Too soon for Katrina jokes?

That's exactly the problem. According to the sentiment that calls for this question, compassion is a time-sensitive issue.

It has become en vogue over the past few years, with the seeming deluge of tragedies that accompanied them, to be a callous person. It is literally stylish.

T-shirthell.com is at the forefront of the trend. On one shirt for sale, "Nothing runs like a queere" (sic) is placed in the John Deere format, with a group of weapon-holding figures running down a expressly frightened figure.

Matthew Shepard was beaten and dragged to death in October 1998. Seven years ago. Is it funny yet?

They have a group of Hurricane Katrina shirts for sale too. I hate to up their site-hit count by telling you that, but it would waste precious page space to dictate the jokes to you now.

While people cope with tragic situations better as time goes on, temporality has nothing to do with whether a person is going to be offended by an insensitive remark. It goes beyond a lack of compassion into the arena of sadism. These jokes, slogans of the callous movement, are meant to offend, meant to insult and unsettle.

George Carlin, possibly one of the most outspoken, or at least the most listened-to advocates of bad taste ever, does a number of routines meant to shock and offend. The difference between Carlin's witting and witty satire and T-shirthell-level humor is the intended end. The message, the point.

In determining what is acceptable to an individual and what is not, one must decide what a joke is trying to say. Carlin used his oft-referenced "7 Dirty Words" routine as a commentary on censorship and the reigning methods of the moral majority. He makes provocative statements in the midst of his alleged filth, which is what separates him from base shock-artists.

It seems that T-shirthell, and plenty of people that surround us on a daily basis, make an active choice to neglect the message and focus on the gastric instinct of what is funny.

Some make the point that comedy is just a way of dealing with tragedy; that comedy is, in effect, an all-encompassing excuse for insensitivity. Is it excusable to laugh about everything?

There is probably a worthwhile and provocative point to be made about every tragedy that makes the news. If it's possible to find that point and make it in a comedic way that helps relieve people's stress or grief, then it's a joke worth telling.

If the only point, however, is to collectively disparage and downplay the incomprehensible mourning that thousands of people have undertaken, then the teller can be justifiably ridiculed and hopefully made uncomfortable enough as to discourage future tellings.

I can understand, however, why one would feel compelled to indulge in senseless levity concerning these issues.

Somehow, media coverage of Hurricane Katrina has been overblown, if you'll pardon the pun. The death of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist became a sidebar story, so enveloping was the media blitz.

The cover of last week's Generation magazine made a similar point quite eloquently. In an admirable display of satire, the editors, Alex Espinal and Andrew Godshalk, put forth the notion that the American perspective is skewed unfairly toward tragedies that directly affect the United States, which has allowed most Americans to remain in the dark on the Sudanese genocide in Darfur.

They've got it figured out. Without diminishing the catastrophic effect Katrina had, and continues to wreak, on New Orleans, they made their point that involves it.

Situations that command the grief of an entire population should also command its respect and should be approached with nothing but sensibility.

Keep the punch lines rolling, if you have a point.