Ford and the author of several manuals for comedians, said he believed a combination of shortened attention spans and lack of backbone among today's youth made them ill-suited for joke telling. Robert Orben, 78, a former speechwriter for President Gerald R. Older comics tend to put the blame on the failings of younger generations. Jillette said he believed most of the best jokes have a mean-spirited component, and that mean-spiritedness is out. Nilsen, the executive secretary of the International Society for Humor Studies and a professor of linguistics at Arizona State University.Īmong comics, the most cited culprit in the death of the joke is so-called "political correctness" or, at least, a heightened sensitivity to offending people. "There isn't a lot of agreement," said Don L.F. In the academic world scholars have been engaged in a lengthy postmortem of the joke for some time, but still no grand unifying theory has emerged. Theories abound: the atomic bomb, A.D.D., the Internet, even the feminization of American culture, have all been cited as possible causes. While many in the world of humor and comedy agree that the joke is dead, there is little consensus on who or what killed it or exactly when it croaked. "I can't remember the last time I was sitting around and heard someone tell a good joke," Ms. To tell a joke at the office or a party these days is to pronounce oneself a cornball, an attention hog, and of course to risk offending someone, a high social crime. "Because then you're a big hack."īut out in the real world, the joke hung on for a while, lurking in backwaters of male camaraderie like bachelor parties and trading floors and in monthly installments of Playboy's "Party Jokes" page. "You don't tell joke jokes onstage ever," she said. "If I don't get a laugh at the end, I'm a failure." "A joke is a way to say, 'I'm going to do something funny now,"' said Penn Jillette, the talking half of the comedy and magic duo Penn & Teller and a producer of "The Aristocrats," a new documentary about an old dirty joke of the same name. The joke insisted on everyone's attention, and when it bombed - wow. "Two guys walked into a bar" "So this lady goes to the doctor" "Did you hear the one about the talking parrot?" The new humor sneaks by on little cat feet, all punch line and no setup, and if it bombs, you barely notice. But when people reminisce about it, they always say the same thing: the joke knew how to make an entrance. There was no next of kin to notify, the comedy skit, the hand-buzzer and Bob Newhart's imaginary telephone monologues having passed on long before. Its passing was barely noticed, drowned out, perhaps, by the din of ironic one-liners, snark and detached bons mots that pass for humor these days. IN case you missed its obituary, the joke died recently after a long illness, of, oh, 30 years.
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