Comments on: Jimmy Kimmel’s sadistic humor – since when did parents decide it’s funny to humiliate your children?

By: Emy

Emy — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 06:42:52 +0000

When I was a little girl aged five, My father gave me a very ugly looking hockey player doll with a flat nose while my older sister got a barbi doll in a pink dress. He thought my distress was amusing and then told me to stop crying because it was hurting my mother. My father was sadistic. He would come up to me and give me a snake bite (which really hurt) just because he felt like it and found the look on my face amusing. He also liked to dunk us in the water until we thought we were going to drown. He could not take any jokes directed towards himself. It is strange how so many defended him and found his cruelty amusing. When I was a little girl, he pulled down my pants infront of a group of adults and call me fat butt. I ran from the room humiliated. All the adults were laughing.

By: Les Kertay

Les Kertay — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:02:42 +0000

Lina, thanks for your comment and sorry I’m responding so late. I appreciate your willingness to say what I suspect is true for many of us – we laugh at things that shouldn’t be funny, but someone it’s become a part of the culture and we succumb out of habit or out of nervousness. I think it happens to a lot of people, and I know it happens to me, even though it’s uncomfortable to admit. I’ll spend some time thinking about that, to, you can bet!

By: Lina Kelso

Lina Kelso — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 05:06:14 +0000

I have to admit I did think the Jimmy Kimmel pieces were funny. Your piece is really thought-provoking and makes me wonder why they are so funny to me. Now, I would NEVER do this to MY children. Even when I was laughing at the videos, I thought, “HOW TERRIBLE!!!” But still they were funny to me. Yikes. My sense of humor tends to be pretty messed up and dark sometimes. Thanks for a different viewpoint. I will think about this.

By: Les Kertay

Les Kertay — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:44:11 +0000

Sorry Anne, my comment on the blog was meant to be a reply to yours … I’m not usually technologically challenged!

By: Les Kertay

Les Kertay — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:42:48 +0000

Thanks, Anne. I didn’t know about Choe’s daughter. The response to this video has been interesting to me – interesting in an academic way, painful in a more human way. I don’t get how anyone can manage not to see the pain in those faces. Sure, they’ll be ok for the most part, kids are pretty resilient and virtually all of us have had the experience of being tricked or embarrassed or bullied in some way. That doesn’t make it right.

Appreciate you taking the time to comment.

Les