And while we are on the subject of ethnic jokes, the election of a Polish pope in 1977 gave rise to many of them. Most people who tell Polish jokes are unaware that the origin of this particular kind of ethnic insult is a legacy from Nazi Germany, whose racist propaganda portrayed the Poles as stupid, porcine people. (Prior to that, Poland was actually best known for the beauty of its women, something to which Napoleon could enthusiastically attest.)
In any event, the accession of John Paul II to the papacy was the occasion for a rash of Polish Pope jokes. (e.g., his first miracle was turning a blind man into a leper.) But a comment popular in England at the time was that he had no sense of humor. If he had one, he would nothave named himself after his predecessor, John Paul I. Logically, Pope John Paul should have been followed by Pope George Ringo.
In the Soviet Union during Stalin's Great Purge, many of the victims were targeted because of their level of education on the assumption that intellectuals could not be relied upon for loyalty to the Stalinist system. A joke from Moscow circa 1936:
Two women, old friends who had not seen each other for years, met on a bus near Red Square. After embracing and expressing delight at their reunion, they exchanged information about their families. "I have three sons," said one woman. "My eldest is an engineer. My middle boy is a professor of literature. My youngest is also in Siberia."
And speaking of Red Square, Lenin's tomb is there. When the founder of the Soviet Union died, his body was embalmed, placed in an airtight glass case, and put on display (where it remains to this day as a major tourist attraction.) Two Muscovites were visiting the tomb during the wrenching and traumatic First Five Year Plan, circa 1933. As they gazed at Lenin's body, one of them said, "He's just like us. Dead, just not buried."
Hermann Goering, number two figure in Nazi Germany and Hitler's right hand man, had a penchant for preposterously theatrical clothing. He was frequently seen in public holding an ebony walking stick with a grip of solid gold, wearing a flowing black silken cape with a red lining, a military uniform of his own design spangled with scores of self-awarded medals, and his ample waist girdled by a golden belt from which dangled a ceremonial sword in a bejeweled scabbard.
A joke from Berlin circa 1940: Hitler, an avid opera enthusiast with a particular devotion to Wagner, was attending a performance of Die Walkure when he nodded off to sleep. He awakened somewhat groggily just as Brunhilda the Valkyr appeared on stage. Following the custom of Wagnarian tradition, she was a hefty woman wearing a horned helmet, armor that included an iron brassiere, and carrying both shield and spear. Startled by the image that presented itself to his abruptly awakened eyes, Hitler leapt to his feet and cried, "Hermann! You have gone too far!"
From 1921 until 1937 Ireland occupied an ambiguous status as the Irish Free State, a Dominion of the British Empire like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but one whose existence was a temporary compromise between the Irish Republican Army and the British government, a compromise which had been preceded by civil war and a century of rebellion. In short, the Irish had no loyalty to the British crown and no affection for the "Brits."
This led to a general sense among the British that Irish were security risks, a not insignificant concern given the rampant espionage current in Europe during the 1930's. It also led to this joke, from England c. 1935:
A British covert operative (spy) was sent to the small Irish town of Tullamore with instructions to contact another covert operative named O'Brien, who would deliver to him certain classified German documents he had secured from the German consulate in Belfast. His identification statement to O’Brien was to be, "The raven is in the hayloft. Repeat: the raven is in the hayloft."
He arrived in Tullamore in the wee hours of the morning and, with difficulty, found the address of O'Brien on the dimly lighted, twisting streets. He knocked softly on the door. After a few moments the door opened. An elderly man said, "Yes?"
"The raven is in the hayloft," the Briton said. "Repeat: the raven is in the hayloft."
The old man smiled broadly. "Oh, you want O'Brien the spy! He lives two doors down."
The presidential election of 1860 was one of the most significant in American History. Passions ran high as the Democratic Party fragmented and the incipient election of the Republican Lincoln threatened the nation with its own fragmentation. At the same time a popular preacher named Miller predicted that January 1, 1861, would be the date of the Second Coming of Christ. This would of course precipitate Judgment Day and the end of the world.
A joke from somewhere in the middle of the country circa 1860: on a train from Chicago to New York, a group of men began discussing national politics. The conversation became an argument, and the argument soon became so loud, bitter, and acrimonious that a real danger of violence soon became evident. A preacher who was a Millerite interposed himself between two of the most frenzied arguers and said, "Gentlemen, please! This is all irrelevant. It makes no difference who wins the election, because on January 1st, Jesus Christ will be president of the world."
"Oh yeah?" one of the men yelled. "Well, he won't carry New Hampshire!"
At about the same time that Alzheimer's disease was first identified in the 1980's, it was discovered that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim of Austria, had a less than pristine military record during World War II. Allegations about involvement with both the S.A. and the S.S., awareness of (if not involvement in) the murder of civilians, and various recorded anti-Semitic comments, led to a British joke that a new disease had been identified: Waldheimer's Disease. The salient characteristic of this syndrome was that when you get old, you forget you were a Nazi.
