The Lemon Fool

I don't know if you know this, but you can now purchase Kosher computers! They are made in Israel by a company called DELL-SHALOM. The price is low, even with the shipping from Israel! However, before you purchase a kosher computer of your own, you should know that there are some important changes from the typical non-kosher computer you are used to, such as:

1) The "Start" button has been replaced with the "Let's go!! I'm not getting any younger!" button.

2) You hear "Hava Nagila" during startup.

3) The cursor moves from right to left.

4) When Spell-checker finds an error it prompts, "Is this the best you can do?"

5) When you look at erotic images, your computer says, "If your mother knew you did this, she would die."

6) It comes with a "monitor cleaning solution" from Manischewitz that advertises it gets rid of all the "schmutz und drek."

7) When running "Scan Disk" it prompts you with a "You want I should fix this?" message.

8) After 20 minutes of no activity, your PC goes "Schloffen."

9) The PC shuts down automatically at sundown on Friday evenings.

10) It comes with two hard drives-one for fleyshedik (business software) and one for milchedik (games).

11) Instead of getting a "General Protection Fault" error, your PC now gets "Ferklempt."

12) The multimedia player has been renamed to "Nu, so play my music already!" corner.

13) When your PC is working too hard, you occasionally hear a loud "Oy Gevalt!"

14) Computer viruses can now be cured with matzo ball soup.

16) When disconnecting external devices from the back of my PC, you are instructed to "Remove the cable from the PC's tuchus."

17) After your computer dies, you have to dispose of it within 24 hours.

18) But best of all, if you have a kosher computer, you can't get SPAM.

Is that supposed to be funny or just an offensive snipe at Judaism?

Peltiq wrote:Is that supposed to be funny or just an offensive snipe at Judaism?

Well I can't see anything offensive here, just a mildly amusing use of some of the tropes of (American) Jewish humour. But then I'm not Jewish.

Actually I'm quite interested in knowing whether this joke causes actual offence to those stereotyped, whether those people actually rather enjoy being thusly stereotyped (all advertising is good), or whether any outrage, felt mainly as empathy by the non-stereotyped, is to be lent credence?

In a way this is material to how these jokes are handled (but please let's not discuss this). I wish my mate PinkDalek were here to help.

Chris
OJ Can't think of anything remotely funny to say here, sorry.

Peltiq wrote:Is that supposed to be funny or just an offensive snipe at Judaism?

I hope you're not offended if I ask if you're Jewish and have been offended?

Me, I don't think this is a snipe at Judaism. They are however very old recycled jokes.

csearle wrote:Actually I'm quite interested in knowing whether this joke causes actual offence to those stereotyped, whether those people actually rather enjoy being thusly stereotyped (all advertising is good), or whether any outrage, felt mainly as empathy by the non-stereotyped, is to be lent credence?

I am not Jewish but many people close to me are, and I am sensitive to antisemitism.

A lot of Jewish humour is self-deprecating, and is based on satire about the whims and eccentricities often found in (American) Jewish communities, particularly New York City. Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Gilda Radner, Lenny Bruce, Sarah Silverman, Seinfeld etc. are all comfortable ragging on the plight of being Jewish. So I tend to give a pass to such humour, simply because so much of it is Jewish comics poking fun at themselves.

Not that this list is particularly funny in my view. But I don't think it is malicious either.

C'mon. this is not offensive.

Lootman wrote:Not that this list is particularly funny in my view. But I don't think it is malicious either.

agreed on both counts

Hi All.

I am in similar position to Lootman - not Jewish myself but for many years celebrated Pesach as much as Easter - I'm sure there are some old photos around of me wearing a Kippah at said times. Also of relevance, IMO, is that I have a fairly irreverent sense of humour, favouring education over proscription.

My guess is that laladonny's humour is marginally not OK in an open forum. Conversely, it would probably be fine delivered to a Jewish friend face to face. Similarly, I have been referred to in jest as a drunken yok - once again, fine face to face from friends, but perhaps not in anonymous written form such as here. Context is important.

When growing up, I knew almost no Jewish people or for that matter, as an alternate example, homosexuals (openly so, at least). Yet, there was a lot of "humour" based on these two groups, which, if I had a different personality, might have prejudiced my long term views. It is for reasons such as this that I think context is important.

That said, my irreverent sense of humour can get close to the mark at times as well, so I am conscious that others may also sail close to the wind without any overt malicious intent.

