In his introduction to this timely collection, Steven Benko raises a key question regarding the relationship between ethics and comedy: “humans can laugh, but should we?” (2). Ethics in Comedy is divided into four sections: “Laughter, Ethicists, and Ethics”; “Laughter, Gender, and Race”; “Laughter and Late Night”; and “Laughter and Ridicule.” As these titles suggest, the book covers a wide range of topics. While some of the contributions are more persuasive than others, the collection suggests that we are entering a new era in the philosophy of humor in which the consensus is shifting on certain key issues.Should scholarly writing include examples of offensive humor? The frequency of such jokes in typical scholarly writing on humor suggests it has not been a point of controversy. Benko, however, opens his introduction by reflecting on this question. Benko explains that while “comedy has never been more prevalent” than in the era of the web and streaming, making it easier than ever to find examples of offensive humor, he sees no need to include “something that offends for the sake of offense” (1). It is undeniable that folklorists such as Alan Dundes performed a valuable service in collecting jokes about topics such as AIDs in the 1980s, but now examples of such crude humor can easily be found with an internet search, as Benko points out, and it may be more ethically responsible to point readers toward such jokes rather than recount them so that they can make up their own minds about whether to read them.Certainly, it might be necessary in certain cases to include examples of offensive humor, as a few essays in this collection do, such as Robert H. Didlake and Caroline E. Compretta's excellent “Ethical Features of Derogatory Humor in Medical Settings.” Generally, however, scholars will probably no longer simply include such examples without an explanation, and so we can expect Shouta Brown's disclaimer in “Closing the Comic Loophole: Reframing the Ethics and Aesthetics of Comedy” to become standard. Brown explains that he fully understands that the kind of jokes he includes in his essay “may cause some offense or discomfort” (29). However, since his argument is about why we should close the “comic loophole” that allows people who make offensive jokes to avoid ethical scrutiny by claiming that they were “just joking,” Brown feels the need to include examples of the kinds of jokes to which this loophole is often applied (29). Such arguments should make us think carefully about the necessity of including examples of offensive humor in our scholarly writing.In other words, even scholars can't necessarily take a “moral holiday,” a phrase Robert C. Roberts uses to describe the ethical uniqueness of humor that Benko quotes (5), and be irresponsible when it comes to using examples of offensive humor. That humor in general is exempt from the ethical concerns that govern other areas of everyday life is another widespread view that this volume questions. Jennifer Marra's “Towards an Objective Ethic of Humor” offers the most thorough critique in the collection of the “just joking” exemption to moral judgment, or the “get out of ethics jail free card” (20). The view that jokes do not have any effect on beliefs, attitudes, or behavior is refuted by a number of laboratory studies that show that racist and sexist jokes have significant negative effects. Awareness of empirical research from the psychological sciences has become increasingly common in the philosophy of humor, but Marra also points to a number of historical studies, such as Mel Watkins's On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock (1999), to buttress her point that it is not coincidental that extremely racist periods in American history have featured extremely racist humor (20). Philosophical discussions of offensive humor, Marra suggests, can benefit from engagement with the findings of historical research, and such research might make us more skeptical of the comic loophole.Perhaps the most persistent theme of this collection is a rejection of consequentialism as the theory best suited to evaluate the morality of humor. That humor should be judged by the effects it has on others has been as close to a consensus view that one can find in the philosophy of humor: a joke that causes harm is not morally acceptable, and one that does not cause harm is. The bar for harm has also tended to be set extremely high: “merely” causing offense has typically not been regarded as a sufficient justification for judging a joke immoral. However, as David K. McGraw notes in his excellent “The Caring Practical Joke,” without the virtue of empathy, we seem pretty poor at judging the harm that jokes might cause in the first place (228). Most of the contributors who are critical of consequentialism see virtue ethics as a superior alternative. Marra, for example, argues that racist humor stems from an “epistemic vice” of “laziness” (22). Cindy Muenchrath Spady's “The Vices and Virtues of David Letterman” offers a convincing analysis of the evolution of Letterman's comedy from, in Aristotelian terms, an early stage of “boorishness and buffoonery” (159) to a later stage in which it demonstrated virtues such as “patience, humility, perseverance, [and] gratitude” (162). While these arguments may not convince committed consequentialists, this larger tent of moral theories is certainly a healthy development in the philosophy of humor. In fact, what these essays suggest is that various moral theories have much to offer: consequentialists are correct that we should not ignore the harm that humor might cause, but we might also develop virtues that direct us to not engage in harmful humor in the first place.Finally, another significant departure from traditional philosophy of humor in this volume is the use of detailed case studies from which philosophical conclusions are drawn. Jonathan Peter Wright's outstanding “Laughter, Bodily Pain, and Ethics in YouTube Fail Videos” carefully analyzes the ethical issues raised by videos that feature often painful examples of unintended physical comedy, such as someone falling off a ladder. Rebecca Krefting's “Minority Report: Joking About the Other” offers a detailed account of the rhetorical distancing strategies professional comedians use to make offensive humor more palatable to audiences, with the aim of educating audiences about these techniques and encouraging them to be more willing to question them. Christophe D. Ringer's “The Boondocks and the Ethics of Black Comic Rage” provides a nuanced and rich analysis of an episode of the television series that focuses on the controversy over musician R. Kelly, placing the show in the context of the “black public sphere” (115). The section on late night comedy, in addition to Spady's essay on David Letterman, includes contributions on Jimmy Kimmel and Samantha Bee. An advantage of the case study is that it is accessible to readers who may not be familiar with long-standing debates in the philosophy of humor. For example, Nicole Graham's “Laughing With ‘Horrible’ People: Reaffirming Ethical Boundaries Through Laughter” examines the party game Cards Against Humanity through the lens of eighteenth-century philosopher Francis Hutcheson's theories of humor.The generally high quality of these essays aside, it is debatable how much professional comedians can tell us about the ethics of comedy in everyday life. As Brown points out in his discussion of the comic loophole, comedians, unlike the rest of us, tell jokes for a living (36), and it may be that drawing ethical precepts from their experiences is akin to, for example, using legal ethics to determine how to treat one's friends. However, that readers might find much to disagree with is a testament to how forward-looking many of these essays are. Those who are new to philosophy of humor and others who are more familiar with its long-standing debates will find much to contemplate in this excellent collection.