Warning: What follows is not, in the opinion of this blogger, the world's funniest joke. It has been well documented that the world's funniest joke was used as a weapon that helped Britain win World War II all by itself. Please do not assume the management (ha!) of this blog believes anything contained herein to be the world's funniest joke. You may now resume your reading of today's post, which is not the world's funniest joke.
A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing; his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency service. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says: “Take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is silence, then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says, “OK, now what?”
That, according to LaughLab, a project organized by Prof. Richard Wiseman (or Dr. Wiseguy, as he's known around my digs) and sponsored by the British Science Association, is the world's funniest joke.
Either this is an especially sad world or Dr. Wiseguy is wrong, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make.
Read the "world's funniest joke" again. And then, please, tell me exactly why the hunters are from New Jersey.
Is it that people from New Jersey are especially stupid? Are we unusually violent? Do we follow instructions especially literally? Exactly what is it about my home state that makes it an indispensable component of (not) the world's funniest joke?
(To be fair, it should be noted that on Dr. Wiseguy's web site listing the joke, the words "New Jersey" do not appear. It's just "two hunters". It was on the Big Think web site, in a posting about the joke, that the hunters are potentially my neighbors.)
I suppose the hunters are New Jerseyans because making them Polish or blonde would be considered politically incorrect (and rightly so). We Jerseyans, as represented by such luminaries as Snooki and The Situation (who aren't from New Jersey, but okay), have enhanced our perennial status as walking punchlines to the point that adding us to your joke can get you the votes you need to put your hilarious little scenario over the top with the populous. Fine.
Here's where I'd typically go on the usual rant about how we are a hopelessly misunderstood people, how New Jersey is among the best-educated and most affluent of states in the union, and how you wish your state university was as good as ours, but hey. I'm used to this sort of thing.
I grew up in New Jersey. I can handle anything.
Now, consider this one: A guy from (pick the state you'd like to ridicule) leads his dog into the office of a talent agent, and tells the seedy looking guy in the office that his dog can talk. The agent rolls his eyes and says, "Fine. Let's hear him."
The guy sits down, looks his dog in the eye, and says, "Who was the greatest baseball player ever?" The dog says, "Roooooooof!" The guy goes on, "What do you call the top of a building?" The dog says, "Roooooooof!"
The agent stops him there, and tosses the two of them out of his office. Dejected, they sit outside the office building and stare at each other.
Finally, the dog turns to the guy and says, "What'd you want me to say? DiMaggio?"
I'll leave it to you--is the hunter joke REALLY funnier than that?
P.S. Happy birthday, Josh (not the Josh who's posting tomorrow)!
OY - and let's not forget Sandra Bullock was "Miss New Jersey" in Miss Congeniality, too.
It could be others are so jealous of our state they have to poke fun at it!
Posted by: Toni Lotempio | August 06, 2012 at 08:05 AM
The only thing I can see which would place them in New Jersey is the fact that your state is also famous for the deer and bear hunting seasons.
Your state earns loads of money for license fees in the regular, black powder, handgun, and bow hunting seasons.
Other then that, the site is incidental and the friend calling in the other hunter's problem is a moron.
Posted by: Noraadrienne.wordpress.com | August 06, 2012 at 08:43 AM
So do lots of other states, Nora. New Jersey is surely not the first place people think of when the word hunting is mentioned.
Posted by: Jeff Cohen | August 06, 2012 at 08:51 AM
Happy bithday to the Josh that isn't me, and can direct circles around me in filmmaking!
Posted by: Josh Getzler | August 06, 2012 at 10:24 AM
Did you hear what happened to the guy from Jersey who fell into a vat of optical glass?
He made a spectacle of himself!
- Bill Doonan (proud New Jersey person)
Posted by: William Doonan | August 06, 2012 at 11:32 AM
If I tell you I'm a middle-aged woman who has never married, you'll get an image in your head that has nothing to do with me.
It's just a stereotype. I think psychologists say we create them as a mental shorthand to help us order our world. It's regrettable, and it's a pain when your individuality is erased by a stereotype, but everybody falls into one unfair pigeonhole or another.
What would be interesting is if some eager sociology student traced the history of the New Jersey stereotype. Certainly 'The Sopranos' took it nationwide and reinforced it, and 'Jersey Shore' is developing and amplifying it, but it must have already existed when 'Miss Congeniality' was written, or the line wouldn't have been funny.
Posted by: Adele | August 06, 2012 at 12:10 PM
There are those who would argue that its NOT funny, but I dont understand the stereotype. What are we supposed to be?
Posted by: Jeff Cohen | August 06, 2012 at 12:13 PM
Sandra Bullock's line contrasted the pastoral image of "The Garden State" with images from industry ("Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State") I think it was universally funny because we've all at some point wryly noted the difference between an advertising image and reality, and that contrast is what hit home. From my own vantage point as somebody who has never been to New Jersey and had no preconceptions about it, I'm perfectly willing to believe that the state has some kind of industrial area, so the joke doesn't fall flat.
As to the original joke that brought this on (which I thought was disgusting) - that was a riff on the mobster image of casual and heartless violence, stemming from real life, developed through movies like 'Pulp Fiction', and associated with New Jersey thanks to 'The Sopranos'.
Take that and combine it with the popular image of Al Capone and the speakeasies of Chicago in the 20s, mix well, add a dash of mobster life taken from film noir, and you've created the stereotype that associates mobsters with a cheap and trashy lifestyle filled with sex and booze. From that the jump from the New Jersey of The Sopranos to the New Jersey of Jersey Shore is pretty much inevitable.
Posted by: Adele | August 06, 2012 at 01:01 PM
Loved the hunter joke. Thanks for the laugh.
Posted by: Gayle | August 06, 2012 at 03:11 PM
As a person from Minnesota, I did not read it as people from NJ being stupid, but that they probably weren't that familiar with hunting. So, maybe I missed the point about the people were supposed to be clueless. In the Midwest, lots of us think NJ is mostly big cities and pavement. Maybe the NJ was added by someone from New York, which I understand (from Sat Night Live)to be a rival. Here, we would probably tell it as an Iowa joke.
Posted by: Lynn | August 06, 2012 at 06:32 PM
Oh, please. The hunters in the joke were reportedly from New Jersey because the joke-teller assumed his/her audience already had the notion that folks from New Jersey were, well, not that bright. This is called playing to the audience.
At least that is why I assume, when I heard the same joke told in Texas in the 70s, the hunters were Aggies... And when an Aggie told it, the hunters attended University of Texas, a notable rival to Texas A&M. (Except, the Aggie, as befits a frugal country boy, field dressed his friend rather than shot him, and the conversation took place at the ER.)
Posted by: Rosemary Webb | August 06, 2012 at 07:27 PM