Told by an insider to an insider, but with the hope that the rest of the
world is listening? Certainly true of Jewish and Black humor. Tho my mother
used to say of some Jewish comics, even while tears of laughter rolled down
her face, that he shouldn't say those things--what would the goyim think?
Rabinowitz is walking down the street in the garment district. Thru the
traffic on the other side of the street he notices someone who looks
strangely familiar, and it finally conmes to him--it's Schultz, the most
vicious guard from the concentration camp. He's dreamed of finding this man
for 40 years. So he fights his way across the street and struggles thru the
pedestrians and finds himself face to face with his nemesis. "Schultz," he
growls, "it's me, Rabinowitz. I've waited years for this moment. You won't
escape me now!" And he grabs Schultz by the lapel, pausing for a moment in
sudden admiration. "Nice cloth!"
Told to me by a French Jew in Paris.
If this becomes a thread of ethnic humor I'd be much more comfortable if
people reported jokes, like the above, that turn on their own ethnicity or
nationality.
Mark
At 08:56 AM 12/19/2003 -0500, Ken Wolman wrote:
>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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