Tom Antion - Disability and Blue Humor

You certainly cannot get away with any profanity or off-color (blue humor)
jokes in a professional presentation. The most serious consequence I ever heard
of with regard to using off-color humor was reported in the July 7, 1996 issue
of the Washington Post. It seems that Captain Ernie Blanchard, a career military
man with a virtually perfect record and no apparent emotional problems,
committed suicide after telling a dozen or so dirty jokes at a Coast Guard
Academy dinner in 1995. The initial investigation, which apparently drove him
to his end, concluded that telling those jokes to 117 people constituted willful
sexual harassment. This is obviously an extreme case, but it is representative of
a politically correct atmosphere that must never be forgotten when you are the
one at the microphone.

Along the same lines, you will never be invited back to speak if you use any
jokes that make fun of a person's disability. Jokes on the subjects of stuttering,
lisping, or amputees will no longer be tolerated and the consequences to your
career can be devastating.

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