"the brunt of so many jokes"

[Laurence Horn]

FWIW, a Nexis search on "brunt"/"joke" tracks this reanalysis back as
far as a 1977 article about a "post-bicentennial rebound for the City
of Brotherly Love" in the Washington Post that quotes the director of
Philly's Convention and Visitors Bureau with the concession that

"For years, Philadelphia has been the brunt of nightclub jokes. It
has lived with the W.C. Fields syndrome,..."

Since this eggcorn/blend/whatever has been around for at least 30
years, one would think it might be incorporated in the dictionaries.

LH

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