Rhinos, White-os, and humour

The other day I ended up stuck in traffic behind a car I really wanted to hijack.

It wasn’t even a nice car. It was an old bakkie that looked like it needed a bit of touching up.

Almost a small truck it was the sort of big car you can just imagine chugging its way through a small Middle Eastern nation’s diesel reserves.

But what made me want to hijack this guy was his bumper sticker – “F*** the rhino, Save the White-o”.

So the urge to hijack was twofold.

On the one hand I quite like having rhinos in our country. They’re not my favourite animal by a long chalk, but they are a good tourist draw and quite charismatic in their own way.

On the other hand I figured getting hijacked by a white guy would really do his head in. I mean – you are the sort of person who would have that on your car, would you expect to be hijacked by a tall blond guy?

It would have been hilarious – unfortunately I am a rather law abiding sort and the resultant prison term wouldn’t have been quite as funny. You really shouldn't hijack people over their car decorating choices.

Though it would still have gotten more laughs than that bumper sticker.

The thing about humour that a lot of people don’t get is that humour is about saying things. We find Mr Bean funny because it says something about British life – we find comedians funny because they say things about the world we are in.

Humour is one of the most potent tools we have in our intellectual arsenals, and a vital part of maintaining one’s logical abilities. We often make the mistake of taking serious people seriously, and non-serious people as being jokes themselves.

Yet when push comes to shove a comedian is basically a philosopher people listen to. When Hitler was taking over Germany he wasn’t using Nazi philosophers to push his propaganda, he was using cartoonists. Humour can be used for evil.

So one cannot really jump to the defence of something – like that bumper sticker – with the idea of “It’s a joke, lighten up” – jokes are serious business. When something is said simply to shock, that doesn’t make it any less wrong.

And frankly, if you can drive around with that bumper sticker without a serious fear of hijacking, you aren’t exactly as at risk as you would like to portray yourself as being. Stop whining.