Personally, Spike was raised on the Clairee Belcher motto from “Steel Magnolias”: “If you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me!” Nothing is sweeter to Spike’s ears than a well timed, witty repost at someone else’s expense, and his whole family is the same way. In fact, Spike remembers coming home from school one day when he was a wee lad, all boo-hooey because one of the girls in his class had called him a “Q-Tip with eyes.” And when he told his mother what the girl had said she laughed beer through her nose, punched Spike in the arm and said, “You gotta admit that was a pretty good one, you little pussy. Now what does this little bitch look like?” and then she helped Spike cook up some choice payback for the next day.

And Spike doesn’t see anything wrong with that. In fact he thinks that if more people followed the lead of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog rather than Goliath from “Davey & Goliath” the world would be a more joyous place and people would be more well adjusted.

While your philosophy may, in fact, be more evolved, a kinder, gentler world is simply not a place in which Spike would want to live, because life without mean-spirited humor would just be dull. It would be like living on the Starship Enterprise during the Picard years. Sure it was a wonderful utopian society where most races lived in peace and where famine and poverty were things of the past. Sure they could cure disease by passing a magic wand over your body and you could get a burger just by pressing a button. Sure you could watch the hot captain strutting around the ship in his form-fitting top and buttocks-hugging trousers. But poor Worf couldn’t allow even a touch of his fiery Klingon temperament to surface without everyone treating him like he’d just farted in an elevator. It was just repressive and boring.

Let’s face it, Dick, it’s human nature to mock and ridicule others who are different. Maybe it comes from insecurity as your oh-so-sensitive parents suggested—and perhaps it’s not one of our most attractive traits—but it seems to be locked into our DNA. And it’s not just a human trait. Most species shun those who are deformed or crippled, and the strong typically bully the weak. Granted, those behaviors have to do with a biological imperative to keep the species strong, but who’s to say that our impulse to mock and ridicule doesn’t come from the same place? It may just be that, as with everything we do, we humans have refined the behavior to the point where it’s lost all its original relevance...kind of like Katie Couric. We’ve moved from “Ogg is short and weak so will make bad babies” to “Did you hear the one about the Spartan who had sex with his wife? Yeah, from behind he mistook her for his young male lover,” to “Hey, 1975 called and they want your hair back.” Now our mocking may serve no greater purpose, but it’s still an instinctive part of our species.

Spike’s only rule is that it’s never okay to be cruel to strangers or hurt their feelings. To paraphrase Kathy Griffin, Spike was raised properly: he knows enough to make fun of people behind their backs...unless it’s a friend or family member in which case you should always mock them to their face. Sure Spike takes occasional cruel swipes at celebrities he doesn’t know, but let’s face it, the chances of Aretha Franklin, Tom Cruise, Rosie O’Donnell, Clay Aiken or Barry Manilow reading some little online gay advice column are pretty small...okay, well the chances of Aretha reading it are pretty small, anyway.

But caution must be exercised during public mocking. Many years ago one of Spike’s friends was stuck at the airport for several hours with his boyfriend. Being two gay men with nothing to do, they did what came naturally...they began making fun of everyone else at the departure gate. Since both of them were fluent in sign language, however, they did it all by signing so no one would know. At one point a particularly large, unattractive woman sat across from them so they turned their attention to her, ridiculing her size, her hair, her clothes and her shoes. Finally after a few minutes the woman got up, looked at them and signed, “And I’m deaf, too, assholes,” before waddling away. That was a very instructive life lesson. Spike finds it useful to test his volume before making fun of people in public by quietly asking, “Did anyone lose a twenty dollar bill?” If no one responds he knows he’s using his proper “inside voice.”

So long as no one gets hurt Spike doesn’t see any harm in making fun of other people. This world is sadly lacking in humor and wit, so anything that brings a little to our daily lives is for the good.

Which leads us to your REAL problem, Dick. As Spike sees it your problem isn’t that Juan Travolta likes to mock people. It’s that his jokes just aren’t funny. First of all, Anna Nicole is dead, so unless the joke is something like, “Damn, looks like Anna Nicole escaped from her coffin again. Nice to see dying didn’t hurt her appetite,” it’s just not timely. And when she was still living the better joke would have been, “Looks like Anna Nicole lost the recipe for Trim Spa again.” That's funnier because it’s layered. It acknowledges the resemblance between the passerby and Anna Nicole, but specifies the fat Anna Nicole, plus it makes fun of Anna Nicole’s intellect since Trim Spa comes pre-mixed in a can so you just have to open it. See the difference? No, probably not.

Anyway, the issue is that your man just isn’t very clever, so instead of trying to reason with him perhaps you should fight fire with fire. Insult his attempts at wit enough times and he just might stop trying. Spike suggest that from now on, every time he makes a lame joke, give him a thumbs up and a big goofy grin and say, “Yo, Dice. Nice one.” Of course given that he’s from the Bronx he might consider it a compliment since those goombas seem to think that the comic stylings of Andrew Dice Clay were the high point of modern comic culture, but he’s also gay so he might catch on eventually. And until he does at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you just called him a dumbass to his face.

Well, time for Spike to get going. The local Weight Watchers meeting lets out in 15 minutes and Spike needs to get an ice cream so he can sit out front and torment all the fatties.

So ciao for now,
Spike

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