Read the following passage and answer the item that follows. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Where plain criticism is expensive, the joke does the work. A charge made straight can be answered, prosecuted, or made an example of; the same charge carried in a joke is harder to seize hold of, because to prosecute it is to confirm it and to explain the offence is to repeat it. This is not because humour is gentler. It is because a joke asks the listener to complete it, and a thought the listener has completed himself is not easily taken back from him. Regimes that tolerate a great deal of open complaint have been known to take a much closer interest in their comedians.

Which one of the following statements best reflects the most logical and rational message conveyed by the above passage?