No, artbrooks, I didn't. But you seem to have missed my point that Jews will make a joke into one about Jewish people, even when it is one that does not "seem to require a racial/ethnic/religious/distinguishing characteristic identity", as you put it. In other words, I am exercised as to why Jews will always start off, "There was this Jewish man who"..., and then go on to tell a story which has no specific Jewish, or other specific ethnic, content whatseoever, adding to it an accent which in no way enhances the completely neutral [from an ethnic POV] anecdote being told.

See what I mean? The question of avoiding ethnic insult doesn't arise, or of neutralising those feelings of separateness which Will invokes, because the nature of the story suggests no such necessity.

~M~