Sorry, Readers, but Conservative Jokes Aren’t Funny
Irony always trumps righteousness
MY GRANDFATHER WAS A HARDSHELL BAPTIST who thought the Southern Baptist Convention was too liberal. He preached fire and brimstone from his pulpits as a circuit preacher and used red ink to mark out every unchristian idea in his Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia. (He’d scribbled out several consecutive pages on “Evolution.” In red ink.) He was a literal man with little sense of humor and no patience for insubordination.
Before Prohibition, my grandmother drove her father’s car to deliver beer to customers. When she was twelve. She also claimed the women in her family were witches. Grandmother had a dry, wry sense of humor. How the two connected is beyond me. She passed her sense of humor to her kids. My grandfather didn’t have a sense of humor to pass on.
My father, like my grandmother, was a rebel, but a rebel who wanted desperately to conform. He followed grandfather into the ministry. Alas, the dark side of the faith seduced him. Not only did he join The Southern Baptist Convention, he forsook the pulpit to lead choirs. He drove truly fundamentalist ministers crazy with wicked one liners he’d drop into the middle of the most devout theological discussions.
My uncles inherited some of my grandmother’s humor. They knew a great joke when they heard it, and could tell it over and over. However, like my grandfather, they believed the world is rigid and certain. They could tell jokes, but no one (professional) would hire them as comedy writers. They entertained me at family gatherings with jokes about blacks, Mexicans, and women. None of them flattering.
My grandmother passed her sense of humor to her kids. My grandfather didn’t have a sense of humor to pass on.
I thought their jokes hilarious. When I was ten. Even when I was thirteen. Later on, after high school and college, when I ended up stewing in the cultural melting pot with the same kids who were the butt of their jokes, I stopped laughing.
Sidebar:
I take back the crack about no one hiring my uncles. One uncle was pretty funny until he found the Lord. After that, I think the experience burned out his funny bone.
I’m not saying Christians can’t be funny. Jesus was one of the best wise-crackers in history. My favorite quip? “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do.” (Luke 5:31) He’s using irony to make a point: You guys don’t have any use for me, so I’m hanging out with the people who accept me.
I suspect that something about absolute certainty disconnects the brain’s humor centers. That’s why there are also so many unfunny liberals. You heard me. It’s not just conservatives. Some liberals can be humorless too. It makes me think there’s a self-righteous gene that compels people to look for faults in others so they can ignore their own. Those liberals call to mind the joke about feminism:
How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
One. And it isn’t funny.1
I came home from college in time to be bombarded with peanut jokes. Jimmy Carter had just won the Presidential elections. I’m sorry, the only funny peanut punchlines are in elephant jokes. That’s when I discovered the jokes weren’t funny anymore. Not all jokes, just the ones my family told.
I suspect that something about absolute certainty disconnects the brain’s humor centers. That’s why there are also so many unfunny liberals.
Some people come by the gift of humor naturally. Not me. Like my uncles, I could tell a joke, but drop that clever bon mot into a conversation? Part of my problem was adolescence. Those jokes that are funny to pre-teen boys (and Baptists) die in a room full of girls, parents, or discerning human beings. The other part of my problem was my conservative evangelical upbringing.
Trust me, when I entered high school, I was a well-groomed Christian soldier from my crew cut to my tapered canvas pants and white loafers. I thought I was a funny guy. I got laughs in Sunday School once I learned that certain jokes (those involving—in the vernacular of the time—negroes, wetbacks, and Jews) were fine to share with Christian friends and family but kept to myself in public or in church.
Unlike my Sunday School and conservative chums, who thought they were funny (like Bruno Kirby’s character Lt. Hauk in Good Morning Vietnam) but who couldn’t get a laugh in the classroom, I realized my bon mots were little more than petites crottes that left everyone holding their nose. I took it upon myself to drop as many wise ass comments as possible so I could gauge my fellow students’ reactionsand discover which ones made me a genuine wise ass, and which made me look like Butthead without Beavis for a foil.
Right wing howlers usually target race and liberals (such as Obama Waffles and “What kind of Black guy is Obama? He can’t dance because he has two leftist feet”). They portray Democrats as hypocrites and often feature terrible puns. Most feature Chuck Norris as the hero.2 And when the joke shows potential, they can’t hit the punchline.
In high school, I realized my bon mots were little more than petites crottes that left everyone holding their nose. I took it upon myself to drop as many wise ass comments as possible so I could gauge my fellow students’ reactions and discover which ones made me a genuine wise ass
Once I weed out the jokes about minorities, which were 90 percent of the jokes I heard as a kid, these are some of the few I recall:3
What did Adam say on the day before Christmas?
It’s Christmas, Eve!
What character in the Bible had no parents?
Joshua son of Nun.
Who was the greatest comedian in the Bible?
Samson. He brought the house down.
Sometimes it’s just a one liner.4
The Pharisees believe in the resurrection of the dead, but the Sadducees don’t. That’s why they’re sad, you see.
Occasionally someone fleshes the riddle pun into a full joke.
Moses is wandering around and he finds the burning bush. He looks closer and sees that while the bush is clearly on fire, it’s not burning up. He just can’t believe his eyes, and in his amazement he says, “No way!”
Then, a voice comes from the bush, and says “Yah way!”
This one’s a little better:
A Sunday School teacher asks her students to draw Christmas pictures. One student draws a picture of four people on an airplane. “What’s this?”
“Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus on a flight to Egypt,” the boy says.
“And… who’s the fourth person?”
“That’s Pontius, the pilot.”
Humor deconstruction
Conservatives will tell jokes even when they’re offensive. But that’s not the issue. Left-leaning comics offend too. Many work hard to offend. Only their targets differ. The issue is that Conservatives can’t write jokes. At least, they can’t lampoon liberal and progressive politicians and be funny.
Consider the following joke:5
A minister sees this guy on a bridge about to jump. He says, “Don’t do it!”
The jumper says, “Nobody loves me.”
The minister says, “Do you believe in God?”
The jumper says, “Yes.”
"Are you a Christian or a Jew?"
"A Christian."
"Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?"
"Protestant."
"Me, too! What denomination?"
"Baptist."
"Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?"
"Northern Baptist."
"Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
"Northern Conservative Baptist."
"Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?"
"Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region."
"Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?"
"Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912."
The minister says, “Die, heretic!” And pushes him over.
Conservatives will tell jokes even when they’re offensive. But that’s not the issue. Left-leaning comics offend too. Many work hard to offend. Only their targets differ.
Die Heretic? This was a joke with potential, but it’s little more than an outline, and it lacks subtlety. The punchline is way over the top. And easy to see coming as well.
To make the joke funnier, we need to flesh it out—add mood and setting like a story to lull our listeners in. And we need to soften the punchline so people think before they laugh. For example:
A minister is walking home from evening services when he spots a guy on a bridge about to jump. He rushes to the poor man’s side and begs him, “Don’t do it!”
The jumper steps back from the edge and wipes the tears from his eye. “Why not? Nobody loves me.”
(Here is where you set the stage for the punchline.)
The minister grips the jumper’s shoulder. “Son, do you believe in God? Don’t you know God loves you? Do you really want to throw away God’s gift of life and condemn yourself to hell?”
The jumper looks down and confesses, “Of course I believe in God. But he’s abandoned me.”
Now is the time to list the categories—from Christian to Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912. Once that’s established, let’s add some shading to the punchline (call it comedy chiaroscuro):
When he hears this, the minister walks away, shaking his head in remorse. The jumper calls behind him, “Aren’t you going to talk me out of jumping?”
The minister replies, “Sorry, son. You’re already going to hell. You might as well face the music now.”
So what makes liberals better suited to humor than conservatives? Liberalism reinforces empathy. Most liberals can imagine better how people react in different situations, which makes them better at framing the joke. But conservatives have little use for empathy, at least not until it serves another agenda. (Remember compassionate conservatism? That was a howler.)
Cutline: Jokes making Obama into a Muslim and illegal alien were really popular when he was President. They provided great fodder for conspiracy theories, too. Just ask his successor, Donald Trump.
Conservatives love jokes that expose what they believe to be liberal hypocrisy. Psychologists call this projection. Here’s the irony of conservative jokes about liberal hypocrisy. Humor comes from irony, not scoring points. Conservatives don’t get irony. How do we know? They look in the mirror, listen to their pundits on FOX, then walk out into the world they deny daily and it looks just like what they saw in the mirror. Neuroscience explains this. The more time you spend in denial, the more your brain shelters you from any facts that might dissuade you.
I suspect that conservative humor is also driven by another impulse. It’s gratifying (see the dual panel above). We feel better about ourselves when we belittle others, and conservative humor probably does deliver a large degree of self-gratification. The same goes for humor from the left. The difference is, humor from the left tends to focus on humor first.
Conservative Christians should also remember that Jesus said real gratification comes from serving others. Liberals believe in serving others too, whether through the agency of government, or local endeavors such as food shelters. Conservatives focus on the pursuit of profit, or, as it was written in the Bible, the love of money. That’s what free enterprise means. And it’s another reason Conservative humor lacks charm. Money isn’t funny.
So what makes liberals better suited to humor than conservatives? Liberalism reinforces empathy. Most liberals can imagine better how people react in different situations, which makes them better at framing the joke. But conservatives have little use for empathy
Let me repeat what I said earlier. Comedy doesn’t revolve around hypocrisy, but irony. Conservatives don’t get irony. Except for the late P.J. O’Rourke. O’Rourke was both Libertarian (a conservative who smokes pot) and funny. Anyone who contributed to the Harvard and National Lampoons was funny. Isn’t it ironic, though, that with P.J. at the helm, people still thought the lampoon was a liberal rag?
One last joke
Three conservative comics walk into a bar. The first orders an Obama Drama, the second a Bloody Hillary and the last a Flaming Liberal. The bartender mixes three drinks and lays them on the bar. “I had to improvise because those drinks aren’t real. So, that’ll be ten dollars a drink.”
The first comic says, “We were joking”
The bartender extends his hand. “This is me laughing. You still owe me thirty dollars.”
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Cancel me if you wish. I’m making a point about humor, not feminists. Besides, real feminists, unlike real men, know how to take a joke.
Okay, that was a joke. Like conservative humor, it plays on a stereotype, but being a Chuck Norris a hurtful stereotype and it doesn’t paint conservatives in a bad light. And, like many conservative jokes, it’s lost on millennials and Gen Z.
You can find dozens of these on MargaretFeinberg.com.
The next three jokes are from Readers’ Digest.
Posted on Quora as one of the funniest jokes of all time. You can find even more Christian humor on Christianity.com and Reddit.