Author's Note: This essay originally appeared in Southern Folklore 46:1 (1989), pp. 15-39. Given the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2001, I felt that it was important to examine folk reactions to those tragedies using the same approach I present below.

Some people with find this material troubling, some offensive, and others in bad taste. Nevertheless, it is important that we document and study these cultural responses to disaster. Those who believe that folklore of this sort should not be studied should read my essay "If Ignorance Is Bliss, 'Tis Folly to Be Wise: What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us," Journal of Folklore Research 32:2 (May-August 1995), pp. 155-63. In fact, that entire issue, titled Arbiters of Taste: Censuring/Censoring Discourse, is a valuable look at the issue of the "appropriateness" of certain types of scholarship.

The original essay appears here as it was first published with minor emendations and glosses in brackets to clarify some topical references that may not be familiar to contemporary readers. My comments on recent events appear at Supplement. A new appendix, C, contains examples of reactions to the terrorist attacks of 11 September.

This article is reprinted with permission of the University Press of Kentucky.

Humor is amazingly complex and functions in many ways. It can exist for its own sake, for entertainment; it can be used to get attention, to demonstrate one's wit, intelligence, and superiority, or conversely, one's subservience through self-depreciation; it can express hostility, anger, or aggression; it can be used to cope with or reflect conflict, fear, or anxiety; it can function in communication, identification, and group cohesion; it can serve to instruct and enlighten, to make a point; it can alleviate discomfort; it can broach an uncomfortable topic and thus lead to a conversation that might not otherwise be held; it can be used to "break the ice"; it can be therapeutic; it can be employed to endear oneself to others, to gain their approval, or to insult them; it can help one to "fit in"; and it can provide an escape from reality All in all, humor is a very economical and efficient way of communicating one's values, often unconsciously.1

Frequently the jokes that convey such messages are generated by events that are reported in the mass media. Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines are channels through which we are bombarded with news about the latest happenings of major significance in the world. The ready accessibility of this information frequently results in the circulation in the United States of many jokes of a topical nature--like Ethiopian jokes, AIDS jokes, Challenger and NASA jokes--referring to a recent event or a public figure in the news. Often taking disasters or other tragedies as their referents, topical jokes begin to circulate virtually as soon as the relevant news reaches the public. For example, Cary Grant died Saturday, November 29, 1986. On Tuesday, December 2, 1986, I heard this joke: "Do you know what Cary Grant had that Natalie Wood didn't have?" "A good stroke."2 These jokes are predicated on an awareness of current events. If people did not know about a given event, they obviously could not make up jokes about it.

But creating awareness of events is not the media's only role in the generation of topical jokes; the media also influence humor by inundating the public with advertising slogans. Product names and other commercial elements are often woven into jokes because the media have made them such a major memorable part of our lives, whether we like it or not. 3 For example, in the spring of 1981, shortly before the arrest of Wayne Williams for the murder of more than twenty black boys and young men, there were many racist Atlanta killer jokes circulating, probably as a direct result of the increased attention that the situation was receiving in the media. The following joke combines the Atlanta killer topic with a fast-food marketing campaign that was underway at the time: "The blacks were upset because there weren't any black winners in McDonald's 'Build a Big Mac' contest, so McDonald's agreed to hold a special contest just for blacks. First prize is a free trip to Atlanta for two, and you can take your kids along." In addition, some of the jokes are migratory:

1979:

What's the five-day forecast for Harrisburg Pennsylvania]? Two days, with temperatures to reach five thousand degrees.

1986:

Have you heard the weather forecast for Kiev? A high of nine thousand degrees and cloudy

1984:

Did you hear that Vanessa Williams died? They found her floating facedown on Veronica Lake.

1985.

Did you hear that Jim Nabors died? They found him bobbing up and down on the Hudson.

1983:

Did you hear that Boy George can't get car insurance anymore? He's been rear-ended [or creamed in the rear too many times.

1985:

Did you hear that Rock Hudson can't get car insurance anymore? He's been rear-ended too many times.

1981:

Did you hear that Natalie Wood didn't like to bathe? She preferred to wash up on shore.

1985:

Why didn't Leon Klinghoffer take a shower on the Achille Lauro? He thought he'd wash ashore.

1986:

They found out Christa McAuliffe didn't like to take a bath. She preferred to wash up on shore.

Why do people joke about some events that are not humorous, but not about other, similar occurrences? What do events that result in jokes have in common? How do they differ from the ones that are not joked about? Of the extensive list I have compiled, more than half of the events involve blacks, gays, or Jews, whereas only one of the not-joked-about events involved blacks, one involved a gay Jewish man, and one involved a gay mass murderer. In addition, more than half of the joked-about events involved public figures, but this fact has little relevance to this discussion: public figures are constantly covered by the media, and little-known people are not likely to be joked about outside their sphere of familiarity. Except for [the eruption of] Mt. St. Helen's, natural disasters were not joked about, 4 nor were food and drug tamperings, except for a pseudo-commercial on HBO's "Not Necessarily the News" for "Gillette--makers of fine Girl Scout cookies" and the following, which is actually an AIDS joke influenced by current events: "Did you hear they found a cure for AIDS?" "Extra-Strength Tylenol."

(It strikes me as odd that the Lipton's soup-tampering in September 1986 did not generate jokes, since it was an ideal set up--a young man is not feeling well, his mother feeds him chicken soup, and he dies. Such a joke would have fascinating implications--the mother is punished for her laziness in relying on a convenience item instead of lovingly devoting her time to making chicken soup from scratch, which results in death rather than health for her son, her pride and joy. As in everything else, the mother would be to blame.)

