(I'm such a Marx Brothers fan, my screenname here was briefly 'Dr. Hackenbush' --but too many FReepers thought I was claiming to be a medical doctor. So I dropped it.)
Monty Python reruns and movies are a little problematic, so we waited with those until the kids were older. Same with Airplane and 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' (for the record, we like the Brit version better).
The beauty of the Marx brothers' movies is that you can sit there and watch them with your children, and you're all laughing your heads off. The innuendo is so brilliantly subtle, your little kids don't even notice it while they're howling over the slapstick.
Not so with the First Lady's shtick the other night. The sexual innuendo of some of those jokes could hardly have been more heavy handed -- no matter how many FReepers absurdly claim their innocence (and our 'dirty-mindedness').
And this is where I think a lot of the problem lies. She's the First Lady, for Pete's sake! Is sexual innuendo ever appropriate for a First Lady? (Can we even imagine debating this question only a few years ago?)
Here we had this lovely and gracious looking woman, conservatively coiffed and clad in ethereal yellow chiffon -- and suddenly out of her mouth came pouring jokes about husbandly sexual inadequacy, suburban fornication, male strippers wearing thongs, and the milking of male horses. Not while we expected while we sat there with our children!
Was the laughter at those jokes the kind of shocked laughter you used to see in audiences watching a Lenny Bruce routine forty years ago? (Yes, there were some great clean jokes in Laura's act too, but nobody's paying attention to them.)
The office of First Lady has never been occupied by a nun. They're real people, not religious figures. They have sex and make jokes, just like real people.
Would it be different for you if the same jokes were made in the same room at the same event by a paid comedian, where the first lady's role would have been to simply laugh and blush?
I'm waiting on the Monty Python as well -- though he has seen (or at least is familiar with) the Black Knight in MP and the Holy Grail. And I drop enough Monty Python quotes in my everyday conversation that it's going to seem really familiar to him, when he actually does see it.
Whose Line, however, my son is a big fan of and watches regularly. (BTW, I specified American, because I haven't seem more than a few of the British) It's probably his second or third favorite show, after medical documentaries and maybe Yu-Gi-Oh! I let him watch Futurama, a well (though not Family Guy.)
I'm basically raising him like my parents raised me -- I used to watch Benny Hill with my father and Scots folks songs like "The Maid Gaed to the Mill" and "The Trooper and the Maid" were part of my cultural life, when my age was single-digits -- though I didn't quite get what was going on for a while.
Yes, he's getting more adult humor than most kids his age. But he's getting it with his parents' supervision and explanations of what is and isn't appropriate for him to do and say. He is also made quite aware of how much slack we give him and that if he doesn't act responsibly, we will put more limits on him.
I like how he's turning out -- witty, difficult to shock, and not particularly vulgar.