the OP's edits and his link about triggers and how joking affects victims.
It's all true.
I don't care.
We can't shy away of every traumatic memory anybody has, ever. We can't avoid humour in all areas of life that hurt somebody, somewhere. Our discourse must be allowed to raise beyond the level of, say, the Care Bears.
It's true that it's hard to argue with a victim. Or, more often, a victim's family, that at times overprotects and overreacts. And I agree with the PA guys' first reaction: not talk about it. It's not a conversation that can be acknowledged. It's best for everybody if it's not.
But if one *was* to acknowledge it, this is what one might say:
That we all have suffered, will suffer or may suffer emotional trauma. That the world does not stop for us when we do. That learning to move on and deal with the unavoidable, stubborn decision of the world to continue to exist despite our own misfortune is learning how to overcome the trauma.
Cancer hits every family at some point. I bet we've all seen it. That cancer joke. Accidentally using "tumor" here and there. Somebody plays that one Nirvana song. And there's a pause.
And then it happens again, and again, and there's cancer in that House episode we're all watching and some standup who thinks he's edgy does a whole routine and the pause gets smaller and the grieving doesn't peak as much and eventually you overcome. Or you don't, but if you don't, you still don't get to kick and scream and tell them all to shut up. Harsh as it is to hear, the worst, most deranged, unimaginable catastrophes that befall us all are just background noise for everybody else.
Now, a lesser speaker, I suspect, would end that paragraph with "deal with it" and move on. I won't. You are not mandated to deal with it. I certainly have not dealt with it many times in the past. We are all entitled to not dealing with it for as long as we want. When not dealing with it involves telling everybody else to stop doing what they're doing to help you deal, though, well that would be pretty great if we could do it for everyone, but we can't. So we don't.
A tsunami killed hundreds of thousands, an earthquake devastated an entire country, illness kills every day. Murder happens, breaking families, and we joke about it. Worse, we watch CSI and Law and Order and Bones, which are, let's face it, more insensitive than Dickwolves by way of stupidity and lack of creativity. I can't even begin to comprehend how the mother of a murder victim reacts to a rotten corpse sliced open casually while two handsome actors flirt on top of it while spouting platitudes about justice and following their gut, but I imagine this happens routinely. Some deal, some don't, but nobody puts their jobs, their creativity or their lives on hold for it, cruel as it may be.
And that's what I think about it.
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