Well… remember the Amalek? I’m not saying it’s a direct parallel, I’m just saying it’s not that simple.
Another German checking in. The German-Nazi theme is annoying to me because “Nazi” is to me is not some vague concept but a very definite one - someone who actively supported the historic system of Nazism or nowadays would like to institute a similar system. Something that’s so extremely out of the pale that I think trivializing it by e.g. using terms like “grammar Nazi” is unwise - but that’s another discussion entirely.
OTOH my reaction to is is not as severe as someone who hears an ethnic slur in an environment where ethnic hate is accompanied by violence - I don’t feel physically threatened, which does much to keep my feelings to mild annoyance. For example when being occasionally in the UK I come upon one of the usual articles which creatively find a way to mention Hitler in connection with anything, but anything happening in today’s Germany, I feel annoyed but not threatened, as there is a curious disconnectedness (which I cannot quite understand but am thankful for) between that and most people’s actual behaviour. It’s not at all comparable to minorities which face the threat of actual violence (like being, say, a Vietnamese in some parts of East Germany).
BTW what I also consider annoying is referring today, indiscriminately, to Nazi-era Germans, specifically German soldiers, as “Nazis”. Kind of like referring to WWII American troops as Democrats or to New Labour, Nea Dimokratia and Forza Italia warships meeting off Athens. It’s not that I resent WWII-era people not making that distinction - the people on the other side doing their best to kill you is not conductive to making fine distinctions, and propaganda needed to be somewhat crude to motivate people. But when I read of veterans nowadays, with six decades’ time to think it over, referring to e.g. shooting down Nazi planes I think “so, they had a political discussion with them beforehand?”. Why I feel personally affected by this: a) my father, a Navy engineer trainee/later artilleryman, was no Nazi, b) it’s only pure chance, and no merit of mine, that I wasn’t born forty years earlier. As I have no reason to fancy myself a hero, I have to assume that I’d have kept my head down and not have deserted. Exposed to the education and propaganda of the time I’d most probably considered myself on the side of the good guys, too.
I think that Germans = Nazi jokes must go down as well as Americans = Native American genocidists. Or American = slave owners.
Many countries have events in their history that are pretty shameful to recall. The Germans certainly do. And so do the British, the French, the Americans, the Russians, the Spanish, the Italians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Australians… But to constantly goad a people about things that happened before most of them were even born isn’t particularly funny.
I’m not too fussed about what the German==nazi idea says about Germans. Afterall, the Simpsons has already taught us that, like butterball Üter, they’re big boys and can therefore presumably handle it.
Aside from that, it’s irrelevant because it’s untrue, stupid, speaks of a provincial intellect and all the rest. However, it’s for this reason that it truly pisses me off. Do we really need more reminders of how insular the American public is?
kellner, in the other thread, refers to it as a random stereotype. Unfortunately that is completely incorrect. When it comes to peculiarly American ideas about the rest of the world, it is one of the two stereotypes that will rear its boring, inane little head everytime the Germans are mentioned. The other one being ‘Scheiße Videos’. If France is mentioned; surrender monkeys or some derivation. Australia; Crikey! or baby stealing dingos. And everytime it’s the inspiration for chuckles and backslaps all round like it’s the funniest fucking thing since… baby-stealing, nazi surrender monkeys.
elfbabe and the inaugural idiot of the the thread whine, “But it’s a pop cultural reference that y’all are just ignorant of!” Well, see I wasn’t ignorant of it from the get go. I completely understand because I too love the Simpsons. The real problem is that so many Americans’ understanding and knowledge is limited to; their job, possibly the Bible (depending on location) and pop culture (which might include sport but largely as a spectator). I’m not saying all Americans are like this but they invariably are the ones that chime in with the non-sequitur dingo references and nazi allusions.
