By Darrell Laurant

Published: April 30, 2008

The frontier between humor and cruelty can be a narrow and treacherous place, the border often vaguely defined.

Although it’s a line I try not to cross as a columnist, there have been times when I’ve inadvertently strayed. We all do.

What makes it tricky is that some of the best humor is borne of pain, like Richard Pryor’s harrowing but hilarious account of having set himself on fire while free-basing cocaine. (“You want to get people’s attention? Try running down the street on fire.”) Other comics make us laugh by blurting out what we might have been thinking to ourselves but would never dare verbalize.

Perhaps it’s all in the perspective. For Pryor to laugh at himself is funny. To make jokes about the scars on his face would have been bad taste.

Which brings me to Mindy Schweiger, Shawn Walker and Saturday Night Live.

Or, more specifically, to an SNL skit on the night of April 12. Ashton Kutcher was the guest host, and he and three SNL regulars portrayed four men who wander into a decidedly downscale strip club.

When the curtain rises, the main performer, Dusty Velvet (Casey Wilson), is sitting in a chair.

“I’m sorry to say I was recently involved in a tragic Tilt-A-Whirl accident and was paralyzed,” she says, “but that won’t stop me from doing what I love to do best.”

Whereupon the master of ceremonies hauls her around, removing articles of clothing and manipulating her arms and legs.

“It wasn’t very accurate,” said Schweiger, a Lynchburg woman whose spinal cord was nearly severed in an automobile accident two years ago and still has little or no feeling below the waist. “Where was the colostomy bag? Where was the tracheotomy tube so she could breathe?”

She was sitting on her living room couch, and she had tears in her eyes. Walker, her older sister, had fire in hers.

As Walker wrote in a letter to NBC President Jeff Zucker and SNL producer Lorne Michaels, “Have you ever known a quadriplegic or paraplegic person? Have you ever witnessed on a daily basis what these people go through? Obviously you haven’t, or you wouldn’t have allowed such a skit to be aired.

“I have seen what happens in the life of a paralyzed person, and … there is nothing whatsoever funny about trying to live your life from a wheelchair. “

Neither Walker nor Schwieger have any illusions about this letter. Their hope is that some underling will bring it to Zucker’s attention and he will read it and get a queasy feeling in his stomach. I’ve gotten a few letters like that myself over the years.

An apology would also be nice.

“I like Saturday Night Live, I really do,” Walker said. “This skit just crossed the line.”

Some humor is delivered with a knowing wink, a joke or a skit that says: “This may seem awful now, but it will be funny in a few years.” Then there is the kind that starts with middle school kids bullying someone different.

Mindy Schweiger is gradually reclaiming her body — she can now feel pressure on her legs and has regained feeling in her hips. An accomplished vocalist, her CD “Awakening” is getting heavy airplay in Europe, some in the U.S.

But in the meantime, she has undergone countless hours of therapy. Moreover, she says, her fiancée and some of her best friends backed away from her when she was injured.
“That hurt,” she said. “That hurt a lot.”

At least they didn’t laugh at her. It took prime time TV to do that.