I’m pretty sure I’ve said it in other threads but I’m Jewish. I even remember the Haftorah from my Bar Mitzvah, sort of - it was about some guy named Balaam who rode around on an “ass,” which my 12 year old mind found endlessly entertaining.
Green Bean, I’m dumbfounded that you’re really that offended by my joke. Jews have traditionally been associated with the practice of lending money. They have a long history of being connected with organized crime, gambling and physically enforcing debts. (Only in America, though - in Europe, when the kings and princes couldn’t pay the Jews back, they just killed them.)
The fact that I’m Jewish should not matter at all. In my opinion, humor is the opposite of bigotry. Joking about other peoples’ ethnic groups or religions is only offensive if you actually believe the stereotypes that the jokes are making fun of. And I think it’s safe to say that none of us here actually believe any of this. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun to play upon historical perceptions of other cultures for laughs.
And mswas is right on the money. There’s a reason why the Jews are the kings of comedy. It’s because they’ve had to take more shit, historically, than any other group in Western culture, and after a while they just learned to laugh about it. I think this is a value that everyone should learn. Not that people should put up with disrespect, but that they shouldn’t be too thin-skinned.
Here’s a Jewish joke that doesn’t involve a lack of blowjobs. It may not be a Jewish joke at all, but it is a joke with a Jew in it, and I’ve told it to mixed audiences without obvious offense, but I’m not the most perceptive of men.
A Catholic priest and a Rabbi are attending an ecumenical council. While sharing lunch, the priest ordered a BLT, and asked the Rabbi if he ever wondered what bacon tastes like. The Rabbi said that once, when he was in Rabbinical school, he travelled to where no one knew him and tried some bacon and eggs, so he did know.
Then the Rabbi says, “Rabbis are allowed, even encouraged, to marry and have normal relations with women, while priests are forbidden to do so. Did the priest ever wonder what it was like?” “Well,” the priest answers, “when I was in the seminary I travelled out of town and met a woman, and one thing led to another, and I did have relations and know what that is like.”
The Rabbi says, “It’s better than bacon, isn’t it?”.
It doesn’t involve stereotypes, and offhand I can see no room for taking offense, but I admit that if the human relations director of my company were in the room I wouldn’t tell it. That probably should be a warning sign.
I am not the person to ask if a joke is appropriate or not because my sense of humor is truly messed up. but from experience Jews know the best and the most offensive Jew jokes ever.
one of my girls told me I was racist against Jews and I just rolled my eyes, she was one of those students who is smart and anything but shy so I knew she was going some where with that comment. turns out that I am only racist against blonde haired blue eyed Jewish girls (which is what she was) it was pretty funny in context.
on the other hand I had a student tell my what she thought was the most offensive Jew joke ever after we were talking about race mixing and how interesting things were with peoples backgrounds.
“What did the Nazi say to the Black Jew?”
will you please move to the back of the oven
it was pretty damn offensive, but I still laughed/
Especially considering that Argent Towers is Jewish. There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world for the OP of this thread.
Back on the real world, I’m definitely having my ignorance fought in this thread–it’s really interesting to find out that the same basic ethnic jokes exist everywhere, but with a different cast of characters. What does that tell us about the way humans instinctively deal with obvious differences in appearance? Paging Dr. Pinker!
Here in Texas, we turn most “Polish” jokes into “Aggie” jokes. (Texas A&M is a fine institution. Originally, it was for white men only & ROTC membership was compulsory. Somehow, Aggies became known as less than smart. All Teasip* lies, no doubt.)
Personally, I’m very careful about ethnic jokes–unless they begin like “An Irishman, a Scot & an Englisman walk into a bar…”
Teasip: University of Texas student or alumnus. No, they aren’t all dumb frat jocks & silly sorority chicks!
The reality is that the most vocally sensitive person in the room gets to decide what’s appropriate. Taken to an extreme, this can lead to an Orwellian nightmare in which no discourse or free speech is possible, but I just don’t think toning it down because someone has crossed an invisible line with cainxinth is nearly so bad, although I do think a nice chorous of “Relax, these are only jokes. Let’s all hold hands and remember the good times” is also an agreeable salve. People have asserted their boundaries, which overlap, but that doesn’t mean we have to fight about it. Let us make peace and move on to telling Irish jokes. You can almost always get away with making fun of the Irish, because they love any chance to talk about being Irish.
My heritage: Mostly Irish, with German and Czech mixed in. I’ve heard my share of jokes about those groups. For example:
“What do you call an abortion in Prague?” A canceled Czech. I was also raised Catholic so I heard a lot of those jokes. I work with computers, love Star Trek and am a Chicago Bears fan so I hear all of those jokes.
Jokes are either funny or not. But the offense comes from the teller, not the listener. Richard Pryor did a great rip on white people in Live on the Sunset Strip. He made fun of the attitudes and language of whites versus blacks (of course he used the nowverboten “n-word”). No malice, no hate. Michael Richards made jokes about blacks but was using the jokes as a weapon.
