Laughed, Thought I’d Die
A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar...and someone calls the Thought Police
Something I read recently on Substack included the complaint that one of the knocks on feminism is that feminists have no sense of humor, the proof being that they won’t laugh at sexist jokes. That’s so mean! It’s so unfair! And you know what? I kind of agree, because feminists find sexist jokes at the expense of men to be screamingly funny, don’t they?
Probably the most perfect example of an oxymoron is politically correct joke, i.e. a joke that does not stereotype, caricature, mock, lampoon, needle, or otherwise disrespect anybody or anything. To be sure, some exceptions are allowed: white people, Republicans, Zionists, Donald Trump. But adherence to this standard would compel the humorist and the comedian to forego the whole target-rich environment of postmodern progressivism. What could be funnier, for instance, than the existential angst of fourth-wave feminism, Gen Z’s weepy laments over the tyranny of work, Dylan Mulvaney's ditzy and sluttish ladyboy act?
Speaking of target-rich environments, some years ago there was a craze for lawyer jokes. For example: Why have lab rats been replaced by lawyers in science experiments? Because there are some things that even a lab rat won’t do. ROTFL! But of course, lawyers were quick to wrap themselves in the mantle of the victim, whining that lawyer jokes made them feel “unsafe.” This was a harbinger of things to come.
Among my father’s books was a fat volume titled, if I recall correctly, A Treasury of Humor. What happened to it I do not know, but some of its contents live in my memory. There was a short story by the incomparable P.G. Wodehouse, “Uncle Fred Flits By,” that made me laugh aloud—many times. Well, that was P.G.’s superpower. There was also a whole section of what I suppose would nowadays be called ethnic jokes: Irish, Scottish, Jewish, etc. Naturally they played on stereotypes in a way that would send today’s Wokesters into a three-foot hover of rage. There was, for example, the one about Mrs. Goldfarb’s report to her friends about a new restaurant: The food was terrible—and the portions were so small!
Not for nothing have so many of the great comedians been Jewish.
The fact that some of the funniest jokes are also the dirtiest jokes tells you something about the mechanics of humor. I wish I could share my all-time favorite dirty joke, which involves the US Marine Corps, the US Navy and a little boy, but that would probably get me kicked off Substack. And that’s a big part of the reason why it’s so hilarious. Cleaned up, that joke would be about as funny as a case of the shingles. My favorite dirty joke only works because it violates good taste, common decency, and three or four of the Seven Cardinal Virtues.
In one way or another every real joke is subversive—a finger in the eye of the Authorities. It outrages some piety. It laughs in the face of some starch-necked Puritan. Today, as it happens, the Authorities and the Puritans congregate on the progressive Left. And oh, how they hate it when they’re laughed at. It’s their own fault, though. They provide the humorist and the comedian with so much material!
The “anti-Zionist” marches, protests, and encampments that have disgraced so many American cities and university campuses for nearly a year now are ugly and vile, of course, but every now and then they’re good for a laugh. For instance: ”Palestine Is a Queer Feminist Struggle Against Imperialism.” And no, I didn’t make that up. It was the actual title of a conference held last March at Rutgers University. Now imagine a bunch of keffiyeh-clad Queer Folk and Feminists showing up in Gaza to express their solidarity with “Palestine.” The Hamas commander looks them over, then says to his aide, Allah be praised that the Zionist Entity didn’t knock down all our high-rise buildings!
Queers for Palestine: Turkeys for Thanksgiving. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!
There’s also much fun to be had with gender ideology, whose master acronym, LGBT, (for Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender) became LGBTQ (adding Queer/Questioning), then LGBTQI (adding Intersex) then LGBTQIA2+ (adding Asexual and Two-Spirit; the + sign indicates that there’s more to come.) Indeed, depending on which list you consult, there are upwards of eighty genders nowadays.
Some of them seem a bit repetitive. Pansexual, for instance denotes a person “who is attracted to people regardless of gender.” Heteroflexible denotes “a straight person who is most often attracted to people of a different gender from themselves but sometimes experiences attraction to people of the same gender as them.” Okay, and they’re different how from bisexual?
You get the impression that these novel gender identities are being dreamed up in a dorm room by a circle of collegiate Wokesters with the help of cannabis, box wine, and pepperoni pizza. Or perhaps they sent out for the Official Sandwich of the LGBTQIA2+ Community. That would be the LGBLT. You want fries with that?
Connoisseurs of political humor surely will miss Joe Biden. His train wreck of a presidency supplied so many precious moments of mirth! But at least we have Kamala Harris. I shall not dwell on her propensity for word salad, though it’s a fertile source of hilarity. And so is the hagiography that’s grown up around her since she replaced Joe Biden at the Democratic Party ticket:
See, there was this sudden flurry of Kamala-as-Superheroine memes, followed quickly by the Kamala Is Brat meme, and in my mind, they clicked together like a couple of Lego blocks. Incidentally, the brat meme originated with pop singer Charli xcx, who helpfully explained that Harris is brat, “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it.” Yeah, that sounds about right. Oh, and it also shows that sexist jokes, even accidental ones, can be an absolute laugh riot.
Like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, Ronald Reagan was often good for a laugh—but he joked on purpose. One of my favorite Reagan moments occurred during a presidential press conference when he was asked about some dumb idea that had been floated by an obscure White House aide. “Well,” said Ron, “in this Administration the right hand sometimes doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” Those were the days.
But these days, American humor is on life support, as the List of Things We Must Not Say grows ever longer. Blonde jokes make feminists feel “unsafe.” X-rated limericks are ticking time bombs of sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and who knows what else. Late-night TV comedy confines itself to variations on the theme of Trump’s such an idiot! Ha! Ha! Ha! True, there’s a certain amount of pushback. But the long progressive campaign to spoil just about everything slogs along, laying waste to all the good things of life—including the one about the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter.
I was at my bank today waiting in a short line. There was just one lady in front of me, an Asian lady, who was trying to exchange HK dollars for US dollars. It was obvious she was a little irritated. She asked the teller, "Why it change? Yesterday, I get two hunat dolla. Today I only get hunat eighty? Why it change?" The teller shrugged his shoulders and said, "Fluctuations." The Asian lady says, "Fluc you white people too!"
PG Wodehouse is absolutely brilliant. I discovered Bertie & Jeeves as a student in London in the 70s and have read every volume