BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?

Subject: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Keef
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 12:51 AM

Sum Ting Wong

Laugh out loud or po faced indignation?

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 05:01 AM

That is terrible.
Maybe if no-one had died...

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 09:33 AM

There's an intern ex-intern whose future
in the broadcast industry has been canceled, methinks.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 01:06 PM

Such insipid pseudo-Chinese names were already common in my childhood (I remember "Hu Flung Dung" from the 1940s), and tho I have no objection to vulgarity in its place, I see no need for any more of that kind, especially in such a dreadful context.

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 03:59 PM

I recall that there was a list of books that kids would sometimes recite, such as "The Spot on the Wall," by Hu Flung Dung, or "The Yellow River," by I. P. Freely, and a whole bunch of others which, fortunately, the mists of time have blocked out.

That sort of stuff is howlingly hilarious--when you're maybe ten years old.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 16 Jul 13 - 04:16 PM

I've been in news studios when the show was going out. It's a hectic environment with stuff being shoved under the announcer's nose at the last second. But even so, I'm at a loss how the dunderheaded announcer could not have scanned ahead a bit to see if what she was reading made sense, and caught the joke? It's hardly subtle.
On the other hand, the intern or whoever thought it was funny should have known better than to introduce something like that into an error-prone environment like a newscast, where the likelihood of it escaping into the wild was quite high.
"Epic Fail" hardly begins to describe it.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,Northerrner
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 07:56 AM

A few years ago some Chinese cockle packers in Morecombe bay were drowned. Their gang master told them to leave when the water reached knee high. Unfortunatey, Nee Hi wasn't there that day.
A dreadful joke on a sad subject so it is definitely gallows humour.

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,Northener
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 07:57 AM

That should have read "cockle pickers".

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 11:26 AM

Gallows humour.

Presumably none of you have ever raised even the smallest titter at Les Barker's "Have You Got Any News Of The Iceberg?" which, of course, is a song about a much greater tragedy in terms of loss of life caused by greed, arrogance and recklessness?

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 12:05 PM

YEah....too soon and too moronic. But we have all indulged in it perhaps? I used to have mail sent to my friends as Hugh G. Rection. National Lampoon's High School Yearbook was filled with them......

Clark Barr
Ray D. Ater
Connie Lingus....and her sister Anna
Jack Mahawgoff
Dwight Mannsburden
May Zola
Penny Loafer
Chris Kraft
Cole Shute
Missy Periad
Amanda B. Reckundwiff

....and about a thousand more...........


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 12:52 PM

Clik 'n" Clack have a huge list of "curious" names on their website. They go through several of them each Saturday.

Saul

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 03:00 PM

Spaw, at the risk of making everyone groan, could you please explain Clark Barr and Chris Kraft? I get the others, but not those two! Sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST,highlandman at work
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 04:54 PM

Clark Bar is an American candy bar.
Chris-Craft is an American power boat builder.
I always thought it odd that the flight director of NASA for many years was Chris Kraft.
-Glenn

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 05:02 PM

I find absolutely nothing funny about this. I think it's a very subtle xenophobia.   Asian names are different. And because we don't understand them, we make fun of them.   My guess is that if an Asian person were going to do something equivalent to what Catspaw49 did with English names (which is kind of funny), it would look very different.

Aside from the terrible taste of doing this after such a tragedy, I'm wondering how people of Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese origin feel about 'jokes' like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 07:51 PM

Absolutely disgusting in the circumstances.

However, divorced from those circumstances, I suppose it's about who you are.

A Chinese guy that I've known since college days, now a buyer for a Beijing Company, actually collects them, and finds them hysterically funny.

His favourites were Wun Tin Lung and Wee Tin Po. Coming across them as a pair he couldn't stop laughing.

Maybe he's just a one off, or maybe it's an indication that it isn't always necessary or even sensible to seize on this kind of humour as a reason to be offended on someone else's behalf.

They may not share your outrage.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 08:18 PM

Oh, my!

