'Frenchman: Excitable. Wears beard, gesticulates wildly'

John Derbyshire remembers when foreigners were funny.

Why aren’t foreigners funny anymore? The answer is of course: Multiculturalism. When there is a foreign family living in the house next door, and four of the ten people in the office where you work are foreign, it’s hard to crack jokes about foreigners without causing offense. It’s especially hard in a milieu where the ability to take offense instantly and promiscuously, even when plainly no offense was intended, is regarded as a mark of fine and delicate sensibilities, indeed of moral purity.