Somebody else post something, please. I’ve read all my stuff already. I need something new to read.
Found the following attempt at humor pretty typical, and am attaching my letter of response. I’m not giving the name of the friend who copied it to me (from something a friend sent that person), because I am quite certain no insult was intended. I don’t care whether you side with my detractors. I just feel this sort discourse deserves wider exposure.
And I did, in the heat of the debate, commit one untruth. I HAVE driven a $60,000 car. Just never bought one or owned one.
Cowboy rules for: Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Nevada and the rest of the Wild West are as follows:1. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.
2. Turn your cap right, your head ain’t crooked.
3. Let’s get this straight: it’s called a ‘gravel road.’ I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you’re gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.
4. They are cattle. That’s why they smell like cattle. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don’t like it? I-10, I-40, I-70 and I-80 go east and west, I-17, I-15, I-25 and I-35 goes north and south. Pick one and go.
5. So you have a $60,000 car. We’re impressed. We have $250,000 Combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.
6. Every person in the Wild West waves. It’s called being friendly. Try to understand the concept…
7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of
geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin’ in during the hunts, we WILL shoot it outa your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the tim e.8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really want sushi and caviar? It’s available at the corner bait shop.
9. The ‘Opener’ refers to the first day of deer season. It’s a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.
10. We open doors for women. That’s applied to all women, regardless of age.
11. No, there’s no ‘vegetarian special’ on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef’s Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham and turkey.
12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah . . We don’t care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat IT AIN’T REAL CHILI!!
13. You bring ‘Coke’ into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring ‘Mary Jane’ into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.
14. College and High School Football is as important here as the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.
15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don’t hit the water hazards – it spooks the fish.
16. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump crap ain’t music, anyway. We don’t want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!
A true Westerner will send this to at least 10 others and a few new friends that probably won’t get it, but we’re friendly so we share in hopes you can begin to understand what a real life is all about
Dear (Friend)—
Sounds like an inferiority complex to me. I have lived in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma (as well as Mississippi and Louisiana and Arkansas). I love sushi and caviar, but I also like elk, deer, and fish. I don’t hunt but I know how to. I’m probably a better shot than most cowboys.
I smoke grass sometimes. I don’t knock back Bud or Coors and I don’t smoke tobacco. Actually probably about half the people in the above states smoke grass, especially the ones under 40.
I don’t drive a $60,000 car, never have, and have never sneered at somebody who owns a combine. We used mechanical cottonpickers on the cotton farm when I was a kid.
Yeah, they open doors for women. And some of em beat women black and blue and utter slurs about niggers (and used to lynch blacks) and greasers, and their cops try to choke paramedics they think insulted them. Why all the belligerence? Why the veiled threats, the threat to shoot cellphones out of peoples’ ears, shoot their heads off? Is this really a sort of behavior I am supposed to admire?
What do I care if they wave at me if they threaten to beat me up when they meet me in person because I aint like them and don’t share political opinions? What kind of courtesy is that? It’s show courtesy, that’s what it is, not the real thing. For that matter, if a cowboy tries to beat me up he might have an awakening coming. I’ve seen a lot of self-styled cowboys, and even at 65 I can hold my own with most of em. I can swim over a mile and a half in an hour, for example. If there’s anyone out there who thinks being in favor of peace and reason makes me weak, let him bring it on.
And do such people really think they have the corner on courtesy? I’ve been treated with deep courtesy by doormen in New York (City), who were bemused by my Southern accent (and complimented me on my cowboy hat). The key is to treat other people, even those who don’t share my tastes and upbringing, with respect.
I don’t play golf as it happens, think it’s silly, but I love to watch Tiger Woods play. And I’m sure there aint no cowboys nowhere that play golf. Right.
I played football in junior high and high school, ran track and cross country in high school and college. Lettered in track and football and cross country in both high school and college. And sorry, no, but high school football is NOT more fun than the pros. The coaches were, with a few exceptions, stupid and cruel. It’s a lie that it was about developing character. Unless by character you mean violence and blind obedience.
Ever smelled Amarillo? If that’s what money smells like to you, you’re welcome to your life. There’s other ways to make money that don’t stink.
