Ah, Dave, my gnomish friend, Polish jokes are merely standard "fool town" stories and, probably for the historical reasons you gave, in European tradition, the Poles are streotyped as the fools. In Ireland, the jokes are told about citizens of Cork. In England, they use the town of Gotham. Jews in the Pale of Settlement told tales of the "Wise Men of Chelm". Here, in the USA, we tell "Dumb" stories about Southerners (in fact, I've seen more than a few "Redneck" jokes in Mudcat threads). Generally, stereotyping is employed to denegrate folks who live nearbye but are different from ourselves. I suppose there are those, even among enlightened folk like us, who accept those traditional streotypes as accurate. That is, they think that Poles are fools, Italians are cowards, Irishmen are drunkards, Mexicans are lazy, and Jews are money grubbing cheats. There are also those in our number who know that a "Fool Story" is just that and identifying the fool by his residense or nationality is no more than a tool of convenience. We may even know that the Scots and the English drink more than the Irish but they have a better press.