Mass murderers seem to have been ignored except when all the victims were black, e.g., the Atlanta killer, or when the murders were gay-related, e.g., John Wayne Gacy. We seem to have no jokes about toxic waste, despite intensive coverage of Love Canal and Times Beach, nor about oil spills and the like.

Jokes about deaths and assassinations of public figures seem unpredictable: there appears to be no rhyme nor reason determining which ones are joked about. Generally terrorism is not a subject for joking, either. The exceptions I have noticed either involve a Jewish man, Leon Klinghoffer, or are actually political jokes, as in the following from the 1980 presidential campaign:

Jimmy Carter called the Ayatollah Khomeini and told him that if he didn't release the hostages we were going to have to kill eight more Americans.

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that Jane Fonda has offered to exchange herself for the hostages, and the ayatollah has accepted. The bad news is that Teddy Kennedy has offered to drive her to the airport and he has to cross seven bridges on the way

Finally, such catastrophes as airplane crashes, with the following exception, do not seem to generate jokes either: "Did you hear they found the black box from Korean Airlines flight 007?" "Miss America had it all along." This joke does not fit the pattern since the plane was shot down by the Soviets, rather than crashing because of mechanical malfunction, bad weather, or pilot error. In addition, it draws upon the coincidence of the nearly simultaneous crash and the selection of Vanessa Williams as the first black Miss America. It is surprising, given the rumors that KAL 007 was on a spying mission for the United States, that the incident did not generate any James Bond jokes. Perhaps, like the [case of the] cyanide-laced chicken soup, such jokes would have been too obvious.

One of the requirements for the development of topical humor may be the existence of parallel elements, that is, a media-hyped event or person plus dislike of the victims or the group to which they belong (particularly evident in the many racist topical jokes). The jokes tend to follow a pattern of combining topics--famine and race relations, athletics and affirmative action, entertainers and academic scholarships for minorities. For example:

You know, all that starvation in Ethiopia is all our fault. We taught them how to pick but we never taught them how to plant.<

> Did you know that the Celtics don't discriminate anymore? They have no Bias.

Did you hear that Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson have gotten together to start a new scholarship fund? It's called the Ignited Negro College Fund.

They found out Christa McAuliffe had dandruff. Her Head and Shoulders washed up on the beach.

Did you hear that NASA has switched to Sprite? They couldn't get Seven-Up.

Do you know what NASA stands for? Need Another Seven Astronauts. Do you know what PLO stands for? Push Leon Overboard.

Do you know what gay stands for? Got AIDS Yet?

Do you know what AIDS stands for?
Ass-Injected Death Sentence.
Adios, Infected Dick Sucker.
Already Infected Dick Sucker.
Another Infected Dick Sucker.

One wonders why people tell such jokes. John Johnson says that they are a way of coping with grief (Howey 1986). More likely is that jokes like these are a reaction to stress and anxiety that one would not experience if the media did not keep us constantly aware of many of the frightening possibilities that await us in the world.5 Paradoxically, while increasing our levels of anxiety, the media tend to overexpose us to various events so that we become desensitized. Had we not been confronted continually for days on end with videotapes and photographs of the [space] shuttle Challenger exploding, we might have remained in too much shock to joke about the tragedy. Instead the image became trite, almost cliched, shifting from surrealistic to unreal.6

With situations to which we have not been desensitized, the jokes seem to represent a psychological dissociation from our fear that perhaps reveals an anxiety, a concern that our fears are justified. In other words, we do not believe ourselves when we say, "It can't happen to me."

Are there subjects about which we dare not joke? Where is the line between that which is all right to laugh about and that which is taboo? Perhaps the more threatening we feel something to be, the less likely we are to joke about it. 7 I do not recall ever having heard a joke about cancer. Indeed, in the present collection, there are no jokes about diseases except for AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), which is gay-identified, and toxic shock syndrome. I have found only one joke about toxic shock syndrome, and I think its existence is the result of the easy connection with an earlier Polish joke and the fact that women's health issues seem strange to many men, are not understood by them, and are perceived by a lot of men as psychosomatic (read "non-existent") and thus laughable. [Actually it was two jokes; the second made sense only when told as a follow-up to the first.]

We do have jokes about the nuclear "accidents" at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but the only joke I remember having heard that even touched on the issue of nuclear war was in the late 1950s, I think. All I can remember of the joke is that it had to do with Eskimos. The punch line was, "Because they have icey BM's [ICBM's, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles]."

The many AIDS jokes that have been circulated present an interesting body of material to use in examining both the relationships between topical humor and the media and the taboo against joking about certain topics. (By contrast, were there any Legionnaires' disease jokes?) Almost all of the AIDS jokes that I have encountered are straight jokes [i.e., jokes told primarily by heterosexuals]. The best way to explain the difference between gay and straight AIDS jokes is to give examples. The following is one of the few gay AIDS jokes: "Do you know what the most difficult thing about having AIDS is?" "Trying to convince your mother that you're part Haitian." This joke expresses gay concerns; it says that death is less to be feared than is discovery of one's homosexuality. The majority of AIDS jokes convey messages of a much different sort: "Do you know why they haven't found a cure for AIDS yet?" "They can't find two rats that will butt-fuck." Based on the stereotype that gay men engage almost exclusively and obsessively in anal intercourse, which is assumed to be one of the primary modes of transmission of AIDS, this joke suggests that homosexuality is unnatural, that is, not occurring in nature.

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