Sunday, March 04, 2007

Ann Coulter's little joke

Here's Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot

Now I know it's a nasty joke, but I also think it's a damn funny joke. And Ann Coulter is the perfect person to tell that joke. The only problem is that John Edwards was not the perfect target for the joke. He was just the topical guy about whom a nasty joke had to be made. Again, great joke, perfect teller, but the target was a bit of a stretch.

2 comments:

Alec said...

"Now I know it's a nasty joke, but I also think it's a damn funny joke."

None of my business, but did you really laugh? That was funny? Damn funny?

"And Ann Coulter is the perfect person to tell that joke. The only problem is that John Edwards was not the perfect target for the joke."

You lost me at Ann. Who'd be the perfect target?

Joe Mondello said...

I'm glad you asked. It's my thinking that whenever a situation arises, the most logical jokes that could be made about that situation almost inevitably will get made. When the guy on Grey's Anatomy called his co-worker that word and got sent to rehab for it, the joke "I'd tell you how I feel about him but I heard they sent you to rehab now for calling someone a 'faggot'" was inevitable. I didn't laugh, but I appreciate the mechanics of the joke.
Second to the mechanics of the joke is the situation in which the joke is told. To tell the joke Ann Coulter did, I would say the perfect situation would be a public function at which a famously shocking and un-PC person slams a somewhat effeminate though not really suspected to be gay public figure. It wouldn't really work if any of these details were off. A not usually shocking person couldn't tell it,a non-famous person couldn't tell it, you couldn't really tell it on a talk show successfully, and you can't really tell it about a person who is not at all effeminate or under the suspicion of homosexuality. So in my opinion the joke would have been perfect (from a purely comedy standpoint) if the target of the joke had been someone who could more plausibly be called a 'faggot' by the likes of Ann Coulter. Maybe Al Gore would have been perfect.