A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Twenty

Wow! Twenty of these! & the hits keep coming.

I have mentioned before how the folks at the A Joke A Day mailing list pride themselves on not being offensive. Humor is, after all, a very safe thing. Just ask Lenny Bruce.

I'm not sure how one who has or has had a loved one stricken with this devastating condition might feel about this particular "joke," from Saturday:

What’s the good part about Alzheimer’s diseased [sic]?
You keep meeting new friends.

This illustrates, to me, the fundamental problem with the A Joke A Day philosophy: "Score big at your next gathering, cocktail or sales appointment with politically-correct jokes. The best & freshest clean jokes in the world! A Joke a Day guarantees to keep all jokes & humor clean." (Emphasis mine.)

Should jokes be "politically correct"? Should they be "clean"? She these things trump editing & spell-checking? (Apparently the last is a "yes.")

Is making fun of a horrible affliction in which people watch their loved ones turn into strangers, people whom they knew as smart & funny & insightful, suddenly forgetting everything, even them, sometimes wandering off, sometimes angry & frightened, is making fun of that "politically correct"?

The dumbshits at the A Joke A Day mailing list have backed themselves into a corner. They want every joke to be as "clean" as a bon mot from Miss Manners, but humor isn't like that. A lot of what is funny is funny because it's outrageous, &/or contains painful truths that people don't usually articulate.

The occasional offensive joke slipped past the A Joke A Day nimrods reveals, I think, the philosophical bankruptcy of the entire enterprise - & it demonstrates in stark relief why most of the A Joke A Day jokes are not, in fact, jokes after all.

Inbox padding, I suppose, but jokes? Nah.