A light-hearted mention of some Jewish stereotypes (greedy, loansharking, gambling) which actually have a lot of basis in reality (Jews in Europe were forced into finance by kings who wouldn’t let them own land, Jews have traditionally been overrepresented in American gambling and organized crime) and which are totally ingrained in our popular culture, and you get offended.
Someone makes a joke about a Jew and a Black being burned alive in an oven, and you’re not only not offended, but you’re entertained.
I think something is a little off about this situation.
My turn to be offended now but I’m offended by the OP more than any joke I’ve ever heard. (I’ve heard some cruel and funny shit)
To create a new thread to show the rest of us the error of our ways, and reminding us that we’d been admonished not just once, but twice is amazing to me.
People disagree with your opinion. I don’t hold the Jewish faith higher than any other faith. Based on your posts, it feels as though you think I should, based whatever reasons you have.
As an African American I suppose I could cry and scream and cringe every time a bad joke is told. Hopefully, I’ll cringe at every bad joke I hear, not just ones involving “the Brothers”. (sarcasm in using this term)
Native Americans suffered genocide- as did Africans-as did Jewish people - as did MANY MANY OTHERS in the history of the world. It’s horrific - it’s hard to accept… but sometimes, shit is just funny! (oh no, now I’ll be admonished for laughing at genocide - I’m not laughing at the acts of cruelty - I’m laughing at my timing in adding my disclaimer. See - a joke)
To the poster who listed “the holocaust” as verboten:
If we’re to be expected to modify our funny bones to exclude the holocaust of the 1930s-1940s, then we need to modify our funny bones for all people who’ve been enslaved, tortured, systematically killed over the ages. See above.
I laugh at whatever I find funny - I laughed a lot in the original thread. “So sue me.” (paraphrasing a comic from the Borsht Belt)
jali, I think you missed my point. I said I liked Jewish jokes. Heck, I like all offensive jokes. My problem is the people who don’t think Jewish jokes are offensive.
Indeed. A lesbian once told me the following joke:
Q: How can you spot a lesbian bar?
A: All the U-Hauls parked out front.
Now, if you’re not a lesbian, you very probably don’t get it. Lesbians, though, think it’s hilarious. The joke, as I was told, is that lesbians quite often move in with each other very quickly, not long after first meeting each other. And it’s something about themselves that they apparently find humorous.
This is it, basically, I think. There are two reasons a person might tell a racist joke: because it’s funny, or because it’s racist. If a person I know well tells such a joke, I can be fairly sure why they’re telling it. If some person I just met, or some anonymous person on a message board tells it, then I have no frame of reference other than the joke itself. So, if I find it funny, I figure they told it because it’s funny; if I don’t find it funny, I figure they told it because it’s racist.
Obviously it’s not an exact science, and my position generally is to just not worry about it too much.
I’m saying that Jewish jokes are no more and no less offensive than any other (fill in the group/gender/sex/religion) joke. Why such outrage at Jewish jokes? Why no outrage at Black jokes?
Offensiveness and beauty are both in the eye of the beholder. Some Jewish people might be offended by all Jewish jokes, no matter who told them or what the situation was. Others might think nothing of telling Holocaust jokes. Some white people might be offended by any racist jokes denigrating black people and some black people might look at them :dubious: . Same for any other group. Fundamentalist Muslims are offended by…hell, what aren’t they offended by?
The point is, some people will hear a joke and go, “Meh, I’ve heard worse.” Others will hear it and want to go on a jihad to kill the person who made the joke. If someone you don’t know tells a joke that you find offensive, let them know how you feel. If they do it again, they are probably an asshole and you shouldn’t give a shit about them anyway.
I hope you’re not talking about me here. Because I don’t think the holocaust or anything else is “verboten” (nice pun by the way, if it was intended.) I just think it’s hypocritical to laugh at a holocaust joke but take offense at some other kind of Jewish joke. I sure as hell don’t have any problem joking about the holocaust, as long as the person just means it as a joke and isn’t actually in favor of killing Jews. Since I only have a few neo-Nazi friends, I thankfully don’t have to deal with the latter very often.
Except that cainxinth’s stated criterion is that the teller of a Jewish joke must be Jewish, and in this case, he was. Which means cainxinth is just pissing into the wind.
The OP is talking about the Jewish ethnicity and culture, not the Jewish faith. Think “Jew” as contrasted to “Arab”, not “Jew” as contrasted to “Muslim”: not all Jews are religious and not all members of the Jewish faith are members of the Jewish ethnicity and culture.
