Mark Weiss wrote:
> Yeah, it's like the to say the least discomfort when a non-jewish friend
> tells a jewish joke, tho among ourselves there's almost nothing else.
Probably any ethnic, racial, or religious joke, or comments made about one's
sexual orientation, fall under the old rule of the football locker room:
"What you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here when you leave
here." It's inside humor; and in most but not all cases, there is an
unspoken rule that they are told by and to insiders and are not to be shared
with/told by people who are not members of the group in question. People
learn and tell them of course, but it's considered a secret and guilty
pleasure, the love that cannot speak its name:-).
If anyone saw the Coen Brothers' film "Raising Arizona," there is a fairly
repellent character who seems--not without deliberate construction?--to
combine sexual tastelessness with ethnic prejudice. He yammers on to
Nicholas Cage's character that he and his wife can't have children "because
there's something wrong with my semen" (so who asked?--this is "guy talk"
taken to the level of a urologist's office). He also is fond of Polish
jokes. At the end of the film, he tells a Polish joke to the wrong guy: an
Arizona State Trooper whose nametag reads "Kowalski." Presumably the moving
violation ticket he gets is a whopper.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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