Engelbert Dollfuss, chancellor and de facto dictator of Austria from 1931 to 1934, was four feet ten inches tall, and was sometimes referred to as the "Minimetternich." (Metternich was Austria foreign minister during the Napoleonic Era.) Jokes about Dollfuss' diminutive size were quite popular in Vienna. He broke his leg falling off a ladder while picking dandelions; a new postage stamp was going be adorned with an image of his face, life-size; instead of taking the train to visit Mussolini, he went by air mail; Austrian physicists were experimenting with splitting the atom, using Dollfuss as their subject; and the police foiled an assassination attempt when they discovered a mouse trap in his bedroom.
The failure of Communism to provide even the most basic consumer needs was one of the causes of the system’s collapse. In every city in the Soviet Union, people had to wait in lines for hours on end in the hopes of purchasing whatever was available. Hence this joke from Moscow when Leonid Brezhnev was still running the country, circa 1981:
Two friends, Ivan and Boris, are waiting on a very long line to buy turnips. When they get toward the front of the line, an announcement is made to the effect that the store has just run out of turnips, but that a store three blocks away has a supply of asparagus. They run over to the other store and get on the end of another long line, only to have the experience repeated.
As they are standing on the fifth long line of the day, Ivan's face grows red with rage and he says to Boris, "Keep my place in line."
"Why?" Boris asks. "Where are you going?"
"To the Kremlin," Ivan says angrily. "I'm going to assassinate Brezhnev, Kosygin, Gromyko, and the entire Politburo."
Ivan leaves, Boris stays in line. An hour later a depressed and unhappy Ivan returns. "What happened?" Boris asks.
"Nothing happened," Ivan replies. "There was a long line."
Referring to a similar economic failure, disgruntled workers in Poland in the late 1980's were paid in worthless currency to spend in empty stores, providing very little incentive to do their jobs. A comment from Poland circa 1987: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
Two jokes that have survived from the ancient world.
From Greece: A man's wife has died, and a funeral procession is preceding the cremation. A passerby asks the widower, "Who is at rest?"
The widower replies, "I am."
Fr
om Rome: A little boy sees a footrace being held and asks his father what the young men are doing. "They are running because they want to win a golden cup."
"Who will get the cup?" the boy asks.
"Why, the one in front, of course," his father replies.
Confused, the boy asks, "Then why are the others running?"
Okay, okay, so they're not very funny. But they certainly are very old, at least.
One of the unforeseen results of the spread of Enlightenment ideas through Europe was the emancipation of the Jews. Once confined in ghettoes in Western Europe and in the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe, they now began to participate in the civic and social lives of the countries where they lived.
This dramatic change in their status led some Jews to begin a reform movement which resulted in an eponymous new form of Judaism, Reform Judaism. The arguments betweenReform Jews and traditional (i.e., Orthodox) Jews was very bitter, and to a degree it remains that way to this day. A central point of contention involved strict adherence to the dietary laws, which the Reformed regarded as antiquated and unnecessary but the Orthodox regarded as a fundamental component of Jewish tradition. This joke was told by Reform Jews in 19th century Britain. (Warning: if the reader is an Orthodox Jew, he or she will probably find this joke offensive.)
Moses is on Mt. Sinai talking with God. "Moses," God says, "tell the people not to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk." So Moses goes down and tells the people not to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. "We see," say the people. "So we should not combine dairy products with meat products, right?" Moses goes back up the mountain and tells God what the people said. God is annoyed. "That's not what I said! Tell them again, and tell them to pay attention. Don't boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. It's not that complicated."
So Moses goes back down the mountain again and repeats the commandment not to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. "We see," say the people. "So we should maintain separate plates and dishes and pots and pans for dairy products and meat products, right?" Moses goes back up the mountain and tells God what the people said, and God gets angry. "What are they, stupid? Are you speaking to them in Babylonian or something? Tell them again, tell them to listen to what you're saying, speak slowly and clearly: don't boil a baby goat in its mother's milk!"
So Moses goes back down the mountain yet again and yet again tells the people not to boil a baby goat in its mother's milk. "We see," say the people. "So there should be ritual acts ofpurification and a rabbinical supervision of the way in which animals are raised and slaughtered, right?" Moses goes back up the mountain and tells God what the people said. God is outraged and flabbergasted. "Tell them ... tell them ..." Then He stops sputtering and sighs. "Oh, tell them to do whatever the hell they want."
STORIES WITHOUT SPECIFIC CATEGORIES
The story of the Christmas Truce is quite well known, but well worth retelling.
The Pope had made efforts to arrange a formal truce on Christmas Day in 1914, the first year of the Great War, to no avail. None of the governments involved—Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox—had any interest in it. A few instances of spontaneous Christmas greetings across the lines did occur, but they were condemned and, where possible, punished.
But on Christmas Eve, 1915, the Germans in their trenches began singing Christmas hymns, including the venerable Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. The British in their trenches listened to the Germans appreciatively, and then responded with the English version of the same hymn, Silent Night, Holy Night. At dawn on Christmas Day, the German and British soldiers, tentatively at first, and then in throngs, climbed out of their trenches and met in the middle of no-man's land. They spent hours talking and laughing, exchanged names and family stories, and then someone somehow found a soccer ball. (Seriously! A soccer ball lying about on a World War One battlefield!) The ensuing soccer game was more melee than match, with no goal posts or scores, but the young men enjoyed themselves immensely. They then went back to their respective trenches and, after a few hours, resumed slaughtering each other.
