"miracle in the alcohol aisle" etc

...whether it's funny is orthogonal to the problem with Takei's "miracle in the alcohol aisle" joke-- that it reinforces a false idea people believe uncritically, which causes them to hurt vulnerable people.

Here's a parallel: I have a large number of books of jokes going back well over a hundred years. Some of them contain, for example, Jewish jokes (iirc there's a section called "Told Against Our Friend The Jew", which shows they already knew about the problem and printed them anyway). Some of these jokes may well be pants-wettingly hilarious for all I care; antisemitism still flourishes, and I'm still not using that material. It's the punching up vs punching down distinction.

[a comment I have left in more than one discussion today; I am starting to think of it as "Told Against Our Friend The Jew" for short.]