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The following is an excerpt from the upcoming “Stay on Fountain”  e-book, soon to be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com.

A word on the etiquette of offending people:  I love a good off-color joke.  In fact, my favorite one is about the pedophile on the pier.

Pedophile is walking along the Boardwalk when he sees this little boy, nine years old, red hair, sobbing his eyes out by the railing.  Pedophile strolls up to the red-headed boy and asks him, “Little boy, what’s the matter?  Why are you crying?”

Little boy says, “My mother’s dead!  She fell over the railing and cracked her head on the rocks, and now she’s dead.”  More choking sobs.

Pedophile looks over the railing at the surf and sees, sure enough, a red-headed woman floating face-down, across the rocks, dead.  He then sees a man, also dead, floating next to the woman.

Pedophile asks the boy, “Well, who’s that guy?”

Through his veil of tears, the boy cries out, “That’s my dad!  He went in to save her, and he drowned too!  Both my parents are dead!”

Pedophile considers this for a moment, looks at the little boy, unzips his fly and says, “Kid, this just isn’t your day.”

Ohhhh!

What offends people is different for everybody.  I thought the Michael Richards n-word outburst was ludicrous, but I laughed my ass off when Kris Jenner went on Good Morning America to talk about her daughter, Kim Kardashian, not giving her engagement ring back and said “Indian giver” a hundred times.

Oh, wait.  That was despicable, too.

It really has to do with two things:  Is it funny?  Is the person harmless and/or sympathetic?

Tracy Morgan famously got his ass handed to him when he joked about stabbing his kid in the face if he was gay.  I guess you had to be there.  I like Tracy Morgan.  I don’t think Tracy Morgan would stab his kid in the face.  However, the joke wouldn’t have gotten him in as much trouble had it been funnier.  I really don’t even know how that bit would have conceivably worked, as I don’t hear any other comedians complaining about Tracy stealing their “Stab My Gay-Voiced Son in the Face” shtick.

Another celebrity in a thick pea soup at the moment is self-appointed douche-tip director Brett Ratner, who, during a press junket for his latest movie Tower Heist, claimed he didn’t do rehearsals for his shoots because “rehearsal’s are for fags.”  The publicist-approved apology came ten seconds later.

Here’s what I love about modern technology.  The chasm of time from slur to national apology is getting narrower.  I can take a long lunch break away from my Twitter, and check back in to see that the whole damn circle of life has already completed its cycle.

Before the weekend was over, Ratner had gone through his GLAAD training (yawn) and stepped down as producer of the Oscars (sure).  This seemed like extreme measures for someone widely confirmed to be a lout.  I would think a far grander, more intellectually satisfying punishment would be requiring Oscar presenters throughout the telecast to say things like, “X-Men 3 is for fags” or “Any of the Rush Hours are for fags” or “I find it funny all this talk about you sleeping with Olivia Munn, I mean, because you’re such a dick-savoring fag.  Plus these Oscars were produced like shit.”

However, that doesn’t answer society’s universal, unquenchable thirst for humiliation and then redemption stories.

Even more recently, an issue of language arose when left-leaning news org NPR, while covering the Penn State child molestation scandal on their show “To the Point,” allowed on Arkansas Family Council’s Jerry Cox to draw links between LGBT adoption and Jerry Sandusky’s ten-plus year reign as a rapist of little boys.

“I find it interesting that we talk about the Penn State situation, and then when we talk about people who claim to have these rights to adopt or foster; in both cases, the children’s rights get put in second place,” Cox spit at host Warren Olney.

Mr. Olney had this to say in response to this horrific claim, “Duuhhhh, gggguuuuh, brrrrrggghhh, up uppp og imma I don’t know waaaghhhh, not all people have a bllluuuuuuuuurrgghhhiiiibrrrrrr and that’s just one opinion.”

After the show concluded, Mr. Olney, in that beautiful 21^st century apology turnaround, issued a statement:

“We apologize for any confusion about today’s ‘To the Point,’ which dealt with both the Penn State child-sex scandal and the issue of same-sex couples as foster or adoptive parents… The connection we intended to make was this: a suspected pedophile backed by a powerful institution was allowed to have foster children, while same-sex couples, who can provide loving families, are often denied that opportunity.”

Mr. Olney claimed he had planned to clarify his point on the next day’s show, after he had wiped up the dribble off his tie of course.  Do you know who reads retractions and listens to following day clarifications?  Fucking publicists and no one else.  This is why the wild claim/next day retraction has been the favored weapon of political dirty tricks teams since the great world first had the idea to start spinning.

How much did Cox pay NPR to let him on their program for talk time?  I see no possible situation in which NPR didn’t know that this man was coming on their show with an axe to grind.  It’s programming so irresponsible I can’t even grasp it.

I find exclamation points to be a journalistic crutch, so imagine me bellowing the next paragraph:  Sandusky is not gay.  He’s married to a woman.  He’s a pedophile.  Where in God’s name does another adult male enter into the sexual equation?  How is talking about gay adoption in any way germane to the discussion of child rape and cover-up at Penn State?

My boyfriend went to Penn State, and I assure you, in his time there, he was not asked to join in the festivities.

We are fighting constantly against this kind of ignorance, false evidence and despicable leaps in connections.  I never in a million years thought we’d need to fight these battles at NPR.