Making fun of people in need

The Kingston Trio used to sing about a man named Charlie who got on the Boston subway when it cost a dime to ride.  Charlie had only that one dime with him. But while he was on the train, the fare jumped to fifteen cents.  And without the extra nickel, they wouldn’t let him off the train.  
As the song story goes, Charlie rides all night “‘neath the streets of Boston.”  He seems trapped there forever because he wife goes to the Scollay Square station each afternoon and hands Charlie a sandwich through an open window on the train.
There’s a thread of fact in “The M. T. A. Song.”  At one point, Boston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority instituted an exit fare rather than go to the expense of modifying all the turnstiles in the system.  So, Charlie’s situation might actually have happened, in theory at least.
The song ends as a campaign message for a mayoral candidate who opposes a fare increase.   That, too, turns out to be based on real life.  A man named Walter A. O’Brien had that as a plank in his platform. In the song, he's called George O’Brien.
Charlie’s story is a parody on a Civil War era song, “The Ship That Never Returned,” which asks, “Did she ever return?” Then comes the answer, “no, she never returned An' her sad fate is still unlearned.”  Likewise, at the end of the subway song, Charlie’s fate is still in question.
Of course, the logic of the M. T. A. story breaks down when you ask why Charlie’s wife didn’t hand him some money instead of a sandwich so he could get off the train.  But that would spoil the fun of the song.
At the time the song was popular, a group of us were singing and laughing about the idea in the story.   Everyone was having fun because we couldn’t take it seriously.  Well, almost everyone was having fun.  One woman in the group took Charlie’s predicament to heart.  She saw nothing funny in the song:  We shouldn’t laugh at the situation, even though the song was intended to amuse.  Because this woman felt such compassion for a fellow human in need, she couldn’t laugh, even at a made-up difficulty.
The concerned woman in our group compared us with the rich man in Jesus’s story of Lazarus the beggar (Luke 16:19-31).  In his luxurious clothing, the man “feasted sumptuously every day” while Lazarus lay nearby starving.  There’s no indication that the wealthy man ever noticed Lazarus, much less reached out to offer him even leftovers.  
The bottom line in Jesus’s parable is that the tables were turned in the afterlife, with Lazarus in heavenly bliss and the rich man in torment.
Maybe our somber friend had a point.  Do we ever make make jokes about real people who face real need?  Do we make light of the jobless, the homeless, the elderly?  Is it ever appropriate for Christians to have fun at the expense of others?  Or do we simply ignore their plight?
Some people try to dodge responsibility for the needy because Jesus said the poor will always be with us (Matthew 26:11).  But Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 15:11 which says, “For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land.”