Regards, Newroad

PS Speaking of NY Jewish humour, some may have come across a show called "The Nanny" where a Jewish girl from Queens (Fran Fine) ends up as the nanny for a Broadway producer of British extraction. Early on her tenure, she mentions the word "shiksa", which, of course, he doesn't understand. Later on, she is walking behind him around the house and observes he has nice "tchotchke's". I can't remember the exact line, but IIRC, after assuring himself she's not referring to some aspect of him, he asks is a tchotchke like a shiksa, to which her reply was something like "Nah, shiksa's are far more expensive". One might argue that was similarly inappropriate - but I thought it was very amusing

Newroad wrote:...

Excellent nuanced response, thank you. Chris

I can imagine if a similar format of 'joke' was posted poking similar fun at say, the Irish rather than the Jewish, it would have been deleted almost before all the electrons had finished rearranging themselves on the TLF server.

Mike4 wrote:I can imagine if a similar format of 'joke' was posted poking similar fun at say, the Irish rather than the Jewish, it would have been deleted almost before all the electrons had finished rearranging themselves on the TLF server.

Most Irish jokes I have heard rely upon the "the Irish are a bit thick" stereotype so would be classed as disparaging.

Posts here that don't include jokes are a bit off-topic so here is one that relates to the Irish accent rather than an unfounded negative stereotype.

Two Irish men are looking for a job. One sees an ad in the paper saying, "tree fellers wanted".
"How about this one", he says, "There's someone here looking for tree fellers, we could do that".
"That's no good", replies the other, "There are only two of us".

And some interesting research on brains,
https://www.memecenter.com/fun/112612/Racism-illustrated


Julian F. G. W.

jfgw wrote:And some interesting research on brains,
https://www.memecenter.com/fun/112612/Racism-illustrated

Could that possibly be racistist?

jfgw wrote:

Mike4 wrote:I can imagine if a similar format of 'joke' was posted poking similar fun at say, the Irish rather than the Jewish, it would have been deleted almost before all the electrons had finished rearranging themselves on the TLF server.

Most Irish jokes I have heard rely upon the "the Irish are a bit thick" stereotype so would be classed as disparaging.

Posts here that don't include jokes are a bit off-topic so here is one that relates to the Irish accent rather than an unfounded negative stereotype.

Two Irish men are looking for a job. One sees an ad in the paper saying, "tree fellers wanted".
"How about this one", he says, "There's someone here looking for tree fellers, we could do that".
"That's no good", replies the other, "There are only two of us".

And some interesting research on brains,
https://www.memecenter.com/fun/112612/Racism-illustrated


Julian F. G. W.

After the trees were felled they were to be turned in to building materials.
The third fella had arrived by this time so the foreman asked him if he knew the difference between a joist and a girder.
After a pause and a bit of a chin rub he responded with: "Well sure didn't Joyce write Ulysses and Goether write Faust?"

- sd

Surly Kosher is how the computer has been killed?

Mike4 wrote:I can imagine if a similar format of 'joke' was posted poking similar fun at say, the Irish rather than the Jewish, it would have been deleted almost before all the electrons had finished rearranging themselves on the TLF server.

Well this is kinda why I'm interested, thanks.

I think maybe Newroad was close to the truth when he(bit of an assumption there) suggested that the context is key. It is one thing to tell a joke to your mate who is the target of the joke and another to launch it into the ether targeting (perhaps with assumed bon homie) people you don't know.

Chris

csearle wrote:

Mike4 wrote:I can imagine if a similar format of 'joke' was posted poking similar fun at say, the Irish rather than the Jewish, it would have been deleted almost before all the electrons had finished rearranging themselves on the TLF server.

Well this is kinda why I'm interested, thanks.

I think maybe Newroad was close to the truth when he(bit of an assumption there) suggested that the context is key. It is one thing to tell a joke to your mate who is the target of the joke and another to launch it into the ether targeting (perhaps with assumed bon homie) people you don't know.

Chris

At the risk of going off topic (from the OP anyways )

I very much believe that context is "just about everything" - and most of the rest is intent ..it's not simply a case of "getting away with it" because of who hears it (or who says it)

Words are just the encoding scheme for a message; so identical phrases can convey very different messages in different contexts, from different people, to different audiences

The same offensive/risque/racist words can be said with the contrasting intents of demeaning a subject or lampooning "the racist" (these are just two extremes among many - language is pure... like.... well... nuanced and stuff)

Robert Downy Jr in Tropic Thunder, John Slattery in Blackface in MadMen, the Colonel in Fawlty Towers, everything in Blazing Saddles
- all performances that include aspects that are "unacceptable" and THAT's the point!!

and you're absolutely bang on about online being "not the place for it"
- far to easy to lose context and be misconstrued as malicious
- or to inadvertently validate the truely offensive with their "how is it racist if they say it?" nonsense

Anyways lets choose somewhere neutral for the ob.joke:

What's the best thing about Switzerland?
- Not sure but the flag is a big plus

- sd