To lower the bar means to stop restricting midgits from entering as well as lowering the bar drinks are served from so that they can reach it.
I forget the jester’s name, but he’s always soused, so it’s his misunderstanding that is funny.
It ain’t really funny even if you don’t care about political correctness, of course.
OK, I thought today’s “Our tax dollar’s” at work line was pretty good. Not hah-hah funny, but an “ouch!” funny.
Clams got punchlines?
I actually laughed the second time I read the joke in the OP. The humor in it, to me, is the question “How the heck can you see a black hole with a normal telescope?!” The king has every right to not believe it.
Of course, that’s just a WAG. 
That the strip was unfunny was sad enough.
That it took two people to write it is… very sad indeed.
You know I really don’t think the humor that was intended has to do with the problems of serious astronomers. I think that it is a bad day for a not particularly great comic.
I don’t see what the big deal is. TheOnlySaneOne got it, and it’s not that difficult. No, it’s not realistic, but so what? Trust me, you do not want realistic astronomy jokes.
And about “lowering the bar”, yes it has two meanings, and no, neither one of them is particularly funny on its own, but that’s what a pun is - it’s only funny if you see the double meaning together.
But if the point of the comic was that you can’t see a black hole with a regular telescope (which I don’t think is true), then there would be no need for the king’s “Yeh, right” response. The “gag” would only need to be the wizard saying what he said. There has to be some reason for the king’s being there.
And I don’t think it’s such a bad comic overall. It’s usually good for a chuckle.
(Whoops. By the way, the “which I don’t think is true” in my above post refers to my feelings about the proposed point of the comic, not to the proposed inability to see black holes with a telescope. That part I’m sure is true.)
pravnik got it first. So did theonlysaneone and a few others. Not that hard to get.
Obviously the humor was much better in the late 60’s, thru the 70’s, and into the early 80’s.
The funniest WOI I remember is from the 1960’s. The king is sitting on his throne. Rodney drags a poor peasant before the king. Rodney says “He was caught stealing a loaf of bread.” The king says, “off with his head.”
The peasant pleads, “Sire, have mercy. I’ve got a wife and children, and it’s Valentine’s Day.” The king deliberates for a moment. He then says, " You’re right.----- Cut out his heart!"
The black humor was the best.
Spooky…
I had a very amusing astronomy teacher back in 1990 who would tell Ferdinand Feghoot jokes in the middle of every class, and I got in the habit of bringing a tape recorder every day. I have, on tape, this teacher saying, “There’s a Wizard of Id comic strip where the wizard announces that he’s discovered a black hole, and the king says, ‘Well, you can’t argue with that!’”
This was over ten years ago. What’s up? Recycled strip? Recycled gag?
Metahumour maybe? Although that’s an awful long time to let an unremarkable strip sit before referencing it.
TWOI was funny back when they made fun of Sir Rodney’s nose. Ever since then, however…
Which would, of course, indicate that my interpretation of the joke was the correct one after all. BWAH HA HA HA HA!!!
[Honestly, I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. Sorry about that…]
Barry
I’ve always had an appreciation for the king of Id, since he’s so unapologeticly rotten. His mother’s day present is an extra bar of soap while she’s cleaning out the dungeons. He makes Sir Rodney the general of his army when the Huns attack, then closes the gate behind him as he charges out.
My favorite was a Sunday strip I had taped to my bookcase for years. A cocky prisoner is being led up the hightower, and he keeps bragging to the guards about how he’s going to escape. He sees the king at top, and says “Well, if it isn’t the little fink himself. What are you doing up here runt?” The king just jestures out through a window to a gallows erected at the top of the tower with a noose hanging from it and remarks “Bungee cord hangings always make my day.”
When I’m king I’m going to have bungee cord hangings.
But I think that there’s a HUGE difference between “You can’t argue with that” and “Yeh, right!” If the comic I read a few days ago had said, “You can’t argue with that,” I don’t know if I’d have asked the question. The “Yeh, right” (which should be “YeAh, right,” as far as I’m concerned, by the way) is different somehow: more mocking, rather than the unwilling acceptance (or realization of the impossibility of refutation) of “You can’t argue with that.”
I just went and checked out that comic online. After reading 3 or 4 strips, I realized that the posts on this thread are funnier then the comic itself! I guess there’s not much more to be said about TWoI.
Speaking of ‘surreally baffling’, reading a thread about a comic that’s funnier then the comic itself seems to fit right in. What does it mean if I read the whole thread but not even a week’s worth of strips?
I too am baffled.
This is why I stick to “Boondocks” and “Get Fuzzy”.
The funniest thing I remember from Wizard of Id was a single panel (cover to a paperback collection of comics) of Sir Rodney meekly laying his sword down in front of a “Yield” sign.
My favorite is the one (very old) where two of the peasants are standing on a lawn discussing national nomenclature. “If people from Norway are Norwegian and people from Sweden are Swedish, etc., then what are we?”
A guard then comes out and says, “Get off the grass, you idiots!”