You can’t say bomb on a plane, and you can’t make fun of minorities on television.  Well, one of those taboos is being broken just about every night.     

“Remarkable people, the Blacks,” Alec Baldwin says on an episode of “30 Rock” on NBC. “Musical, very athletic, but not very good swimmers, and again, I’m talking about the family.”

That mischievous use of the surname Black to make a joke about stereotypes was very similar to a conceit woven into the entire sixth season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Larry David and his wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), take in an African-American family left homeless by Hurricane Edna. Their guests’ surname is Black, which amuses only Larry. “That’s like if my last name was Jew,” Larry says as the Blacks stare at him blankly. “Like Larry Jew.”

The great thing about comedy is that it’s the great democratizer, the great equalizer, the great destructor of ego and vanity (unlike tragedy, that is its opposite).  Of course, everybody and subcultural group has something you can’t make fun of, but I think it’s a sign of health in our culture that we can expose the racial wound to the healing fresh air of good comedy.