In case you missed its obituary, the joke died recently after a long illness, of, oh, 30 years. Its passing was barely noticed, drowned out, perhaps, by the din of ironic one-liners, snark and detached bons mots that pass for humor these days.I suspect all of these things contributed, but in the end, I think the conclusion is right: the era of telling a good joke is gone. Sad. Maybe the pendulum will swing the other way one day.
Among comics, the most cited culprit in the death of the joke is so-called "political correctness" or, at least, a heightened sensitivity to offending people.
The torrent of e-mail jokes in the late 1990s and joke Web sites made every joke available at once, essentially diluting the effect of what had been a spoken form. While getting up and telling a joke requires courage, forwarding a joke by e-mail takes hardly any effort at all. So everyone did it, until it wasn't funny anymore.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Death of the Joke
For a long time I've lamented that I never hear any good jokes. I have never been sure what to blame it on. It seems to me that someone was always saying "Hey, I heard a good joke today" when I was growing up, but I just never hear anyone saying that any more. Funnily enough (pun intended), there was an article about it in the Mercury News today.
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I heard these guys discussing this very thing on the radio the other day. Their position was a good joke is almost always at the expense of someone else making it, as you alluded to,"politically incorrect" They added that a way to still pull off a good joke and not offend anyone is begin with a totaly unbelievable premise to start with, Like , A man walks in his bedroom with a sheep under his arm and announces... Or, A couple picks up a half dead skunk in an effort to save its life and.. The conclusion to those and about 10 others they offered were neither politicaly correct or funny, unless you can just let yourself go and think absurd comedy, not politics or someonelses feelings. I have to admit I did laugh.
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