Go ahead, good buddy, restrict your diet to meat and starch (and a few boiled veggies). Good luck with your heart and your weight as you get older. Have a Camel to help your digestion, why don’t you?
The whole thing is bullshit stereotyping. Every intellectual isn’t a snob, every cowboy isn’t a tobacco-chewing liberal-killin’ hero. There’s assholes everywhere and in every walk of life, and good people everywhere in every walk of life.
I’m more like a cowboy than a northeastern city boy. I’ve fed cattle, picked cotton by hand, worked the dirt, built my own cabin with handtools. I also happen to be an intellectual, I read books, I protested the undeclared wars in Viet Nam and Iraq.
It’s true I don’t clump around in high heels all day and think it makes me manly. Though I do have a damn good pair of Luccheses. Actually, she paints a highly idealized portrait of “cowboys.” There aint many like the ones she describes. In Oklahoma and now in Arizona I don’t see many Marlboro men, but I do see a lot of blankfaced mean old geezers hobbling around in hats and boots and driving giant pickups (quite a few of which cost more than a good car) because everybody else does.
You know what I admire? People who think for themselves. People who have the guts to follow what they love without spluttering hostility at other people who don’t love the same things. Real courtesy, not the kind that waves and then threatens to kill you.
I know—honest—that you don’t mean to insult me, and I am not blaming you.
But (nameless) should be ashamed of herself for promoting idiotic stereotypes that foster anger and aggression and not understanding. I’m sure she thinks it’s funny, but maybe she should grow up and realize that the “cowboys” she thinks she is celebrating are really an extremely tiny part of the population of the Earth, and that the bellicose assumption of superiority such people make is what is really laughable.
And you can tell her I said so.
This is exactly the kind of shit that convinces people everyone in Oklahoma is sociopathic. You and I know for a fact that is not true, so she is doing a disservice to the very people she thinks she is boosting. Sorry to be so vehement but I have heard this kind of crap all my life and I do not intend ever to tolerate it quietly again.
Yours, Jack
Stereotypes are offensive. I have never smelled Amarillo. I have smelled Fort Worth near those meat processing plants and the pig farms in North Arkansas at that airport near the Walmart headquarters. Both smelled rather nasty. Only part of Oklahoma worth seeing is that section that borders Arkansas ;0)
whoopdedoo
June 16, 2009 01:32 PM
“The whole thing is bullshit stereotyping. Every intellectual isn’t a snob, every cowboy isn’t a tobacco-chewing liberal-killin’ hero. There’s assholes everywhere and in every walk of life, and good people everywhere in every walk of life.”Amen.
AshKW
June 16, 2009 01:39 PM
Your response to this is way more stereotypical than this stupid email. And in reading through it again, highly offensive to actual cowboys, my husband included.
Julie Tarp
June 16, 2009 01:50 PM
I’m just happy that she is from Oklahoma. Amarillo ain’t really that bad. Everyone has to be from somewhere…we are all victims of our environments, like it or not. Ignorance is bliss for everyone.
Rated & Cheers!
Texas Bubba
June 16, 2009 01:53 PM
I kinda liked the e-mail. Nodded in agreement at parts. Not sure where the e-mail fosters aggression or anger, but I can see where your response might.I don’t really have time to do a point-by-point breakdown, but you really didn’t respond to the e-mail. You responded to your own bitterness, for example in your complaint about bullying from high school football coaches. You moved the subject from high school and college football being more fun to watch than pro basketball and baseball to how high school football coaches are bullies, which has precisely what to do with watching the game?
Mrs. Michaels
June 16, 2009 02:20 PM
Feel better now that you have insulted a large part of the population in the western half of the United States? And being from New Mexico and your inference that we beat women and call Black people “niggers’’ all I have to say is:FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON ASSHOLE
ocularnervosa
June 16, 2009 09:10 PM
Julie: No, my response is not “more stereotypical.” My response points out that people are people, on the whole, but that some people need to learn common courtesy. My response points out the difference between show courtesy and the real thing. My response says that real cowboys do not fit the stereotypes any more than the stereotypes in the supposed “humor” fit actual people. Nowhere in my response do I talk about shooting people in the head if I don’t like what they are doing.
