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Op-Ed

Humor — Is It Funny?

October 18, 2019

There comes a time when we must lay artifice aside and write the truth directly as it flows from the human heart. I’m not going to do it, though. I’ve got a family to support. What, do you think I’m crazy? I’m here to tell jokes.

Robert Kahn

By Robert Kahn

Deputy editor emeritus, Courthouse News

There comes a time when we must lay artifice aside and write the truth directly as it flows from the human heart. I’m not going to do it, though. I’ve got a family to support. What, do you think I’m crazy? I’m here to tell jokes.

So this penguin’s driving down the road on a hot day in August and all of a sudden the car starts shaking and grinding. Fortunately, the Three Monkeys Garage is up at the next corner. So the penguin coasts in there and the head monkey is standing out front. The head monkey listens to the engine and tells the penguin to turn it off.

“Give me thirty minutes to figure it out,” the head monkey says. “There’s an ice cream parlor right across the street. Why’n’t you go over there and relax?”

So the penguin waddles across the street and goes into the ice cream parlor — “Ting-a-ling-a-ling!” — and there’s all kinds of ice cream in there. He finally decides to just have a vanilla ice cream cone. He licks it and eats the cone and wanders around the ice cream parlor and looks at all the other kinds of ice cream.

Finally he leaves the shop — “Ting-a-ling-a-ling!” — and waddles back across the street, and the head monkey is standing out front.

“Well,” the head monkey says, “you blew a seal.”

And the penguin says, “I did not! I just had some ice cream.”

From: REDACTED

To: Robert Kahn

cc: REDACTED

Bob,

I am afraid I am going to have to report this little “joke” to HR and the Title IX office.

Are you out of your mind?

First: the verb “waddling” is clearly body-shaming.

Next: the verb “grinding” may bring up inappropriate contacts in some readers’ minds, which may make our advertisers uncomfortable.

Third and Fourth: Why can a monkey figure out something a penguin can’t? Are we species-shaming as well?

Fifth: Do you believe that veiled reference to interspecies fellatio in an ice cream parlor is funny?

Sixth, and surely last: Do you consider it appropriate to make immature jokes on a distinguished news page?

This is your two-week notice.

Karen REDACTED (Somebody screwed up and didn’t black out Karen’s first name.)

From: Robert Kahn

To: Karen REDACTED

cc: REDACTED

Karen,

All guy jokes are immature.

For instance, this one, which is true.

A neurophysiologist in England has been studying orgasms in her laboratory for years, men and women both, and she thinks that having orgasms might help your mental health.

I suspected it before she did, I bet.

I ain’t trying to brag.

I admit I didn’t think it was science when I was doing it … those lonely nights in the laboratory …

My eighth-grade science teacher, Mr. Selz, told us: “Don’t play with it!”

That was 55 years ago.

Now I guess they tell them: “Go ahead and play with it. Blame Darwin and the Democrats.”

I say: Bring on Darwin and the Democrats!

Course, you can’t not bring on Darwin.

Whatever that means.

(Courthouse News columnist Robert Kahn is resting comfortably at home.)

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