Most ethnic jokes point to the ridiculous stereotypes and prejudices that people perceive in “others”. But, as Rick and HubZilla mentioned upthread, different groups/countries will find alternate targets. Got a joke about the rivalry between Packers and Bears fans? I’ve bet you’ve probably heard it also used to refer to two other teams. Tight-fisted Jewish jokes? I’m sure the same ones are being told with Scottish or some other group. Are women bad drivers or are Asians? Were the people in the joke dumb blondes or dumb Polacks/Swedes/Irish/German/Albanian/Inuit/etc?
Tell me a joke, any kind. Make fun of my ancestry, my religion, my hobbies. You can also call me a mick or a kraut and I won’t care. I’m a honky, or a cracker. Make fun of the fact that where I live I’m surrounded by rednecks. It doesn’t bother me. Your words cannot hurt me because that is all they are: words. It is the power and the message behind the words that can hurt and offend. If your joke is told in the spirit of friendship, goodwill and sharing then go right ahead. But if your joke is told because of your hatred of my make up, then you’re damn right I’ll be offended.
I think whenever you open a thread called “Post your favorite Joke,” you better be prepared for seeing one that targets your ethnic/religious/class background. There’s no way everybody involved can avoid being a targetter, much less a target. You’re an unknown to them, so there’s no way they could know that YOU, the CENTER of the UNIVERSE, could be offended.
And of crouse, nothing provides an opportunity for more laughs than to see somebody protest the jokes. ZOOM! New Target! You can’t shame them into stopping.
Best example of this was when Gilbert Goddfried was on Howard Stern, and a woman called in with the intention of exposing Gilbert as a terrible Holocaust hater, as if millions didn’t already think Goddfried was an asshole. Goddfried explained that she was hired to drive him from the airport to his venue. After she picked him up, she immediately started talking to him about how her parents were Holocaust survivors, and got into all the sordid details of what they went through. After 20 minutes or so of this, Goddfried asked her if she ever got too scared to take a shower because she was afraid gas might come out.
She of course, got angry at this, and the more she complained, the more jokes he made about it. When she called him on Stern, it made the situation even worse for her, because now Goddfried had an audience of millions to bounce these jokes against and hear her horrified reactions. “So are you afraid to bake anything because you think you might get trapped in the oven?”
I agree that there is a thin line. I’m pretty offended by blatantly racist jokes. I can sort of relate to the concept of the jokes being acceptable in certain circles. When I was in high school, almost every single one of my friends was gay. The word ‘‘fag,’’ coming from my mouth, was a term of endearment. I would never use this word in polite society but when hanging out with my friends fake gay insults were a matter of course. I think when you can safely use these stereotypes with friends who are culturally different it says a lot about the level of trust and intimacy between you.
I will admit that when we’re sitting at home goofing around, my husband and I can come up with some righteously offensive things to say… stuff we wouldn’t be caught dead saying in front of anyone else. But what makes it okay is that we both understand one another perfectly. We know we are tolerant people; we are mocking the intolerant.
And I think many stand up comics take it too far (Sarah Silverman for example), but every once in a while racial comedy can be gold. ‘‘The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour’’ is the perfect example. I think the whole thing is pretty hilarious, with the best by far being, ‘‘I got married to an Indian woman a year ago… beautiful, beautiful Indian woman… I have to clarify because people go woah, woah, which do you mean… and I always have to say, no, no, not casino Indian… computer Indian. Yes, that’s right, I married Tech Support.’’ You haven’t lived until you’ve had the Maz Jobrani experience. He is Perrrsian, Meow!
Honestly I feel like if something offends you, you have something wrong with you. I can not think of anything anybody could say to me that is going to get me riled up and offended. If you don’t like the jokes someone tells than shrug it off and don’t hang out with them anymore, but don’t for the love of God obsess and lose sleep over it. Its my opinion that when someone can tell you a joke that pokes fun at your religious/ethnic/ etc. group than that person feels comfortable enough around you and your people to laugh and have a good time.
Also for the the record:
Whats the difference between a baptist and methodist?
Two methodists will talk to each other at the liquour store.
Or they could just be a dick that you can’t avoid for one reason or another. I’m pretty laid-back as far as these things go, but I can recognize that some people do tell offensive jokes to be nasty.
And, for the record, we have two situations in this thread:
X telling an X joke to a non-X
Non-X telling an X joke to an X
But what about a non-X telling an X joke to a non-X? Is it really so innocent then?
Who cares if i’m an X and someone tells a joke about X’s, then one of two things are occuring there is some truth to the joke (though it may be in bad taste), and so I can think its distasteful, but i’m not going to let it get at me, because i recognize that the joke is based on “some” truth. Or its just a joke ment to be nasty without a single grain of truth, in which case by getting mad and letting it eat at me all I’m doing is playing their game and giving them the satisfaction they don’t deserve.
There’s also the category of jokes about a certain group of people, which will only make sense to members of that group, or those very familiar with them. I’ve certainly heard my share of Catholic jokes which wouldn’t make sense to non-Catholics, and physicist jokes which wouldn’t make sense to non-physicists, and Montana jokes which wouldn’t make sense to non-Montanans, and so forth. I don’t generally tell such jokes in mixed company, not because they’re offensive, but simply because they wouldn’t be funny to outsiders.