It is true that I counter most of the assertions of the email with examples that blow the stereotypes apart. It is true that I did so with mockery and derision, not with the limp-spined acquiescence you might have expected. I did not talk about your husband because I don’t know your husband. If he wishes to identify with stereotypes, it’s his choice.
A common strategy in this sort of thing is claiming that it is only humor, only a joke, and that it is free speech, and acting as if the person committing the offense is the one being offended. In other words, reversing the reality.
You don’t get to decide whether something offends me. I get to decide. If not common human decency, then self-preservation should tell anyone not to tell “nigger” jokes to blacks or “Chink” jokes to Chinese. How is this different? How hard is it to understand that insult and threat is not likely to produce admiration and understanding?
Mrs. Michaels: You are not sure what is offensive about the email. You thought it was funny. I suppose that makes it funny to everyone else on Earth? I hardly know what to say to you. Yes, I am bitter. Where do you think the bitterness came from? Did you miss the part where I said I grew up around this stuff? I have heard it all my life, and I am sick of it. Did you miss the part where I said I’m a country boy, that I have actually played high school football, and that maybe, just maybe I know what I am talking about? I am bitter because of the repetition of slanderous and mindless stereotypes. I have defended rednecks passionately against the slanders of self-appointed cultural elitists. Shall I be less passionate about equally mindless and ugly stereotypes in another direction?
And you are wrong: I DID respond to the email, almost point by point. I didn’t bring up waving, or opening the doors for women, or sushi, or caviar, or combines, or high school football. I responded to repulsive stereotypes someone else brought up. Some points seemed so obviously preposterous I didn’t bother, such as the implication that men can tell women what they ought to drive and how long they can wear their hair.
This is the kind of stuff that is funny only to a hermetic group of individuals, and the people who write it and the people who promote it may as well realize that fact. The age of tolerance for insult disguised as humor is over. The possession of wit and intelligence does not mean that you are a patsy who has to accept any description someone else wishes to paste onto you. I suspect that the propagators of this sort of nonsense are going to find themselves in an increasingly hostile world, whose hostility they will of course blame on anyone but themselves.
If you find that uncomfortable, I am sure you will be able to put the discomfort out of your mind shortly.
Feel better now that you have insulted a large part of the population in the western half of the United States? And being from New Mexico and your inference that we beat women and call Black people “niggers’’ all I have to say is:FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON ASSHOLE
ocularnervosa
June 16, 2009 09:10 PM
Oc nerve, you need to learn the difference between insulting somebody and responding angrily to an insult. But I suppose if you had been able to do that, your post might have been more eloquent and less of an unsuccessful attempt at intimidation. It might also help to develop enough reading comprehension to see that I did not say New Mexicans beat women. Since I lived there for quite a while, that would mean that I beat women, which I assuredly do not. For that matter I do not beat men, children, or animals either. What I did was counter a preposterous stereotype with an actuality. I said SOME cowboys (NOT New Mexicans) beat women and traded racial slurs. To most people this would indicate that I am well aware not ALL of them do. Do you deny that any self-described cowboy anywhere has ever behaved that way? If so, you lie. If not, you have no point.
And I suppose, since I do not have intercourse with horses, that you would be the one performing that act?
Texas Bubba, my mother and sister live in Amarillo. It’s true we are all to some degree victims of where we live, though some of us, as your comment indicates, develop a degree of self-awareness. My point wasn’t that Amarillo is bad, my point is that the supposed defense of Amarillo is unnecessary, defensive, and insulting.
I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you were looking for, but I posted something partially in answer to your request that somebody post something.
http://alexvcook.blogspot.com/2009/06/furry-codes.html
There is much to think about here, but now I can’t quit imagining that somewhere, in a parallel universe vibrating at a frequency just slightly out of tune with ours, there is a George Strait who, instead of becoming a country music star, fronted a punk band whose first album was called “Have You Ever Smelled Amarillo?”
I don’t want to live in this universe, but I wish I had access to their iTunes.
It’s always disturbing to see people treat stereotypes as a medicine and not a poison. Jack, I don’t even know where you get the strength to respond to such things, my blood pressure rises just thinking about it all.
