Irish joke

[Wilson Gray]

That's right up there with:

A. My sister married an Irishman.
B. Oh, really?
C. No. O'Reilly.

This is the first ethnic joke that I ever heard: first grade, ca.1942.
Since we little colored kids had no concept of white ethnicity
whatsoever, the joke made no sense, there being nothing to relate it
to. Nevertheless, this joke was amazingly popular, despite the fact
that it was totally empty of content. I heard it hundreds of times. I
consider it to be my first brush with zen-thought.

The "Paddy O'Furniture joke was in an IFC film about, among other
things, a protagonist who was trying to recover the lost punch line of
the ethnic joke:

Why don't italians ever barbecue in the backyard?
[Because  the spaghetti keeps falling through the grille.]

-Wilson



On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 9:57 PM, Joel S. Berson<Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Irish joke
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 7/19/2009 02:15 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>Joel Berson wrote:
>>
>>>At 7/19/2009 12:23 PM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>>> >now posted about, with references to a 2000 ADS-L discussion, on my
>>> >blog:
>>> >http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/the-patio-footnote/
>>>
>>>Oh dear -- I won't be able to tell my Irish joke any more.
>>
>>stop teasing us. Â what Irish joke?
>
> But it's fun!
>
> "Who's Irish and stays out all night?"
>
> [Spoiler below]
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> "Paddy (or Patti) O'Furniture."
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org