Under The Sun

I just read Harold Lloyd's autobiography, An America Comedy. Originally published in 1928, it is, alas, a boring version of an exciting story. One passage struck me, though.

You often hear conservatives say there's so much political correctness, you can't make fun of any group anymore, only the mainstream. Who would have thought the same thing was going on in the silent era?

But check out this quote from the chapter entitled "The Night Life Of Hollywood." After noting the huge foreign market, Lloyd says:

If any character is to be held up to scorn or ridicule, let him be unmistakably a citizen of the U.S.A., preferably of old native stock, or else a resident of Mars, where we do not yet sell pictures. The National Association of Police Chiefs makes no protest about the Keystone cops, but the army of Graustark brooks no horseplay with its uniform. Knowing that the pictures are our very own, we rarely read a racial, national or professional slur into accidents of narrative and characterization. Very broadminded of us, but suppose, just for the sake of supposing, that London made the world's pictures. Suppose again that a British company should make a good British version of Hoyt's good old American farce, A Milk White Flag, which made fun of our politics and our militia. There would be rioting in the armories and hot words in the legislature, or I don't know my human nature. I can take a joke on myself, perhaps, but I prefer to do the telling of it.