If the punchline of your "joke" boils down to HURR HURR HURR LOOKIT THOSE IDIOTS REACT, please don't tell it to me and give serious thought to not telling it at all. This includes donating to a cause not universally supported in the name of someone who opposes it. It's not funny, merely tribal and, if the conflict is over deeply-held feelings, needlessly cruel.
This applies even if "they'd do it to you." There are people in this world who'd skin you alive for a pack of smokes and even so, you don't get to make lampshades out of them. If you think you ought to, you are no better than they are.
Be the grown-up you'd like to see in the
Ummm, I'm kind of losst here. What brought this on? Looks like I'm behind the curve again.
ReplyDeleteMerle
There's jokes (ha ha ha), and jokes (gotcha you asswipe).
ReplyDeleteI prefer the former and loathe the latter. Being on the victim side of door number 2 is painful at the least, and could easily provide backlash violence at the worst.
In other words, grow up kiddies, or no milk and cookies....
Raz
"THIS," as the cool kids say.
ReplyDeleteI like absurd humor, or we're-all-in-this-together-and-life-is-stupid-sometimes humor. I very strongly dislike the "I am going to show you what a jerk I am and in how much contempt I seem to hold you" humor.
Part of that could be that the third kind of humor was one I regularly experienced at the hands of classmates from roughly grade 3 to grade 9.
Also, the "donate in someone's name to a cause they don't support" seems passive-aggressive in the extreme.
That sort of derp is so old it's actually condemned in the Old Testament.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit like Merle on this, not *quite* sure what you're getting at short of actually chargeable physical battery.
ReplyDelete"This includes donating to a cause not universally supported in the name of someone who opposes it."
I'm a bit jaded on this, as far as I'm concerned, if Nancy Pelosi wants to donate to the Second Amendment foundation in the name of Donald Trump, knock yourself out, Nancy.
The lampshade reference leads me to believe this was a blatant anti-Semitic or racist 'joke', and I have a less than zero tolerance for that crap, especially in a workplace environment.
If i somehow failed to pick up on the gist, crack me (somewhat gently, please) upside my head with the Oaken Clue Bat...
So, Anon, how about a nice big donation to Planned Parenthood, in the name of oh, whoever you know who objects to abortion? That funny to ya?
ReplyDeleteI have to be careful with jokes, for the main reason that I am not funny. I can tell the same joke that one of the well known t.v. comedians tell, and people look at me like I stepped in something unpleasant and then came into their living room with out wiping my feet. Something about the delivery.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do recognize that when joking about something, if the entire idea is to make someone uncomfortable or to make them feel put down, it is probably not something that an adult should be participating in. In fact, it is not something anyone should be participating in. Kids need to learn respect at a very young age.
Moot point, over my dead body would I ever donate to Planned Parenthood.
ReplyDeleteHypothetically, if I had an itch to send the NRA a hundred bucks and I had a co-worker who hated guns, I just might pay for a membership for them and leave them baffled as to why they got the membership.
But I wouldn't tell them I did it, and privately I'd enjoy that to no end.
Look, I apologize, I'm obviously still not reading between lines on this.
I blame my male brain's lack of the abstract.