Mindy Kaling jokingly referred to herself as a “human trafficker” of “handsome men” on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Do I take offense to that? You’re damn right I do.
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Oh, but then she added “It’s okay. They don’t get human trafficked that much.”
And then in the finale, when she kinda-sorta tried to apologize, she turned into a joke by bragging that she is…
“The first Indian woman ever to be a human trafficker.”
So here’s a short list of things Mindy Kaling would know if she really was a human trafficker:
(1) It’s no joking matter. It’s a business, and perhaps our world’s most complex and brutal crime.
(2) She wouldn’t be the first Indian woman ever because, well, thousands of Indian women have come before her.
(3) It happens all over the world and, in addition to girls and women, it wrecks the lives of boy and men.
I’ll end there. Mindy Kaling seems cool as all get out. May this serve as a small nudge to encourage her to become more sensitive to this issue.
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–Photo: AP
I’m not her audience; and I don’t care. I of course despise human trafficking, but who doesn’t? It’s horrific, the kind of thing that can make you lose faith in humanity. But like a flag, words are only a symbol of something, not that something itself. She’s not condoning human trafficking or making light of it, she’s using it for comic effect, creating a ridiculous comparison in a sarcastic manner. I don’t think she was very funny, either, but so what? There’s such a thing as too sensitive; at some point, one person’s sensitivity trespasses on another person. In this… Read more »
Although humor is a way to deal with very painful issues and can serve us well in dealing with tragedy and horrors that are part of the human experience sometimes, there is an intelligent way of using it and a mindless tasteless way of using it. I wonder if Mindy knows the difference? I wonder if her audience even cares?