Hawaii is up in arms over a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit. In it, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Fred Armisen portray two hula-skirted restaurant singers who serenade tourists with bitter thoughts about how much they hate their jobs. Hawaii’s governor claims the skit makes the state look bad and will negatively affect their tourism industry, which has already been hit hard by the recession. Their tourism liaison called it offensive. Watching the skit, I think it’s pretty funny – and it’s one of the highest viewed clips on Hulu right now.

The four-minute skit, an exaggerated portrayal of how annoying and frustrating it can be to deal with tourists, depicts a pair of disgruntled locals who sing and dance for mainland visitors. Hawaii Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona said he’s worried the skit might hurt the state’s biggest industry and plans to send a letter in protest to Lorne Michaels, the NBC program’s executive producer. The skit “went too far in its negative depiction of Hawaii’s native people and tourism industry,” Aiona said. He added he wouldn’t let “such distortions go unchecked” when the economy is doing so poorly.

When a woman gushes about being in Hawaii for her honeymoon, telling the entertainers “it must be fun working here,” they [Johnson and Armisen] respond sarcastically. “Yeah, it’s great. They make us wear grass skirts,” Armisen says. “We make $7 an hour. It’s a dream job.” Johnson tells one visitor: “It’s a fun fact about Hawaii. Our biggest export is coffee. And our biggest import is fat white tourists!” He later deliberately knocks over the drinks of a customer who points to the flower lei around his neck and makes a lame joke about getting “lei-ed.”

Jonathan Osorio, a professor at the University of Hawaii’s Center for Hawaiian Studies, said the skit accurately addressed how many in the islands work for low wages and how Hawaiian culture is sometimes packaged for tourist consumption without concern for its authenticity. It also accurately showed how many tourists who visit are ignorant of these realities, he said.

“I thought the skit was not uproariously funny but was very much true to life in expressing how many people in Hawaii actually live with tourism,” Osorio said.

[From the Associated Press via the Huffington Post]

Part of good humor is that it’s not always safe. There has to be an element of risk to it, and that almost always means there’s a chance you’ll offend someone. I don’t think humor whose sole intent is to offend people is funny. But sometimes that’s a byproduct of a joke. If you played it safe for everyone, nothing creative or interesting would ever come out.

The Associated Press did a good job of noting that the point of the skit was to make fun of stupid tourists. There were definitely some digs about Hawaii, but not nearly as many as there were at ignorant mainlanders. Half of what cracked me up was how good the Rock was with his song and dance.

SNL has gone all-out with making fun of New York’s legally blind governor, David Paterson. When some people responded with outrage, SNL’s rebuttal was that Paterson is a terrible governor, and they’re going to keep making fun of him for it until he stops sucking at his job. Given that response, I really doubt they’re going to pause for even ten seconds to think about the response to the Hawaii skit.

You can watch the skit on Hulu here.