not funny

“Take my wife, please.” Henny Youngman

My Grandma Braff and her sisters and their spouses would collect around our dining room table after a holiday meal, or a family poker night sipping very strong Romanian coffee or smoking some enormous stinky cigar. My sisters, cousins and I would retire into the living room waiting for the dessert to be served. Dinner was always great but nothing beat the home made cakes and pies and the wait was well worth while. However, getting a slice of pie or cake meant having to walk into the dining room standing in front of the eldest of the uncles and have him say, “do you want to hear a joke’?

At first and for the uninitiated, it seemed rather simple, a joke for a piece of pie, two jokes for another piece of cake, three jokes if you wanted any ice cream on top. Shaking our heads yes that we wanted to hear a joke, the elder uncle would pull us closer to him lean in toward us with that smelly cigar breath tell us the joke.

With only the first name of the husband changing, the joke would end with...take my wife please... Every aunt and uncle over the age of 75 would howl like hyenas, hold their achy bellies from laughing and giggle like little girls and boys. Another uncle would chime in didn’t see that coming did you. Finish off that comment with a slap on the table and the dessert would be served.

We did see it coming, we knew it was coming once the dinner dishes were removed and replaced with the dessert ware. Most of us knew after the second time the joke was told it was not funny. We would, like deer in the headlights, look around for assistance from the other aunts and uncles, just one of them to say that joke is not funny, but never to any avail. The elder uncle would tell the joke, say it was funny and everyone else sitting around the table would acquiesce. And if we were brave enough not to laugh, we were warned that we will never grow up understanding what is funny and what is not funny. 

"It Can Now Be Said, Without Equivocation," Obama "Hates This Country" he was indoctrinated as a youth by a communist father and a radical mother.” Rush Limbaugh

“It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bachmann said. “It appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency.” Michelle Bachmann

Once again,some people out of touch with their reality are sitting around the table repeating the same punch lines to jokes that are not funny. Unlike “...take my wife please...” these jokes told by Michelle Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh are dire and dangerous, vile and venomous. Sadly the recipients of these jokes are not intelligent enough to see just how ridiculous they are nor do these recipients have the ability to discern truth from lie, fact from fiction. And so buffoons like Bachmann and Limbaugh continue to tease the public with promises of dessert if only they listen to one more joke. And so, disingenuous, derelicts tempt and tease a group of people who think being a bigot deserves them a slice of dessert. 

I remember after the third time walking into the dining room as an audience member of the the”...take my wife joke...”, going to my mother complaining that the joke was not funny. I remember adding that what WAS funny in a sad way was just how much the elder uncle thought he made us laugh. I remember not knowing the word for it but thinking this man is pathetic and all those aunts and uncles I love so much are even more pathetic to let him tell that joke over and over again. And I remember asking my mother why do they let the elder uncle do this all the time? She would reply in passing, maybe they don’t know any better!

Has America fallen into the hands of maybe they don’t know better? Has America become so dumb that smart is a foreign concept? Rush is one of the most listened to radio jocks, Michelle is a Congresswoman and they tell us jokes that divide and conquer. These jokes are not funny but America is still laughing. And the only reward America is going to get is a pie in the face.