For Joe F - above - those are good - thank you for posting - and please bring more when you find them.

For those posting EXAMPLES - it would be helpful for future researchers if you could note the approximate contact you had with the material :
Location (England - Wales, Eastern USA, Church Camp in Illinois
Year (late 1950's, my father heard it in the war)
Situation (telling jokes with friends)
Or source (book - webpage - uncle - playground kid)

OK - Looks like it is time for the special filter to be activated by the clone on the throne.

Obviously, some of us are mature adults. Some of us have "issues" and require tissues.

For myself - I will gladly share the Austic/Ausberger/Special-Ed/Dislexic/Retard jokes I heard at a 2009 Super Bowl party.. ( Brit's the "Super Bowl" is a celebration of the best in American toilet cleanser advertising - next to Germany - America is the biggest consumer of "Supper Bowels.")

I would love to rise to the gauntlet tossed by Villan - but I will wait until the clones enact the special filter. I am on good behavior.

I suggest that those of a more "sensitive nature" kindly bow aside - if you cannot - then the special filter should be enacted. (They have used it on me - and I KNOW it works - you are seeing a kinder, gentler, G....consider it a "cyber-straight-jacket"...one other poster in this thread has had it applied...or been very sick ... or been traveling.)

If people are a "little uncomfortable" ....then they make jokes....if a situation is horrific they do not....if the person has been raised to ICON status....jokes will follow....blasting ICONs is a Western tradition - Religious Leaders, Politicians, Death, - every one that rises above the rest will - like the Korean (ain't that an oxymoron source) saying - The nail that stands out .... will be hammered.

In the genre of similar morbid-folk-humor - are the Helen Keller ones...there is NO CONNECTION TO REALITY .... they are "jokes" based on an absurd premise - we ALL (most of us) KNOW that the situation presented is fanciful....You almost want to laugh at the "set up line" - who could imagine "Helen Keller's parents" wanting to "punish" her? - It IS part of humor.

There are dozens of these:

Q: How did Helen Keller burn her hands?
A: Trying to read the waffle- iron.

Q: How did Helen Keller parents punish her?
A: They moved the furniture.

Q: How did Helen Keller break her wrists?
A: Screaming for help when she fell down the well.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

RE: "cope" and "mechanism" that were questioned above - I do not believe that "cope" is a good usage - if you are "coping" you are not realistic - drinking to drunkenness is a temporary coping process - humor is not coping it is acceptance of the irony with the situation (and most western humor is ironic - situational, dramatic, or verbal)..............regarding "mechanism" this is mechanical - we are human we are not machines. For over a decade I have shared an opposite view to one specific poster in this thread. We agree to disagree