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Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro were delicious at Jillian Manus-Salzman's latest charity bash.

At her "politically incorrect" themed benefit for the Stanford Cancer Center earlier this month, the California philanthropist had her conservatory transformed into a hall for "Irreverent Dictator Tributes." A cheese model of Hitler and a vegetable Castro bust stood next to an ice vodka luge of George W. Bush that poured red and blue cocktails from the ears.

Her decorators and caterers also transformed rooms in her San Francisco Bay-area home into a "Betty Ford Clinic," where guests snacked on cookies shaped like Valium pills and Prozac capsules, and "Dick Cheney's Hunting Lounge," adorned with fake taxidermic human heads and staffed with waiters serving quail. The bathroom was renamed "Larry Craig's office" in reference to the U.S. senator arrested at an airport restroom last year for lewd conduct.

The event, which raised $600,000 (U.S.), was a massive hit with guests, Ms. Manus-Salzman said. And despite the high-society attendance, no one complained of being offended by the evening's risqué humour.

"All I heard was, 'This is just what we needed,' because everyone could all let their hair down," she said. "Really, I think that's the spirit of it - it's okay to be politically incorrect sometimes, and sometimes you have to be."

From the upper crust to the college fraternity set, politically incorrect parties have become a popular forum for those looking to push buttons and poke fun at societal taboos.

MySpace, YouTube and Facebook are rife with entries dedicated to politically incorrect-themed parties in which guests are dressed up as caricatures of class and racial stereotypes. One YouTube clip shows a partygoer dressed as a country bumpkin and another wearing a large sombrero and an exaggerated mustache, while posters on the wall bear such slogans as "So you're a feminist? How cute!!!" and "My SUV loves Iraqi oil."

But the line between what's considered funny and what's foul can be a treacherous thing to negotiate. Politically incorrect parties have sparked outrage at several U.S. colleges, including Macalester College in Minnesota, where last year one student dressed in blackface and another attended as a Ku Klux Klan member.

Student parties at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and South Carolina's Clemson University have also raised alarm among students and faculty members over racial stereotypes.

Partygoers, however, say the chance to dress and act in ways that would normally be considered inappropriate is the very appeal of these events. Taking cues from the intentionally offensive comedy of South Park, Family Guy and Borat, they're testing the boundaries of what their peers will tolerate.

Brian Flasch, 39, of Vancouver has attended multiple politically incorrect parties, including a trailer-trash party at which guests dressed up in men's white undershirts or revealing halter tops, and a Betty Ford Clinic party, where partiers came as their favourite drug-addicted celebrities.

The parties weren't intended to make light of serious issues, he said - they were just harmless fun.

"In everyday life, we don't have a time to let go. You have to be polite, you have to say the right things," Mr. Flasch said. But at these parties, "people can say what they want, and there's no negative feedback."

Still, anything that derogated people's beliefs or religion, or that made fun of issues such as child molestation in which innocent people are seriously harmed, was off limits among Mr. Flasch's friends.

"There are some subjects that you can't make light of," he said.

At a recent staff party at the bar where he works, Chris, 30, of Whistler, B.C., saw one colleague dressed up as a pedophile in a trench coat, while another came as a disabled volleyball player. Two others dressed up as the twin towers of the World Trade Center with model planes crashing into their sides.

No one at the party objected to any of the costumes, but staff members were warned in advance not to attend if they might be offended.

"Some of the costumes we had ... it was so bad," said Chris, who did not want his full name to be used to protect his workplace from repercussions.

But "that was the whole shock value of it all," he added. "I think we're just so used to seeing the norm. To go against that, you're kind of making fun of everyday life."

Breaking taboos is the foundation of what is considered funny, says humour expert Elaine Decker, associate dean of social sciences at Kwantlen University College in Surrey, B.C., and an instructor of humour studies at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.

However, whether an attempt at humour crosses the line depends on the intention of the joker and how his or her audience interprets it, she said. Participants at politically incorrect parties need to be mindful of their own motives.

If the joker's intention is to be unkind, Dr. Decker warned: "You can't 'just kidding' your way out of it."

Ms. Manus-Salzman said she carefully considered how her guests would interpret the gags at her party. "In something like this, you have to insult everyone equally. I didn't want to offend everyone, but I wanted to make sure I made fun of everyone," she said.

She said she targeted both Democrats and Republicans by hiring a live elephant draped in a sign that read: "My wife thinks I'm an ass." In addition to her jabs at Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush, she ribbed Clinton supporters by bringing in a Bill Clinton impersonator who mingled with guests dressed in a pair of boxer shorts.

Rather than polarizing her guests, she said, the politically incorrect references allowed people of different political stripes to share laughs. "It's just a lot of fun," she said.

For Ms. Decker, however, the act of teasing loses its amusement when it degrades another individual or group.

"If you have a politically incorrect party to assert your right to be superior and unkind and cruel, and to separate yourself from any responsibility to examine the unequal distribution of power and privilege in our socially stratified society, don't invite me," she said. "I will spoil the party by arguing and saying again and again, 'That's not funny.' "