When I was in high school, the school had a PA system, and when someone was called to the office or someplace else, a call would go out over the PA system. But apparently the woman who made the announcements over the PA system was a bit slow on the up-take and some pretty ripe stuff would get blared out through the school halls.

Apparently she never did check to see if there was a student named "Pat McCanns" in the school.

When I worked for Boeing, the same sort of nonsense went on. I don't think Boeing actually had an employee named "C. Mike Hunt."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: catspaw49
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 08:34 PM

And Eliza, using them can be dangerous! My friend got junk mail for years in the name of Hugh G. Rection after I filled out one card for a drawing. Connie Lingus was entered in a contest and WON! The guy stood there in front of gawd and everybody and kept asking for her and then changed to, "Does anyone know Connie Lingus?"

Could be worse. I actually went to school with a girl named Sharon Peters.......


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Keef
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 08:39 PM

Perhaps "gallows humour" is not quite the correct description.

These are closer to that definition...

Murderer James French has been attributed with famous last words before his death by electric chair: "How's this for a headline? 'French Fries'." Likewise, when a Jewish mob boss George Appel was electrocuted, his last words were: "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel."

I should probably have called it "Disaster Humour"
In the olden days it probably took a bit longer for the jokes to spread around than it does nowadays thanks to the internet.

I think these sort of jokes occur in most cultures.
Schadenfreude? or a natural response to "always look on the bright side"?

As to the puns on Asian names I believe that other races take the piss out of John Smith and other wacky Anglo names.

Unless you are getting your material from the Readers Digest or a Chinese Cracker (oops!) then most jokes are liable to offend SOMEBODY and an apology might be in order.

If a joke causes vicarious offence among the odious PC brigade then (IMHO) they are welcome to go and get intimate with themselves!

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Jul 13 - 08:49 PM

Sweet Young Thing:   "I don't like George. He has a really dirty mind!"

Straight man:   "How so?"

Sweet Young Thing:   "He goes around whistling dirty songs all the time!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Jul 13 - 06:31 PM

A former sister-in-law once introduced her new friend as "my boy friend Harry Peter." (He immediately screamed "HAROLD!!! HAROLD!!!.)

Such travesties aren't limited to Asian names, of course. One must recall the classic Canadian Novel "Antlers in the Treetops" by the famous author Whogous daMouss.

The cited incident in what was presented as a legitimate news broadcast was, of course, offensive and should not have happened. In an obvious parody it might have been more acceptable.

My experience has been, however, that my "Pollak" friends knew the best Polish jokes, the Irish knew the best Irish jokes, and my Jewish friends knew (and told) the only Yiddish*** jokes worth repeating.

*** Most of the good Yiddish jokes required translation, since few of us knew much of the language.

I've never been exposed (to remember) many oriental jokes, since they're mostly inscrutable to me. On a brief business trip to Nagoya it did appear that the Japanese thought almost anything "'Melican" was absolutely hilarious, but they didn't translate why ... .

John

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Jul 13 - 08:14 PM

One of my fellow students at the University of Washington was from Japan. He told me his surname was "Matsumoto."

"That's Japanese for 'Smith,'" he informed me.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Jul 13 - 09:42 PM

In this instance, not funny, but maybe only because it was too soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Gallows humour or Political correctness?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Jul 13 - 11:46 PM

A tale from an earlier generation (~1920s) is that a visiting school board bigwig asked the janitor "where's the principal?"

The custodian replied, according to the wigbig, "Go to Hell and Hunt 'er."

The pompous ass spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to fire the janitor before someone finally got him to shut up long enough to tell him that the name of the principal at the Pleasant Valley School (Reno County Kansas) was clearly posted on the office door as "Helen Hunter."

That might be (?) the same school board official whose carriage (minus the horse) was found high-centered on the peak of the school house roof a little later.

(Not exactly "mountain mean," but country boys (back then) did have a way of "making it all come out sort of even.")

John