Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice.
Blessed are…

Then Simon Peter said, “Should we write this down?”
And Andrew said, “Do we have to know this?”
And James said, “Will this be on the final exam?”
And Phillip said, “What was that thing about the meek?”
And John said, “The other disciples didn’t have to learn this.”
And Judas said, “What does this have to do with the real life?”

Then one of the Pharisees present asked to see Jesus’ lesson plans and inquired of Jesus his terminal objectives in the cognitive domain… and Jesus wept.

Is this joke offensive? Maybe, to someone who thinks lesson plans are sacred. The point of the joke is to invite shared laughter about challenges teachers face.

But it’s easy to see that this joke could “meta-offend” –a word I made up to describe something in the real world that has no name. “Meta-offense” is a response that claims to be offense but in fact is anger or calculated politics. People get meta-offended by a remark, and try very hard to make you sorry for it, to prove to the world that they have power to punish.*

Kind-hearted people steer clear of jokes that offend. But meta-offending is a different issue. I don’t mind meta-offending groups that try to make too many claims. Kowtowing to every possible sacred cow would be sooooo much work–and it’s just not funny!

*Example of racial offense and meta-offense.

• The joke that got Earl Butz fired (1976) was very offensive, both in its language and its message.
• Trying to get a white coworker fired for saying he would be “niggardly” (1999) was IMO a case of meta-offense.

Betsy’s quotes of the day:
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. ” (Abbie Hoffman)
“If all people were just, no one would need to be brave.” (Agesilaus, 444-360 BCE)

1.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You go over to him and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Direct Marketing.

2.You’re at a party with a group of friends and you see an attractive man. One of your friends goes over to him and says: “That girl over there is fantastic in bed.” This is Publicity.

3.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You ask for his phone number. The next day you call him and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Telemarketing.

4.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man you already know. You go over to him and say: “Do you remember how good I am in bed?” This is Customer Relationship Management.

5.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. You get up, smooth your dress, go over and serve him a drink. You straighten his tie seductively and say: “I’m fantastic in bed.” This is Public Relations.

6.You’re at a party and you see an attractive man. He comes over to you and says: “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.” This is Branding, the reputation of the name.

7. On your way to a party, you realize many attractive men live nearby. You start blasting your horn, roll down your car window, and drive slowly, yelling for all the world to hear, “I–AM–FANTASTIC–IN–BED!” This is spam.

I love double-barreled jokes–jokes that make you laugh, and then laugh again. This is a multi-barreled joke, with many successive re-authors including me.

Is this joke sexist? If you said yes, would it still be sexist if I switch the genders, so that a man keeps telling women he meets that he’s very good in bed? There are people who would see either version as offensively sexist, and if one of those people would tell me how to write jokes about sex that aren’t sexist, I’d sure like to know!

The Court of King George III London, England

July 10, 1776

Mr. Thomas Jefferson c/o The Continental Congress Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dear Mr. Jefferson:

We have read your “Declaration of Independence” with great interest. Certainly, it represents a considerable undertaking, and many of your statements do merit serious consideration. Unfortunately, the Declaration as a whole fails to meet recently adopted specifications for proposals to the Crown, so we must return the document to you for further refinement. The questions which follow might assist you in your process of revision:

1.In your opening paragraph you use the phrase “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” What are these laws? In what way are they the criteria on which you base your central arguments? Please document with citations from the recent literature.

2.In the same paragraph you refer to the “opinions of mankind.” Whose polling data are you using? Without specific evidence, it seems to us the “opinions of mankind” are a matter of opinion.

3.You hold certain truths to be “self-evident.” Could you please elaborate. If they are as evident as you claim then it should not be difficult for you to locate the appropriate supporting statistics.

4.”Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” seem to be the goals of your proposal. These are not measurable goals. If you were to say that “among these is the ability to sustain an average life expectancy in six of the 13 colonies of at last 55 years, and to enable newspapers in the colonies to print news without outside interference, and to raise the average income of the colonists by 10 percent in the next 10 years,” these could be measurable goals. Please clarify.

5.You state that “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government….” Have you weighed this assertion against all the alternatives? What are the trade-off considerations?

6.Your description of the existing situation is quite extensive. Such a long list of grievances should precede the statement of goals, not follow it. Your problem statement needs improvement.