I’ve spent almost my entire life moving, and being moved, around the world and I’ve had a lot of exposure to culture (pop and otherwise) that would utterly appall most of the urbane readers of this thread were I to let it inform my treatment of African-Americans for example. If I were in DC, could I walk up to some black guy on the street and say, “You’re exactly how I always pictured the Golliwogs in Enid Blyton books!”? What if I refer to him as a nigger? Can I expect him to chill out when I explain to him the version of eenie, meenie, minie, mo we used as kids? No biggie bro.
The point is that there’s a shitload of things you can’t say and use your junk food, garbage culture to excuse it. By all means, try and stir up discourse, be confrontational in your art and challenge the limits of your audience, but don’t look for cheap yucks on an internet message board with that crap. It’s offensive but worse still, it’s boring.
There’s no such thing as “excessively” rude in joke telling, you either offend or you don’t. And no matter what joke you tell, you’re making fun of someone, so there will always be an offended party.
If rudeness is the criteria, then I guess we all need to stop telling jokes. From now on I’m mortally offended by any Catholic, Irish, tall people, Mexican, Spanish, or Irish Catholic jokes, and I’m going to raise a stink every time I see one. I’m contemplating raising a stink every time I see any sort of joke out of deference to people who might be offended by them but do not have the ability or desire to show how offended they are.
Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. Humor should not be tolerated in any way, shape, or form. I have become Offenderati, and I have all of you to thank for it.
You’re kind of beefy to be hanging on a cross, aren’t you big fella?
Anyway, you’re essentially saying there no point in using common sense to moderate the level of tired offensiveness in any particular joke you wish to tell, because somewhere, someone will be offended by it, and if you start down this treacherous slippery slope of self censorship all humor in the know universe will be sucked into to giant black hole of political correctness?
I crown you, in all your lanky Catholic glory, “The Drama King”.
Don’t get me wrong Airman Doors, USAF. I’m sure you’re a real funny, relaxed guy under the flight suit and so you would probably understand the principle of diminishing returns and how it relates to humour. No matter how funny a joke is at the start, it never gets any funnier. Paradoxically, the funniest jokes are the edgy (offensive?) ones because they are the ones that set up the greatest levels of tension before the release of the punchline. Sadly, when we’ve heard the punchline often enough, gags about fascist toddlers just doesn’t have that zing anymore. In fact, the offensiveness that originally gave it that zest now just leaves an uncomfortable, shitty vibe for anybody with a functioning cerebral cortex. Like the brightest stars, they burn out the fastest and you just have to let go of them for the sake of humour. Don’t give into those liberal pinkos Airman Doors, USAF by getting all PC. Just don’t let them think you’re boring and unoriginal.
Ok, so you tell me, what jokes are acceptable? Are the priest/rapist jokes acceptable? How about the Dumb Polack jokes? There is no “common sense” approach to humor. You throw out the bomb and hope you get enough people to laugh at it that it short-circuits the protests of the offended people.
See, I can laugh at jokes aimed in my direction. People who know me know that there is not a joke around that is too vile or too rude. Too bad other people can’t see it that way, that it’s just a joke. So, in the interest of fairness, I submit that we abstain from telling jokes to forestall the inevitable hand-wringing that results from the people who castigate others for their rude, discriminatory, and just plain tasteless sense of humor, without which the joke would cease to be funny.
It seems to me that while I’m being dramatic, the true drama here is that this thread had to be started to begin with. It’s making a big stink over nothing.
Humor is obviously quite subtle and complex in some cases, and hammer n’ watermelons direct in others. You are certainly well within your free speech rights to lob out whatever joke “bomb” you wish in the hope that it stuns enough targets of opportunity to be classified as an “Airman Doors Kneeslapper” [sub]TM[/sub].
I seems evident that asking for a touch of sensitivity and moderation in beating and re-beating long dead horses, is going to cramp your arms akimbo, free wheeling, joke telling style to the extent that the extra long “Airman Doors Cross of PC Persecution” has to wheeled out yet again.
I suspect that poor cross wheel is going to need a re-tread soon.
Airman Doors has a point.
