I've never been much of a fan of edgy humor. Wait -- that's not entirely true. When I was a kid, it did appeal to me. Isn't that kind of how it goes when you're younger? You don't fully appreciate being shielded and protected from the more harsh realities of the world, so when you're flipping through the channels, land on HBO, and hear people like George Carlin, Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay sound angry, using profanity and talking about sex, it feels like that good-sort-of-dangerous that, the kind your mind reacts to when faced with a forbidden fruit. Speaking of Eddie Murphy, it was his 1983 stand-up special, Delirious, and his 1987 follow-up, Raw , that caught my attention during the late '80s. They were both funny in their own way, and both specials were definitely homophobic . And there was the internal dichotomy for yours truly: On the one hand, it was titillating watching what amounted to adult verbal content when I wasn't supposed to. On the...