I'm drawn to weirdos. Is that OK?

I told her that I was interested to explore the difference between our reactions. She said, "Well, it's like we always talk about: it's a Louisiana thing. Y'all don't run away from your weirdos. It's your way of dealing with it."

I told her yes, it is. I can't help it that I find it utterly absurd, to the point of black humor, that an old white man can be so racist that he'd just as soon die of cancer than have a black doctor try to save his life. That's so crazy I can't help but laugh at it.

"Yeah, but it's evil," Julie said. "It's really evil."

"Agreed," I said.

We talked for a bit longer about when and whether it's appropriate to laugh at evil as a way of dealing with it. Julie grew up in the Dallas suburbs, and rarely if ever ran into white people driven as crazy by racism as Favog's uncle. While Favog's uncle is an extreme case, the general sentiment is not unfamiliar to me, having grown up where I did. I remember once, when I was in college, being at a wake among some distant relations, and having some elderly white great uncle I'd never met ask me how I liked being in college "with all them n---ers." I answered him coldly that college was great, then found a reason to step out. It wouldn't have done any good to have taken a stand in that room full of elderly rednecks, and certainly not at a time of mourning. When I was younger, and maybe still today, if you're going to be white and more or less liberal on race, then you have to learn how to choose your battles when confronted by white racism. If you make a scene every time you hear a racist remark, you'll make yourself a pariah; if you let it get to you, you'll run yourself crazy real quick.

And you'll also not be able to appreciate the complexity of the culture, and how people who believe evil things can also be good (as some on the left said in defense of Jeremiah Wright earlier this year). I can't explain why some of the most stone-cold racists I've ever known have done acts of great generosity and kindness to black people. But I've seen it. I know it happens. That doesn't excuse their racism, but it does give evidence that people are complicated, and rarely if ever should be understood wholly in terms of their besetting sins.

Julie suggested that perhaps learning to laugh at this kind of thing when you can serves the same function that black humor serves for cops, firefighters and paramedics -- to make awful things you can't change or escape bearable through ironic distancing. You know, a strategy of being so exhausted by horror or disgust that you just try to be amused. Maybe that's part of it, I dunno. In this particular case, it's at least possible to laugh at Favog's cousin because he's the victim of his own racism; if this were a story about how Favog's cousin was, say, willing to let a black man drown because he couldn't bring himself to grab the man's hand and pull him out of the river, that would be a complete moral horror, and in no way amusing. You see?

Getting back to the original point, though: whose reaction was more appropriate to the spectacle of Favog's cousin -- Julie's horror and sorrow at the shocking degree to which racism had advanced in this man, to the point where he'd choose death over being "defiled" by a black doctor? Or my black-humor guffawing at the utter stupidity and self-destructive vanity of a man who would literally rather die than be touched by a black man?

For my part, I think there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer to this. It could be simply a matter of temperament. Julie does not get "A Confederacy of Dunces," which is her only flaw, as far as I can tell. She thinks Ignatius Reilly is sad and gross, not funny. I think he's sad and gross and hilarious.