In person, body language and inflection can make it clear that you mean no offense. More, your audience is limited.
I have a running joke with one of my friends.
“You’re nothing but a lousy, Irish drunk.”
To which, he angrily replies
“You take that back! Like all the sons of Eire, I’m a marvellous drunk!”
But, if he joined the SDMB and I made the standard joke, I’d likely be Pitted by people who didn’t know me and had just that post to go on.
So, do you tell jokes about blacks?
:rolleyes: What’s the odds that your friend isn’t even Irish. Just ‘American-Irish’?
There is no subjects that you can’t make a joke about. Nothing. Humour is a way of coping with the most awful of things. But how offensive it becomes depends on how you are joking; the context and the intent.
If you tell your ‘dead baby’ joke in front of the recently miscarriaged mother then you’re an insensitive jerk. You’ve got your context badly wrong.
If you are continually making drunk Irish, nazi German jokes in the presence of the Irish or Germans, then your intent is obvious. You’ve got a bit of an issue, but are hiding behind a “Just kidding!” pretence. You equally get plenty ‘jokes’ where the aim is to belittle. The intent is to make the teller and the listener feel superior and to re-enforce prejudices. In these cases, no matter what the subject, they’re simply not funny.
So imagine if no matter where you went, people cracked jokes about your appearance, or your ethnicity, or your accent, or anything else that was totally outwith your control. And these jokes were usually belittling, suggesting you weren’t a good/worthy person, in common with all of “your type”. And they’re so old that they can’t possibly be funny anymore. So there must be some other motive for making it.
You don’t think it would get extremely irritating? Even if the joke teller actually meant absolutely no offense by it? These guys have to be told, and learn, that the joke’s not funny anymore. It’s wasn’t very funny to start with. It’s old. It’s insulting. Don’t be a jerk about it.
Throw the fact that Nietzsche was very opposed to the Nazi party into the German=Nazi pot and you have non sequiter menage trois, possibly a poorly spelled “non sequiter menage trois”, but a non sequiter menage trois nonetheless.
Do you mean this one, which I always use when someone makes the Nazi connection around me (Note: I’m German)?
I always mention that I don’t find Nazi jokes funny, because my grandfather died in a concentration camp. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I mention the fact that he got drunk and fell off the watchtower. If you meant that joke, I happen to think it’s the perfect answer, because it makes clear to people just what it is that they are joking about. The atrocities commited by the real Nazis (and some, but not all members of the Wehrmacht) are not now and never will be worth joking about by anyone other than people of Jewish heritage. Mel Brooks can write “Springtime for Hitler”, but I damn well don’t have that right, no matter how many generations before mine that war was.
My grandfather was a Nazi (joined the part in 1935) and was an officer in the Waffen SS. He never worked at a concentration camp, but I shudder to think about what he might have done, or been responsible for, on the eastern front where he died, so no, Nazi jokes are not funny to me!
Even more so because Nietzsche died years before the party was founded.
Oops, you are right. I was blurring his disgust at his sister’s anti-semitism with her later open support for the Nazi party.
My mistake. :smack:
Gest
[Moderator Hat ON]
Do NOT call your fellow posters an “idiot” here. [sub]Or Nazis.[/sub]
[Moderator Hat OFF]
The odds are zero. His mother and father were both born in Ireland. Had they emmigrated a few months later, he would have been born there as well. His mother makes Irish food (though to her it’s just food) and he stays current on Irish politics. He’s also made several trips to Ireland to visit his relatives.
Unless you’re working on a variant of the No True Scotsman fallacy, he’s Irish.
Don’t forget their women.
German chicks are off the hiznook–particularly, if, like myself, you are able to sense the presence of blonde dna in the dark at four hundred yards…
It is particularly unseemly for people to make german=nazi jokes when they are all up with their ass on their shoulders if recent events involving war crimes committed against Iraq are compared and contrasted with the similar unpleasantness involving the Sudentenland in 1938.