Aren't we all a little misunderstood?

Ok, I'll take on the question (since no one else has stepped up to the plate, here) of whether we are laughing at "people's struggles against ignorance and bigotry" and thereby legitimizing oppression, as a poster on the Geico caveman to another blog recently observed.

I guess it depends what you, personally, are laughing at. Here's why I think I get a kick out of the caveman (whether his personality is pretty much the same in all of the commercials or whether the commercials trace some kind of development or change is a subject for another discussion.) Let's take the therapist commercial. He's sick of people not getting it that he is an intelligent white collar kind of guy. So he goes to a therapist, because that is what it is recommended that you do if you have some kind of psychological malaise. As is sometimes or often the case, though, the therapist can't help much, whether because he or she doesn't get you either or because no one can help you that much with what's ailing you anyways.

Or maybe talking to the therapist IS helping, even if it's not apparent at the time. So the caveman bears with it; he's going through the motions like he usually does, because he's generally misunderstood. Then his mother calls. She presumably loves him -- here she is calling in the middle of the day, which it probably is -- but she doesn't quite get him either. Whatever. He'll just put her on speaker phone. It's par for the course for him, being surrounded by people who just can't relate.

I think we laugh, because we identify with him. We're not laughing at him because we think he's beneath us. If we're laughing at anyone, it's a the therapist, who apparently is not so sharp. (Photo is noirish Bill Clinton in drag.)