I heard this joke in a sermon in 1974. I heard that highly revered minister preach at least a hundred sermons and this is the ONLY thing I remember him saying.
A guy loses his job and is desperate for a new one with which to support his precious family. Nothing turns up until one day the newspaper Help Wanted Ads (so now you know how old this jokes really is) says the zoo has an opening. Guy applies. The HR person looks worried and then says the zoo changed its mind, the job is too demeaning. Guy says he’s desperate, will take anything.
“Well, okay then. Our famous and beloved ape has died. So many patrons came here to visit him and we can’t afford to lose that audience. So we taxidermized him into a suit and want to hire someone to wear it and pretend to be him”.
Guy says yeah, it’s weird but he will do it. Guy is VERY good at this job. He climbs, dances, hoots, and hums. People attend the zoo like crazy to see the amazing and entertaining ape. Then, one day he’s climbing the tree in his cage, goes too far out on a branch, and FALLS INTO THE LION CAGE!
He yells. “HELP! HELP!!!”
The lion rushes to him, opens his mouth, and whispers, “Shut up or we’ll both get fired.”
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Humor relaxes the body, gets us to breathe, causes us to smile. For a moment we feel happy. This is probably why the humor (and music) of people who live under oppression is often the best humor. Humor and music are the homelands of people without a safe homeland.
Example: Rios Montt was a brutal military dictator in Guatemala in the early 1980’s; his two years in office were the bloodiest of Guatemala’s long bloody civil war (the US backed Montt in case you were wondering). Anyways, it was said of Montt that he was born with a twin – who was deceased with signs of torture.
The humor of the oppressed can be very pointed.
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Humor can provide release and relief in tense or distraught moments and situations.
I learned at my brother’s funeral that for more than a year he had let his hair grow long enough to wear in a pony tail. One night he was out at a bar with friends. (Well, to be truthful, he was out at a bar most of the nights of his adult life except when he had friends over to the bar in his house.) Anyways, a guy just visiting his town happened to be at that bar that night and struck up a lively conversation with Paul. (A big part of this joke is that my brother could talk to anyone about anything and make them feel good about themselves in the process.) When Paul went to the restroom the guy asked someone at their table what “her” name was. Paul got a haircut the next day.
Losing Paul when he was only 51 was awful and yet, that joke brings the best of him back to me every time.
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Some humor provides a way to be superior to others. When your life causes you to feel like a loser, its easy to feel superior again by making fun of others.
This is a dangerous humor. Calling women Barbie's or Karen’s is humor until it is a toxic way to disenfranchise the voices of women - as several readers named Barbara and Karen understand.
Trump mimicking reporter Serge Kovaleski who has arthrogryposis in this arm. That year Merely Streep accepted an award at the Golden Globe with this: “That was the one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge_F._Kovaleski
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Some humor - IMHO the best humor – is just nutty. It’s can be delightfully incongruous and memorable when unrelated ideas are mingled.
Oscar Wilde’s “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
Mark Twain on just about any topic. “I was educated once - it took me years to get over it.” “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” “Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
Random internet joke: My boss was honest with me today. He pulled up to work with his sweet new car this morning and I complimented him on it. He replied, "Well, if you work hard, set goals, stay determined and put in long hours, I can get an even better one next year."
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Len just heard this with which we will end this important essay. “Getting lots of sleep helps prevent the ravages of old age. Especially if you do it while you drive.”
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