The Christmas Truce has been the basis of films, songs, artwork, and memoir, including a music video made by, and starring, Paul McCartney. The last participant in the Truce, an Englishman named Alfred Anderson, died in 2005 at the age of 109.
Nursery rhymes often have interesting origins.
When the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which proclaimed the king to be head of the Church of England and severed all connections with the Papacy, it became clear to many of the abbots of many of the monasteries in England, Ireland, and Wales that their vast holdings of land and villages were soon to be in jeopardy. One farsighted abbot, hoping to forestall a royal seizure of the abbey's property, decided to offer Henry VIII one half of the abbey's property in the hopes that because of this act of loyalty, obedience, and self-sacrifice they could keep the other half. The offer was to be made in the form of deeds.
A deed in 16th century England described in detail the property in question, not the identity of the owner. There were no attorneys, title searches, or anything even vaguely similar to what property ownership is today. If you physically had the deed in your hands, properly notarized and sealed with an official stamp, you owned the property, and that was that. So the abbot decided to deliver to the king the deeds for half the abbey's holdings.
The problem was that the royal dignity would be outraged by a public bribe. A secret, private bribe would be fine, of course. So the abbot hit upon a strategy: he would send the king a Christmas confectionary as a gift from the abbey's bakery, and he wound insert the deeds, wrapped up in moisture resistant velum, into the dessert with no comments made or questions asked.
A novice (that is to say, a boy in the monastery who would become a monk but who had not yet taken vows) was dispatched to the palace with the gift. But instead of delivering it, he snuck away into an alley and ate it. Imagine his surprise when he discovered the deeds. They conferred upon him ownership of hundreds of acres of rich farmland, which he promptly claimed, and he became very wealthy very quickly.
Oh, what a good boy am I!
The boy's name was John Horner. Hence the nursery rhyme:
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said, “What a good boy am I!”
The deeds, of course, were the "plumb."
We have all heard the expression "passing the buck," meaning trying to blame things on other people, and it is also generally known that on the president's desk in the Oval Office is a plaque placed there by Harry Truman saying "The buck stops here." What is less generally known is what exactly the "buck" was and what passing it originally meant.
In the old Northwest Territories (the area bounded by the Canadian border, the Ohio River, and the Mississippi), there were very few white people back in the 18th century, and most of them were fur trappers, mostly Anglo-Americans with a heavy component of Quebecois. There were very few settled communities, as trappers were an itinerant lot who spent most of the year in the back woods, setting and checking traps, skinning animals, and curing pelts.
Once each year the trappers would gather at a predetermined location for what they called a "Rendezvous," which they pronounced "ren-dez-voos." There they would meet in make-shift cabins with merchants from the scattered towns to sell pelts for coin and trade pelts for supplies. Some entrepreneuring merchants would throw a few planks across a few barrels, thus creating an ersatz bar, and would sell cups of homemade whiskey to the trappers. A few tables and chairs were an invitation to card games, and so a splendid time was had by all.
The problem, however, is that there is an irrevocable law of human relations that can be phrased as an equation: men + whiskey + gambling = violence. Accusations of cheating, whether true r not, frequently led to fights. So as to minimize the potential for outright murder, all weapons were prohibited in these cabins, with only one exception:
whoever was dealing the cards was allowed to have a hunting knife on the table in front of him, and with it the responsibility to maintain order. A hunting knife in those days was not something purchased in sporting goods stores, which of course did not exist. The hunter would purchase a blade with an extended haft from a blacksmith, and would then take a long strip of leather, soak it in water until soft and pliable, and wrap it tightly around the haft. When it dried, it formed the handle of the knife. Another word for leather is "buckskin," and the knife was thus called a buck-knife, or, for short, a buck.
Thus the buck was the peace-keeping weapon at the gaming table in the cabins at the Rendezvous; and when the dealer got sick and tired of having to keep Zeke from attacking Caleb, he would say words to the effect of "I ain't agonna do this no more!" and would then pass the buck to someone else. It was now somebody else's problem.
A brief coda to this story: a hundred years later paddle-wheel steamboats cruised up and down the Mississippi carrying both cargo and passengers, and every large steamboat had what was called a saloon (from the French salon), a lounge which served alcohol and hosted games of chance. As is true whenever men mix liquor with gambling, violent outbursts were not unusual, but unlike the old Rendezvous with its trappers and pelts, the steamboat had women, children, the elderly, and valuable cargo onboard. So to further minimize the possibility of violence, not even the knife was permitted at the gaming table, nor was any real money permitted to change hands in the saloon. Instead of money, small colored pieces of wood called "chips" were purchased at the bar and could be redeemed for cash when the gambler left the saloon. The only piece of real money in the saloon was a single silver dollar that took the place of the knife, and that coin remained in front of the dealer to indicate who was in charge of the table.
Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun Page 11