Avoiding social problems by joking

I enjoyed Best's observation of jokes as a form of public expression toward popular social problems.  I had never thought about why jokes circulate and it can be argued that they reflect public attitude toward social problems.  I think the argument that joke cycles are a form of claimsmaking is compelling.  The media and locality of the incident help shape these jokes.  Some argue that joke cycles allow ordinary people to participate in the social problems process when they might otherwise be uncomfortable lending an opinion(185).  What is interesting about this is that many of the people who participate in the joking do not hold the same point of view and therefore people are able to hide behind the joke and not truly express their opinion on a social problem.  Both the media, which insists on focusing on the individual, and claimsmaking through joke cycles is a way to avoid confronting social problems.