“If you thought comedy was dead, you should have been in Britain after the pope cited the opinion of a Byzantine emperor who died 600 years ago.”

That’s how Taki Theodoracopulos (yes, that is his real name) began his column in the latest edition of The America Conservative. Apparently a 49-year-old man named Ronnie Hutton was jailed in Britain after, get this, he was accused of “revving his car in a racist manner.”

As Taki puts it, tongue delightfully in cheek: “Yes, in these politically correct times, engines too can be racists, especially if revved up.”

Maybe Hutton really was trying to intimidate the Libyan couple who were in tradional Arab dress and walking nearby. (He says he was trying to solve an engine problem by revving it, as the article linked to above eventually notes.) And we’re not defending his two-word response to a retired police officer who intervened. But the idea of getting in any sort of trouble for supposedly revving an engine in a “racist manner” still strikes us as ridiculous.