The difference between something like South Park is that they have an entire body of work available for someone to look at, the joke is within a huge multi-seasoned context. In fact, a lot of the jokes in the early seasons were more offensive than the ones in the later seasons because of the tone changes and maturing in the series, the context changed.

I don't think anyone's obligated to give that benefit of a doubt to a random person telling an offensive joke, and I definitely don't think the burden of educating bigoted people falls on the shoulders of their victims.

Your main goal here seems to orbit around the Be Nice Brigade which puts the focus back on the feelings of the person who was in the wrong. That's ridiculous. What if the victim doesn't WANT to ignore it? They should just suck it up, because yelling would hurt the other person's feelings? What? Why does the moral maturity of a bigot lie in the hands of their victim? Do you know how often minorities are told to be quiet because they'll make a scene, they'll make other women/blacks/jews/anything not a white male look bad?

I want you to reread the first comment you got, and really try to figure out why you defaulted on assuming that the joke wasn't worthy of being shot down, and why it was so important to you to assure that person they had nothing to apologize for (probably!!!). Was it because the poster just seemed sad and you wanted to cheer them up? Isn't it just as possible that several people were made sad by their hilarious joke? Why was your immediate thought that it was just a bunch of uppity people complaining?

But I think this will be my last time trying to explain any of this on F!S, this place has become the squatting grounds for the Be Nice Brigade and I lost the patience to calmly and sweetly explain why someone should get off my foot ages ago.

Also you don't know how to use re:.