I wrote three thousand words. Had to erase some.
The one thing you didn’t say, was that the person who wrote this manifestly ISN’T a cowboy, right? I know cowboys, loggers, fishermen…fucking working people. No one like that wrote this. This is like the “Diary Of An Uppity Girl” thing or whatever it was called…a man who doesn’t GET any, has a fantasy of what a BITCH is…
...Then writes a “bitch’s-eye-view” of how she gets her comeuppance. It is a DISGUSTING trick, fooling no one, for which no one applauds, because no one is even in the audience. It is the most convoluted and pointless form of masturbation known to man: the only kind that features a profoundly dirty absence of climax. Instead, there is a marvellous shower of self-pollinating bitterness and stupidity that explodes blackly in the brain, ruining it for all time, and the genitals shrivel up as they must, and the poor plant dies unmourned, and then hopefully a volcano erupts near it and covers it with lava, the evil fucking thing. I cannot say how much I despise and abominate that “Bitch’s-eye-view” business (neither can you, of course), and the most horrible thing is that some women thought it was written by a woman AND IT WAS NOT…
And it was not written by a misogynist MAN, either.
I mean: who does that?
It was, of course, written by the people you folks know as “Swift-Boat Veterans”.
Was it not?
I tell you that it must have been. Most people are not like this. People in general do not hold such homogenously horrible, horribly homogenous views. Jack, Prof, Gorj…this is all SPAM, you realize. A matter of Nigerian Princes. “People” don’t think up and promulgate such ideas, or anyway if they do they can NEVER expect to gain a wide audience. Well, doesn’t that imply that many people not only picked it up from Racist Patient Zero, but also PASSED IT ON?!? And then the people they passed it on to—a “volume” of people if you will, that is MUCH bigger than the original volume of pass-on-ers…passed it on further…! And THEN…
!!
But: NO, goddamnit.
That is of course bullshit. Unless id voting were mandatory John McCain would’ve won NINETY PERCENT of the popular vote, that whole set-up, that whole business where someone makes that “Cowboy” list up and it somehow gets to Jack…no. NO. Honestly, fellows.
Jack, you’re practically a goddamn saint for arguing with the people who’ve been found by this propagandistic contagion. Here in Canada I openly challenge this sort of person to a public bare-knucked fight…or would, if I ever found one of them. Funny thing: my one friend who lives in Arizona sends me six manifestos a week from disgruntled Canadians who want to live free with their guns and their trucks but not pot and no greens and no queers and no broccoli and no libruls…
...And yet my thirty friends in Canada have not sent me ONE quiz or picture-array like that…
And some of them are quite vocal librul-haters!
...So apparently in Arizona not only are Canadians hating socialized medicine but also they’re making thousands of PowerPoint presentations about it and putting them out on the web, whereupon naturally they get forwarded…
Uh…
Sorry, guys. Ranting. But my God, how terrible. The “cowboy” diet. Jesus Christ, what awful bullshit. I mean you’d think none of us had successfully lived through the TWENTIETH-GODDAMN-CENTURY!
Lies, lies, lies, it’s so disgusting, and it really isn’t FOR anything. It’s just for meanness. Meanness and dumbness.
So, sorry…but Jack, good for you for engaging with the people who believe such lies, who’d like to define themselves by them. You’re a far more patient and gutsy fellow than I. And I do think I have to believe you’re doing some good. Maybe it’s only the kind of good that sand does when you throw it in the compost, but then that ain’t nothing either.
Hm, possibly a bit too much sangria tonight. Hope that made sense. In any case expect me soon again, PFers! Out in the woods exercising the frustration at the moment—with axe, shovel, crowbar, saw, pen, guitar. But will be back somewhat soon, and have an idea. Okay!
Looking back on this, too, it becomes clear how much these sorts of lists are motivated by fear—and a very particular sort of fear most clearly embodied in the first two and the last one.
Plok, you do my heart good. Because the response from those I thought would have been most offended by the “humor” was so tepid, not to say nearly nonexistent (with the exception of a few friends like Professor Fury), and so much vitriol was hurled in my direction, I had begun to wonder if there was something wrong with me, if I was just a querulous old fool taking things too seriously.
