Big Friendly Vegan

[This is something I wrote in 2002 for my friend Ed's website. I thought I would repost it here so that no one can read it here either.]

I have come to the conclusion that the whole world has gone mad.

Maybe it is because I'm getting old (I'm about to turn 29, for God's sake) but things just ain't the way they used to be. People are suing companies because the coffee is too hot, children are being expelled from schools for sharing sweets with other children (the principal said that sharing the sweets was like sharing drugs, which is just not tolerated!). My students aren't students anymore, they're customers.

The final shred of proof that led to my conclusion came the other day during one of my lectures:

I was teaching my students about number systems (such as binary, decimal and hexadecimal) in a first year introductory computing class. I asked the class a question about why we use a decimal (base 10) system.

The simple, obvious and probably correct answer is that we have ten fingers. At this point I made a joke that this is also the reason why men are better at mathematics than women. You see, if they take their shoes and socks off, men and women can count up to 20, but men, if they're naked, can count up to 21. (Pause for laughter).

I have been using that joke for a lot of semesters and it usually gets a good reception. It is, in my honest opinion, a quite tame, if childish joke that could not possibly offend anyone.

This semester, however, was different.

I started by telling the joke, as usual, but even before I had reached the punch line, I noticed that one of my female students had become visibly agitated. As I delivered the coup-de-grace and was pausing for the laughter, this student spoke up and protested at my assertion that men were better at mathematics than women.

The rest of the class, who heard the punch line over her protest, did laugh as expected, but the protestor refused to be silent. On her feet now, she demanded that I retract the statement or she would sue me.

I explained, patiently, that it was a joke. I tried to explain the joke to her (which is hard to do without being obvious about what should be obvious), but she was not satisfied. I had, in her opinion, made a blatantly sexist remark that would result in severe and immediate legal action.

Now, if I were living in America, I would probably have been more concerned by her threat (let's face it, if I was in America, I wouldn't have kept this job for long, with the level of crap I go on with - I'm a law suit waiting to happen). Fortunately, I live in Australia and that sort of thing just doesn't happen here - yet.

The way the world is evolving, there will be no haven left for exploring the pleasures of making even a simple joke.

Jokers will be confined to small, dank clubs where they will congregate in the darkness, wearing long overcoats and laughing at the one about the Pope and the duck - but in a subdued fashion, looking over their shoulder suspiciously in case someone had heard them snicker.

News items will abound about the rise in the number of random acts of comedy on the street. Drive-by jokings will become popular in some of the poorer neighbourhoods and people will sell dirty gags in alleyways.

The jokers of this world will be a hunted subspecies and the lawyers will be the New Gods.

I have always used comedy to great effect in my lectures and it has proved to be very popular. However, you usually get one or two squeaky wheels that cause a problem, just like the wailing banshee mentioned above (I'm just kidding, don't sue me!).

A few years ago I was told to stop making jokes in class, because (and I am not making this up) ONE (yes, only one) student had complained that I was too funny in class.

Let me repeat that:

I was told to stop being funny in class, because I was too funny.

I didn't take this lying down. I told my students about it and they launched a "Save Dave" campaign where they bombarded the head of department with emails saying how much they enjoyed the lectures and especially the jokes.

The head of department told me that he didn't have an issue with it, although I later found out that a spy was sent into the lectures to see if I was, indeed, too funny (and since I was allowed to continue teaching, I was apparently not. I'm not sure whether to be offended?)

As far as I am concerned, there are few, if any, situations where jokes are entirely inappropriate. Sure, some jokes may be rude or crude, but even those in the worst taste and at the worst time, are as valid a form of expression as poetry, painting or song.

Jokes can be dark and revealing about a subject (e.g. What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing she hasn't already been told twice), they can be scathingly critical (e.g. What do you call a Muslim with a beard? Terrorist) and they can be sadly amusing (e.g. Spike Milligan's official last words - "See, I told you I was sick").

In my lectures I use jokes to illustrate ideas. Ideas that, when remembered, are associated with a smile rather than just with the pain of understanding.

To get back to the situation that prompted this rant. In the end, nothing happened. The woman in question, being the annoying troublemaker that she is (I'm just joking, please don't sue me!), never showed up to my class again. The rest of the class didn't seem to care, but at least now have an amusing anecdote, and I continue to do what I have always done in the best way that I know how.

I think the best comment on the political correctness of jokes (and the joke of political correctness) comes from an after dinner speech I heard at a conference banquet.

The speaker, a well-known scientist, started by telling us that he usually opened his talks with a little joke. Unfortunately, he was now obliged to be politically correct and couldn't make jokes about people of other races or nationalities in case it caused offence. He did, however, believe that it was O.K. to make jokes about long dead civilizations.

So he told us a joke about an ancient Aztec priest, named Father Murphy, who...