Do we need comedy to get our point across?

While reading the articles for this weeks class and after attending the class on Tuesday, I never really put into what I read into what we as people see on a daily basis. We discussed stereotypes, "eating the other" and the representation of our own language. We as people learn these representations as we grow older and through our own culture. Being brought up in a diverse country, we see things everyday that don't seem to shock us as it would in other countries. For example we were talking about how these adult style cartoons such as Family Guy and South Park touch on some heavy duty topics that our culture and society are going through. For example, one of the characters on the show in South Park is Jewish and his mother protrays that sterotypical image of a Jewish woman-but it does so in a funny way that we all in society can laugh and relate to. Not only do they have the sterotypes of what certain people or religions are, they make fun of it and they seem to get away with it. Could the same topics that Dave Chappelle talks about get the same reaction if it was played on a different "white" channel? We have these sterotypes and we automatically judge everyone to a certain degree, whether we would all like to admit it or not. The other day I got to thinking about how we use comedy as a front to talk about certain issues such as race and sexual appearance. What would happen if we didn't have these shows to talk about what is going on in world that concerns sterotyping. What we all have to laugh about?