Also, something I came across yesterday, Justice Albie Sachs writing about the importance of humour in a free society, from a Judgement of the Constitutional Court of South Africa in a case concerning trademark infringement (a satirical bunch of activists had parodied the Carling Black Label brand on some t-shirts they had produced. The brand sued.):
"A society that takes itself too seriously risks bottling up its tensions and treating every example of irreverence as a threat to its existence. Humour is one of the great solvents of democracy. It permits the ambiguities and contradictions of public life to be articulated in non-violent forms. It promotes diversity. It enables a multitude of discontents to be expressed in a myriad of spontaneous ways. It is an elixir of constitutional health."
The full Judgements of the Court are here, with the relevant passage being at paragraph 109. (page 64).
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