Friday, June 15, 2007
The virtue in double standards
Most right-thinking people deplore double standards, but they do allow us to indulge in ethnic humor, even if only with regard to certain particularly successful ethnicities. For example.
For your discussion: Should even this joke be banned from polite society, or does it remind us how much we are missing by having banned the others?
11 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Jun 15, 10:15:00 PM:
All this polite correctness ... a somewhat redneck Southern Lady is drinking shots. On each side is a stranger, one a Mexican and the other a Muslim.
The Mexican tosses back a shot and tosses his glass, bragging "In Mexico, glasses or so cheap we never use the same one twice". The Muslim downs his, throws the glass through a window breaking both, stating "In the Middle East, we have so much sand we just make more glass, so why drink with the same one twice?"
The Lady pulls out a .45, shoots each in the head, tosses back her shot, and orders another with a chaser. Everyone looks at her for a reason, to which she says "In America, we have so many illegal Mexicans and Terrorists, why drink with the same ones twice?"
By 
TigerHawk, at
Fri Jun 15, 10:18:00 PM:
Well, Anonymous, that joke certainly highlights the huge stakes embedded in the question I posed.
By , at
Fri Jun 15, 10:45:00 PM:
Actually, it's JT in NC. One of these days I'll get an alias.
Anyway TH, when you can't laugh at stereotypes or bad jokes anymore ...
By Papa Ray, at
Fri Jun 15, 11:51:00 PM:
A few quotes are in order here, from a man who knew the value of truth in a joke.
"A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth."
"Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious."
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else."
I've always believed if you can't take a joke, there is a problem with you. Now I'm not talking about malicious jokes, but all of the rest of them.
But anyway, the lefturds are trying to make the world so PC and everybody equal and protect everybody and everything, that soon nothing will work, people will be afraid to do anything or say anything.
I'm just glad I won't be around to see it.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Jun 15, 11:56:00 PM:
Years ago I chatted with media guru Marshall McLuhan. He told me, "All jokes are grievances."
By , at
Fri Jun 15, 11:57:00 PM:
Even in the Soviet Union, no haven for free speech, many sharp jokes about the rulers circulated. Are Americans, who live in a free country, going to censor jokes out of PC concerns? While I do not consider myself PC, I got irritated when a friend called Sarkozy, who is of partial Jewish descent, a Nazi. Thirty years ago, Earl Butz inadvertently created an uproar when he told a joke to John Dean about blacks which irritated me and most people.
My irritation in both instances came from identifying with the group that was the object of jokes, from having friends belonging to the group that is the butt of the joke, and from perceiving that the group that is the object of the joke is unfairly treated/oppressed. While Jews are treated well in this country, they are on the short end of the stick in Europe and the Middle East. Earl Butz told his joke only a decade after the repeal of the Jim Crow laws and the enactment of the Voting Rights bill, so ill- treatment of blacks, while receding, was neither non-existent nor long ago.
Does the following joke irritate anyone?
I first heard this joke from a Bolivian. An Argentine, a priest and a hippie are passengers in a small plane. An hour into the flight, the pilot walks into the passenger cabin. “I regret to inform you that we are going to crash shortly.” As the pilot grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane, he advises the passengers to do the same. As the three passengers look about the cabin, they realize there are only two parachutes remaining. They decide that the passengers who can give the most convincing reason why they should survive will get the parachutes. The priest goes first. “I want to live so that I may continue serving my flock and my Lord.” The hippie goes next. “I want to live so that I can keep grooving on nature. It is now the Argentine’s turn. Without saying a word, he grabs a parachute and jumps out of the plane. The hippie gets very alarmed. The priest tells the hippie to calm down: “The Argentine jumped out of the plane with your backpack.”
This joke flies in Bolivia because many Bolivians consider Argentines to be arrogant so and sos.
When I told this joke to an Englishman, he informed me that he had heard this joke with an Irishman as the butt of the joke. Some Chinese students, after hearing the joke, told me they had heard the joke with Li Peng, whom many blame for the Tiananmen massacre, as the butt of the joke. In Texas, this joke is told with an Aggie as the butt of the joke- but not in College Station.
One thing a joke can delineate is: who are your friends, and who are your enemies? But the object of the joke is not necessarily your enemy. While UT and Aggies rag each other, it is more the competition between brothers, as many family have students and graduates at both places.
By Christopher Chambers, at
Sat Jun 16, 01:02:00 AM:
Depends on who's the butt of the joke, right?
By , at
Sat Jun 16, 10:33:00 AM:
Chambers ... who the butt of the joke is irrelevent. If it's told by a black guy and the butt is a while guy, or a jew, or a muslim, or a christian, or a [fill in the blank]?
There's perhaps some truth or exploitation of stereotype in every joke, but it happens every day. Often, it's actually both FUNNY, and touches your conscience to consider the unfairness of the stereotype or history carried by it.
BTW ... I've always heard this joke as Jesse Jackson, the Pope and Hillary, where the self-ordained smartest woman in the world jumps out with a daypack. Sometimes it's got a kid instead of Hillary or Jesse.
By GreenmanTim, at
Sat Jun 16, 10:34:00 AM:
A jole about European Unity (as told by Richard Thompson, a transplanted Englishman and hella good guitartist with a a devious wit):
"In Heaven, the English greet you at the door, the French do the cooking, the Germans organize everything and the Italians provide the entertainment.
"In Hell, the French greet you at the door, the English do the cooking, the Italians organize everything and the Germans provide the entertainment."
If we can't laugh at ourselves, we are probably the butt of the joke.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Jun 16, 08:08:00 PM:
I heard an expansion on GT's European joke:
In heaven,
All the cooks are French
All the comedians are English
All the mechanics are German
All the service is Swiss
All the lovers are Italian
In hell
All the cooks are English
All the service is French
All the comedians are Germans
All the lovers are Swiss
All the mechanics are Italians.
Look, I'm kicking myself at least twice here.
By , at
Sun Jun 17, 12:52:00 AM:
Liberals want gun control for everyone but themselves and their bodyguards they still think were living in a monarcy what fools what hypotcrits
