What I said, again.

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 10 20:29:01 UTC 2010


Spoken by an aspiring comedienne on Comedy Central:

"I'm white. [almost-imperceptible pause]. My husband is Jewish."

It got a decent laugh.

Of course, "I'm white. My [significant other] is [in some sense,
NOT-white]" lends itself to pre-interpretation on any number of
levels, here in "post-racial" America. Indeed, even if the speaker in
this instance had said only,

"I'm white. [almost-imperceptible pause] My husband is white."

it's very likely that the audience would have laughed just as hard,
since, having primed itself to hear some form of [NOT-white], the
audience would still have been caught with its prejudices hanging out.
--
-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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