7.Your strategy for achieving your goal is not developed at all. You state that the colonies “ought to be Free and Independent States,” and that they are “Absolved from All Allegiance to the British Crown.” Who or what must change to achieve this objective? In what way must they change? What specific steps will you take to overcome the resistance? How long will it take? We have found that a little foresight in these areas helps to prevent careless errors later on. How cost-effective are your strategies?

8.Who among the list of signatories will be responsible for implementing your strategy? Who conceived it? Who provided the theoretical research? Who will constitute the advisory committee? Please submit an organization chart and vitas of the principal investigators.

9.You must include an evaluation design. We have been requiring this since Queen Anne’s War.

10.What impact will your problem have? Your failure to include any assessment of this inspires little confidence in the long-range prospects of your undertaking.

11.Please submit a PERT diagram, an activity chart, itemized budget, and manpower utilization matrix.

We hope that these comments prove useful in revising your “Declaration of Independence.” We welcome the submission of your revised proposal. Our due date for unsolicited proposals is July 31, 1776. Ten copies with original signatures will be required.

Sincerely,

Thomas Pilkington, Bart.

Management Analyst to the British Crown

I wish I knew who wrote this funny spoof–Google has 123 hits on it, going back as far at 1995, but none give the name of the author.

(Continued from E.B. White, Part 1)

White uses and reuses the device of surprise reappearance by an apparent digression. We readers have seen this trick before, but each time we love it all over again. The “retired” soprano comes back for just one more concert? Hurray! And if the soprano comes back at the end of the show, for just one last bow, we’re even more thrilled.

A joke with a “capper” gives twice the dose of humor (both surprise and congruence.) Revival with a new image or a new setting gives you new insight into big topics like change, eternity, death. (White attempts a much wider range of subjects than Barry.)

White’s diction is quirky. He writes for New Yorker readers and for himself–the general level is quite a bit higher than Barry’s. He rummages through his treasure-chest of words looking for just the one needed right now, bringing forth things new and old. Most often, a short, direct word does the job–“his hard little body, skinny and bare”–but White has no false shame about “teeming” or “petulant.” And he makes no apology for “slummiest” or “pawed over.” White himself is not slumming. He is writing for equals.

The girders that hold up White’s essays are found in Strunk (later Strunk and White.) “Use the active voice.” “Put statements in positive form.” “Omit needless words.” I would like to compare the original Strunk (available online) to the more famous Strunk and White. White’s additions would be full of meaning–but this is a pleasant goal for a more-leisured future.

Strunk says, “…the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end.” This rule “applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition.” White took the advice to heart.

In Once More to the Lake, White’s last two paragraphs draw together all the essay’s big themes. Then, in this now comfortable, familiar setting, White’s ending delivers an even-more massive surprise.

Here’s how he does it: A thunderstorm brings back the themes I call “Then” and “Now”– the long-ago summers of childhood and this summer’s trip with his own young son. White also revisits two closely-related themes I call “Eternity” and “Change” –the indestructible one-ness of lakeside summers, despite an admission that “Now” some detail has changed. (The others are all going swimming, but “Now” the narrator sits languidly watching.) One last time, we share White’s “Illusion” of changing places with his son or his father. The author watches the boy of today, feeling once more what he felt as a long-ago boy, but in the final word of the final phrase of the final sentence, we see what has been, so far, so carefully hidden: “death.”

Wow.

The essay Here is New York (only excerpts online) is less finely crafted. White’s major theme throughout is “his” New York–a brisk catalog of the city’s pleasures and fears, virtues and flaws, tossed off in a series of small, sharp images that add up to one huge impressionistic daub, like a “face” made up of a hundred tiny photographs. This part is brilliantly done. Less successfully, the end (an expression of hope for the United Nations) seems merely tacked on, for all his craftsmanship.

Still, let’s see how the master tries for his effect. This essay has lots of short-run themes–ideas that crop up a few times in successive paragraphs, then disappear. In the final paragraphs White brings back many of these, reminding us of our shared journey thus far–images of construction, housing projects, the invisibility of big events, racial harmony, sky-scraping buildings with planes overhead, now seen as an emblem of menace.

The final paragraph comes back to specifics, one single specific tree in Turtle Bay, a symbol both of the city itself and of all that we have to lose when we lose what we love. By no coincidence–White first published “Once More to the Lake” in 1941; “Here in New York” dates from 1948–the final word of both essays is the same image of the fear of infinite loss: “death.”