As a student of folk culture, one wonders what ever happened to the genre called Little Moron Jokes? Whom were they written by? The only one I remember from back in grade school is why did the l.m. jump through the screen door. There was also a series of jokes that had something to do with Crazy Willy or somebody named Willy who always came to a horrible end. What do you call the place in our cultural heritage that used to be occupied by grotesque jokes such as the Little Moron and the Willy jokes, and what occupies that place now? Possibly “gallows humor?” Why this morbid streak in mankind? And finally, how were the old terms (now no longer utilized by the profession) moron, imbecile, and
idiot, which were once technical terms, used? I mean which was the lowest, etc. and what sorts of citizens did they refer to?
In ascending order of intelligence, the terminology was as roughly follows:
Idiot: < 20 I.Q. points. Many of these people cannot even walk or talk.
Imbecile: 21 - 55 points. I think the character played by Micky Rooney in the “Bill” movies was toward the upper range here.
Moron: 55 - 75 or 80 points. Anyone above the upper limit wasn’t considered handicapped, just not terribly bright.
I’m not sure of my cutoff points, but I do know the terms were used in that order.
I always thought the term “retarded” was unpleasantly ironic, besides not entirely accurate. “Retarded” means “slow”, but implies thereby that the person will get someplace eventually. Sadly, I don’t think this usually happens.
And don’t even get me started on the term “Special”!.
Obviously, these days it is far less acceptable to make jokes about the handicapped or otherwise disadvantaged. But
I remember hearing little moron jokes before I even knew what the word meant, and thinking that a moron must be some
imaginary little creature, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book or a cartoon.
As to the jokes, didn’t they become blonde jokes, or which ever nationality was being picked on (Hear about the latest Irish invention? key opened submarines - only an example, it could readily by Polish or Greek, it just depends on which country one is in). Didn’t you have similar jingoistic jokes?
IIRC, the cut-off points mentioned by javaman are:
[list][li]moron: 60 - 40 I.Q.[/li][li]imbecile: 40 - 20 I.Q.[/li][li]idiot: <20 I.Q.[/li]
…and this was devised by that Binet guy who’s famous for the Stanford-Binet I.Q. test.
Did Binet have another label for the range between 60 and, say 80 IQ points? If not, a person with an IQ of 65 would
be not seriously handicapped, yet I find it hard to imagine
how such a person could function fully as an independent adult.
Back in the 1950s Eisenhower era, there was a vogue for “sick jokes”, as they were called then. Any form of humor where the punch line revolved around grotesque mayhem, as in the examples you have, was called “sick”.
When Lenny Bruce made the scene, the journalists called him a “sick comic” because they didn’t know what else to make of him. Bob Dylan sang in his elegy “Lenny Bruce”:
They said that he was “sick”
'cause he didn’t play by the rules.
He showed the wise men of his day
to be nothing more than fools.
They stamped him and they labeled him
like they do pants and shirts.
He fought a war on a battlefield
where every victory hurts.
Lenny Bruce was bad.
He was the brother that you never had.