Do racism or profanity have any place in comedy?

A long ways back, myself and some friends went to see a guy called Roy chubby brown, who basicaly just swore all the time. I remember finding this hilarious, nothing was out of bounds, including race. I was young and naive (still am really, just not so young!) anyhoo, being let loose in pubs and clubs makes things you don’t hear very often, and were not aloud to say just plain funny.

But as the years rolled on, and I had children, comedy needed a boost, so ‘just plain funny’ had been religated to ‘yawn and sniff’. Now that I’ve matured (like cheese….) comedy subject matter needs to be incitefull, meaningfull and make me think, and occaisonally drag me over to the dark side give me a severe kicking and lob me back.

So I wondered, these are my comedy hero’s;
Bill Bailey – English
Bill Hicks – Dead
George Carlin – Dead
Chris Rock – American
Mitch Hedberg – Dead
Eddie Izzard – English
Frankie Boyle – Scotish
Lee Evans – English

Some of them are very offensive, some have influencial political views, some of them have very colourful ways of looking at life and some of them just just like to moan (George!).

So, would you have banned any of these?