It feels good to be thought courageous, too. But the truth is I am a timid fellow who dearly wants to belong and be approved by his species. It is just that all my heroes, men and women, have always placed honor over convenience, and I dare not shame myself before them.
Your virus analogy is exact. Many viruses work by deceiving the immune system and replacing the functioning parts of a cell with their own self-serving and destructive mechanisms. Just so, this piece of so-called humor is a meme which replaces, in vulnerable minds, the perception of actual cowboys with a fraudulent image of what cowboys are. From there on out, the infected mind reacts as if the image were real, leading, in my opinion, to massive reality failure.
Perhaps you are right, that this was not written by a human, in the same way that advertisements, though ostensibly one human talking to another, are actually not human communication, not one heart speaking to another heart, but a deceit intended to drain off money. Certainly it was not written by anyone I would happily recognize as human.
I might feel foolish responding to something that was mere mass-produced bait, and throw up my hands in helpless acceptance of the prevalence of this sort of ugliness, except that (continuing the brilliant virus analogy) to do so strikes me as equivalent to a doctor confronted with a malevolent infection saying, Well, no use fighting, the world is full of viruses.
I am no doctor, but I know words at least as well as doctors know biology, and if you confront me on my own ground with this sort of nastiness, you are going to feel the sting of antibodies, the keenness of the scalpel slicing away diseased thought.
I grew up in Mississippi in the late 50s and early 60s. The place has changed unimaginably, as evidenced by the very existence of this site, but back then the state was ruled by liars and bigots. Back then, anyone who offered the sorts of commentary and opinion often found here would have been in genuine danger of lynching, or assassination by some coward with a long-distance rifle. Perhaps it is that exposure that has hardened my resolve never to tolerate this sort of thing again.
I am also convinced that if no one bothers to respond to this crap with the mockery it deserves, there will be no models of honest thought and truly devastating humor for our children to learn from.
There were too many willful and egregious absurdities in this thing to respond to them all, so I noted but did not comment on the conflation of crackheads with people who wear their caps backwards, the further conflation of those with intellectuals, and the conflation of all of the above with snobs driving expensive cars.
How many intellectuals do you know who can afford a Lexus?
I think wearing a billcap backwards is pretty dumbass, too, a slavish accommodation to fashion. Not to mention the hilarious baggy pants sagging below the ass. But so what? There’s neighborhoods where you would look as out of place in a cowboy hat as a kid wearing his cap backward would on a ranch. By what species of inanity do the ones who prefer cowboy hats think they get to declare what everyone else can wear? Besides, as I look around this tiny ranching-, farming-, and mining-dominated town, I see a lot of the cowboys’ kids walking around with reversed billcaps and drooping drawers. Reality, anyone?
This sort of junk gets my adrenaline going too, and I feel combative. I wanted to say, but did not, that no doubt someone could sneak up behind me and blow my head off. I suspect defeating me in an unarmed one-on-one fight would be more problematical, but if the champion were fast enough, big enough, and skillful enough, it is certainly possible.
But there are two things people who like this sort of crap cannot do, and will never be able to do. They cannot frighten me. And they cannot outhink me or beat me in open debate.
And there was one indisputable good result of my response (aside from the support from a few fine people): The person who sent me this is actually pretty liberal, but perhaps because she lives in Oklahoma and her mind is saturated by such nonsense, had not recognized how offensive it was. I was hesitant to say what I thought, as many liberals are, for fear of appearing to castigate her. But I did, and the result has been a much closer and more open communication. One mind, at least, is no longer vulnerable to this sort of opportunistic wickedness.
Again, thank you. Apologize for rousing your anger—anger is a kind of amphetamine, and coming down from it hurts—but walking in the woods sounds like an excellent therapy. It’s the kind of thing I do.
