My husband and I had just finished watching the Patriots get humiliated by the Jets so we were practically suicidal and in need of a laugh. We turned on the Golden Globes. It was just what we needed to wrap up a perfect evening. So UNfunny, it was hilarious.

Ricky Gervais claims he has no regrets about savaging the Hollywood elite. But he was offensive enough that the Hollywood Foreign Press, which sponsors the awards, appeared to pull him out of the show for an hour. Viewers had vastly different opinions about what actually crossed the line. The New York Times has now dubbed it Rickygate.

See what you think about a few of these zingers:

“It’s going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking… or, as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast.”

“Next up, Eva Longoria who has the daunting task of introducing the President of the Hollywood Foreign Press. That’s nothing. I just had to help him off the toilet and pop his teeth in.”

“Also not nominated, I Love You Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay… so the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists, then. My lawyers helped with that joke.”

I personally thought there was some funny stuff:

“It’s an honour to be here in a room full of what I consider to be the most important people on the planet. Actors. They’re just better than normal people aren’t they?”

“One thing that can’t be bought is a Golden Globe. Officially.”

For me, the difference in funny or not is whether it’s too personal. When you poke fun at a group it stings, but people can silently point the finger and say, “he doesn’t mean me.” When you wind up and deliverately punch one person, below the belt, everybody squirms. For example:

“I like a drink as much as the next man. Unless the next man is Mel Gibson.” (At which point, Gervais turned around to introduce Mel Gibson).

Gervais was the first host in 14 years, and they all say these are the hardest jobs in entertainment. Many (including David Letterman) have failed.

And, what precisely did HFP expect when they brought in an icon of edgy British humor, the famously cheeky and chappy Gervais?

He wasn’t the only offender. How about Robert De Niro? Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, his comments about about waiters getting deported were profoundly tasteless. “I thought this would be more fun for this kind of evening.”

Matt Damon didn’t cover himself in glory, either, lamely reading a script that implied he had confused De Niro’s characters (did he mean they weren’t that memorable, or he wasn’t that great? Don’t ask me, I didn’t get it.) It made him look stupid, not funny. You could tell he was kind of in pain.

There were some other funny moments. A couple of my favorites:

Jeff Bridges: “You’re really messing up my under-appreciated status.”

Robert Downey Jr: “I’d first like to thank my wife for telling me that Matt Damon was going to win so don’t bother to prepare a speech. That was at 10 a.m. today. I don’t have anybody to thank. I’m sorry everyone’s been so gratuitous, ‘it was collaboration, we all did this together’. I’m certainly not going to thank Warner Brothers. They needed me.”

There is a takeaway here. While humor is often cultural, gender specific, or just individual, most people think it isn’t that funny to hurt people badly. American audiences have even less tolerance. We prefer our humor a little more self-effacing.Humor with an edge might get a laugh, but if it leaves leave a sting, it doesn’t reflect well on your brand.