In which Al Franken teaches Ann Coulter how to tell a joke

There are all kinds of good jokes.  Some of my favorites are jokes that use language against itself, puns and their wittier cousins, like this Henny Youngman joke about his uncle the lush.

"My uncle the lush is sitting in a bar one day.  He looks up and sees a sign on the wall.  Sign says, "Drink Canada Dry.'  So he went up there."

Same uncle goes hunting.

"My uncle went hunting.  He's driving through the mountains and he sees a sign says, "Bear Left.'   So he went home."

Steven Wright's jokes are like this.  Steven Wright is like Henny Youngman slowed way down.

I'm not going to start.  Once you start doing Wright's jokes, you can't stop.  You want to read some, you can go here.

I also like jokes about how silly people can be.  Not stupid.  Silly.  There's a big difference.  And I only like them when the joke includes the implication that we are all silly like the people in the joke sometimes.  When the joke is about how silly other people can be, it's not a joke, it's just an expression of smugness.

I'm not crazy about insult comics like Don Rickles, but they can be funny because everybody in the room is a target.  You don't go see them to hear other people made fun of.  You go to hear yourself called a hockey puck.

My very favorite jokes are the kind that do the same work as tragedy.  Jokes that are in fact mini-tragedies, except that somehow at the end they make us laugh instead of cry.  These are jokes that remind us not how silly people can be but how painful it often is to be a human being.

That was Richard Pryor's genius.

Some very funny people can't tell a joke.  My friend Gary is one of the wittiest people alive.  His mind works at the speed of Groucho.  But whenever he tries to tell a joke with a set-up, a story, and a punchline, he always blows it.

He just can't get the rhythm.

He can't dance either.

I can tell a joke.  But I can't make them up.  I have to steal other people's material.

Milton Berle is my patron saint.

Some people who can't tell a joke think they can, to the embarrassment of everyone around them.  Some people who can't write jokes still try to do it for a living, which explains most sitcoms.   Some of these people who try and fail to write and tell jokes actually have no senses of humor.  They think they do.  They think they know what a joke is.

What they know is what a joke sounds like.

They know what jokes are meant to do.

They've read Freud and grasped that jokes are often expressions of anger or hostility.  They know that sometimes the best jokes are shocking, outrageous, even offensive.  They've heard Pryor and and they've heard of Lenny Bruce.  They've seen Animal House one too many times.  They've been told that certain words are funny all by themselves.  Like bratwurst.  Bratwurst is a funny word.  Order some in a restaurant with a straight face.  I dare you.  There are lots of words like bratwurst.  It doesn't matter what they mean.  Their actual meaning has nothing to do with their funniness.  Put them in a sentence, and that sentence will sound like a joke.

Rat poison, for instance.

Creme brulee?  Not so much.

But knowing all this, these people without a sense of humor will try to write a joke.

And come up with something like this:  "We need someone to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee."

Recently, Al Franken had the opportunity to teach Ann Coulter how to tell a real joke.  He did it by telling her one of his own, which happens to be an example of my favorite kind of joke.  Franken's joke goes like this:

Like they do every Saturday night, two elderly Jewish couples are going out to dinner. The guys are in front, the girls riding in back. Irv says to Sid, “Where should we go tonight?”

Sid says, “How about that place we went about a month ago.  The Italian place with the great lasagna.”

Irv says, “I don’t remember it.”

Sid says, “The place with the great lasagna.”

Irv says, “I don’t remember.   What’s the name of the place?”

Sid thinks.  But can’t remember.  “A flower.  Gimme a flower.”

“Tulip?” Irv says.

“No, no.  A different flower.”

“Magnolia?”

“No, no.  A basic flower.”

“Orchid?”

“No!  Basic.”

“Rose?”

"That’s it!"  Sid turns to the back seat.  “Rose.  What was the name of that restaurant…?”

Franken taught Coulter a few other things while he was at it.  He did it in front of an audience at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles where he and Coutler were invited to debate by the University of Judaism.

Franken posted his report on the debate at the Huffington Post.  You can read his opening speech at Midwest Values PAC.  His speech is like his book, the truth, with jokes.

Because, as Franken says, you can't have freedom without the truth.

On the other hand, he says, "You can have freedom without jokes, as has been proven by the Dutch and the Swiss."

Thanks to Jude Nagurney Camwell at the American Street for the links.

Comments

[rameau's nephew]

Curses! I was just composing (albeit mentally) a post to use that joke today. Damn your eyes, sir!

Whatever I think might make a good post, Mannion or Neddie is always there first.

[RonzoniRigatoni]

Lancelot, ol' man:

Having spent a goodly amount of time in the Nederlands over the past 20 some years, I beg to differ. The Dutch DO have a sense of humor of a sort. But it seems to be limited to "Belgian" jokes, if you get my drift. Of course, the Belgians tell the same jokes, 'cept they're "Dutch" jokes. Gagagaga (gutteral Dutch/Flemish G)

[Jeremy]

I want to be the first to add their absolute favorite joke>

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a pub. The barman says, "what is this? Some kind of joke?"

The one about Sir Vivian Fuchs can't be done in prose.

[Mike Schilling]

One way to tell right-wingers: they have no idea what's funny and what's not. They also think Limbaugh is funny, and they'll defend him that way. "'Feminazi?' It's a joke, don't you get it? Geez, you liberal PC types have no sense of humor."

[harry near indy]

jeremy,

i never heard/read that version of the joke. the version i heard goes like this:

a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar. the bartender looks up and says, "what is this -- some kind of joke?"

or you could substitute diner for bar. same diff.

it's also a post-modern joke -- that is, a joke about being a joke, with the characters knowing that they're in a joke. iirc, that's one feature of post-modernist literature.

[Buce]

--My doctor told me to get some at the drugstore...
--Some what?
--I dunno, sounds like a city in England.
--London? Manchester? Liverpool?
--That's it! Carter's Little Liverpools.

[velvet goldmine]

In a book about Saturday Night Live, Al Franken describes an awful joke he pulled on the (all female) guests at his wife's postpartem baby shower.

He walks in, apparently holding the baby, which is actually a doll, and does a spectacular prat fall, coming down with all his weight on the baby, in such a way that would assuredly have killed it. "The screams! The screams!" he said in recounting the guests' reactions.

It's horrible and it's sick, but I laugh every time I think of it. (If I remember correctly, his wife was in on it -- she strolled in just after, carrying the real baby.)

[Kevin Wolf]

Lance, you could not possibly be more correct about Coulter. Not only is she not funny, she thinks she's hilarious. That just makes her even less funny.

You can see the lines coming and then they thud, but she and her readers think she's witty. Ugh.

I love Steve Martin and Steven Wright; I've read SJ Perlman and my idol is James Thurber. That's wit.

Coulter is witless.