Hunter S. Thompson meets a Hell's Angel, 1967 | CBC

To be fair, the Woody Allen joke is also allegorically about domestic violence and this updated version only reinforced those references, so I don't think your reaction was off base. For even more context, around the same time as the Woody Allen stand-up Hunter S. Thompson gets confronted on CBC by a member of Hells Angels. It shows in stark contrast how much society has matured in 50 years (at least regarding public acceptance of domestic violence). You should really watch the clip, but I've again excerpted choice quotes from the Hells Angels member that the audience reacts favorably to. (At 3:24 in the video) > Junkie George is beating his old lady. Junkie George's dog bit him. To me this is a personal feud. If a guy wants to beat his wife and his dog bites him, that's between the three of 'em. [Audience laughter and applause] and a short time later (5:42 in the video): > To keep a woman in line you got to beat her like a rug once in a while. [Again, audience laughter and applause] [this video]

We really can not know this. We can only infer from cultures and religions in the relatively short timespan covered by written history. And even then, morality has changed significantly through time. A simple example - would you think that someone telling a story about someone else beating his wife to a pulp is something to laugh about? Here, check out how the audience reacts just a bit more than 50 years ago: [this video] I think the only moral that may have been something close to universal throughout times would've been something like: "Don't kill a member of in-group without a good reason if you're not the head honcho." Everything else? We have literally no idea. EDIT: Really, watch the video, it actually applies to the discussion really well. It's basically an argument about morals.