In that case, I don't think the idea of joking was the problem so much as shoving politics into the workplace.
It gets worse when half the team is laughing, and the other half are praying for you to be struck dumb already.
Giving up on laughter seems a "baby with the bathwater" approach to inclusiveness. I suppose being miserable is rather inclusive though :/
That said, there are certainly people that can only perform humor as a zero-sum game. But in my experience they are also generally the kind of people that subject their coworkers to uncomfortable conversations in a myriad of other ways.