Jack, thinking about your comment about the pervasiveness and sheer volume of this sort of thing—although I enjoy playing around on Facebook and seeing what old and new friends are up to, one of the frustrating aspects of the experience is watching this type claptrap fly back and forth so often; it’s enormously pervasive. I can’t count the number of invitations I’ve gotten in the past few weeks from high school and college friends to join a FB “cause” called “Tell Obama We Are Still a Christian Nation.” How even to begin to respond to something whose basic premises are so far divorced from reality? I have avoided taking the FB quiz called “How Mississippi Are You?” for fear it will look a lot like the list you’ve posted above.
I let most of this stuff just slide by, especially when it’s from someone I haven’t seen in years and who I don’t have any real relationship with other than on Facebook. Occasionally, if it’s someone I know, though, I’ll respond—as when an old friend posted a terrible Republican bumper sticker slogan on his page and attributed it to Thomas Jefferson. Mere seconds of googling revealed it wasn’t TJ. So I told him, and he posted another quote—also not by TJ. And then another—also not by TJ. I don’t think I made my friend any less conservative, nor was I trying to; but taking RNC talking points and attributing them to the founders is a pet peeve of mine. If the only change this causes is for him to check the sources of his quotations better, heck, I’ll take that.
Anyway, all this to say that I usually feel weirdly guilty on those rare occasions when I respond to anything like this—like I’m intruding on someone else’s parade. But this post is making me re-think that squeamishness.
Dear Prof: Yeah, I know what you mean about the squeamishness. Mostly don’t bother responding to people I love for one reason or another. Have decided, as I suppose is evident, that my squeamishness—I am NOT talking about yours or anybody else’s—is not terribly important, that no, I am unlikely to persuade such people, but perhaps at least, with repeated application of scorn, it will dimly begin to percolate into the lower strata of their brains that ignorance and malice does not get a free ride. Like someone who keeps sticking his hand into a hornet’s nest. You’re gonna get stung every time, booby. Your choice. I consider it a small contribution to their sense of reality.
Growing up in Mississippi when I did confirmed me in that squeamishness because we were “polite”—like the stereotypical waving cowboys—and because we heard so much of the goddamn stuff from those who were supposedly older and wiser.
I want bigots to at least know I am not a patsy and there will be a cost. This is certainly nonviolent resistance, since I do not threaten anyone, harm anyone, or hurl invective. I simply do what I can to show how ridiculously incompetent this sort of intellectual malingering is.
Wow, what a discussion I have missed while traveling in a part of the country that was new to me and while getting to know people who value some things that, perhaps, I do not value, and whose time honored conventions are ones that I had never heard of. Your discussion reminds me to keep reminding myself that folks who are different (in most things) are not wrong, just different. And when they find me different too, I guess that I can hope they are willing to scratch beneath my surface to find the person that is me and not just the conventionalities that float on the surface.
I am also a cowboy so my original comment stands.
not to put too harsh of a point on it, but it sounds like the overriding cowboy rule (or pick your own region, etc for these types of emails) is a deep, detailed account of auto fellatio.
on the other hand, It reads like a list of ways that ‘cowboys’ are polite and good hearted, etc…paired up with all the ways they couldn’t give a shit about non ‘cowboy’ people/ways. great. a list of “what i like about me and what i don’t like about you”.
Dear polly: You summed the nature of the beast more shrewdly and succinctly than I did, and with far less acrimony. Many thanks.
And Professor Fury, I never responded to what you said about false attribution of RNC talking points. Exactly. It doesn’t bother me to think that people disagree with me honestly. I have quite a few conservative friends, with whom it is possible to hold impassioned but courteous debate.
What pushes my buttons—and I’m working on being calmer about the hopeless—is the deliberate or ignorant mangling of fact and thought, the attempt to disguise malice as humor, and so on. I may learn to hold my tongue with people who behave in this fashion, but I will never be able to respect them for integrity. In fact, if the word “integrity” has any meaning, they clearly do not possess it, since there is in them such a vast discrepancy between their professed principles and their behavior in argumentation.
can no one tke a joke damn
Fuzzball: This is not a joke, but “. . . the deliberate or ignorant mangling of fact and thought.” There are certain types who, if they prevail, consider it successful aggression, but if they fail, wish to avoid the results of failure by passing their animus off as jokes. I grew up with racial jokes in country and small-town society, and I learned the sound of hatred disguised as humor quite well.