Week 2: "Rough Jokes"

     In Bossypants, by Tina Fey, she gives a somewhat detailed explanation of the difference between a good “rough joke” and a bad “rough joke” in her chapter titled “Sarah, Oprah, and Captain Hook, or How to Succeed by Sort of Looking Like Someone.” A good rough joke being one that does not too specifically target another person and does not cross any social boundaries too severely. Obviously, there is a lot of room for interpretation here. The example she sites is one rough joke she decided to include in her SNL bit:

“Gwen Ifill: Governor Palin, would you extend same-sex rights to the entire country?

Gov. Sarah Palin: You know I would be afraid of where that would lead. I believe that marriage is a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers” (221).

This joke referenced Governor Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy and how it became a rallying cause for the Prolife Movement during the debate. This joke she considered to be in good taste, while, for the most part, any joke about pedophilia is not.

            Especially since I have been back from the winter break, living on campus again, my weeks have come to revolve around my very close friend—let’s call him “Jacob.” (A little background on Jacob to follow) Jacob joined my fraternity last semester and I am his “big brother” or mentor. Early last semester, I find out he has a massive crush on this girl—let’s call her “Jaime.” However, this is not your run-of-miss crush. This is one of those, “I saw her on Instagram, and she goes to my school, so I DM’d her and now I’m in love with her kinds of crushes.” Now, don’t get me wrong, Jacob is a great guy. He just never learned how to accurately process his feelings. Throughout the semester he makes it very clear that she is interested in her and she repeatedly makes it very clear that she is not interested in him. He gets the picture and makes the attempt to back off multiple times, never truly succeeding. (Back to the present) Recently, because we are friends with Jaime and Jacob made his advances very publicly known, many of the guys in the fraternity were making jokes about him via various memes or sarcastic comments in the group chat. Never anything too harsh; they were all good “rough jokes.” This was nothing new or out of the ordinary. The way guys interact with each other is that we sarcastically bash each other for our downfalls and makes some decent humor out of it. It’s our way of saying, “You messed up buddy, but we still love you.” All of this is done in-good-taste with the security that, in this organization, we do care about each other.

            Though, this week, someone said something to Jacob. It was a joke trying to get the point across to him that he needs to leave Jaime alone and move on with his live. As Jacob tends to do, he took it the wrong way and despite there never being any true “beef” between the two, Jacob thought he was actively being targeted. A theme in the last few months is that he feels insecure about the situation, blames the fraternity, and then tells me that he wants to quit because he thinks no one likes him. Since this is extremely far from the truth, I explain to him that that’s not the case, everyone is just trying to help you. He is usually fine by the time it is the weekend for some unknown reason.

            I see three morals to the story. Moral the first, be careful what you say to someone. You do not know how it is going to affect them or other key factors could be essential to the situation. Moral the second, do not leave an organization that you love just because you are mad at one guy. Be the man or woman that you are and stand up for yourself. It only gets easier from there. Moral the third, “rough jokes” are not something that can ever go away completely, whether they cross boundaries or not. Especially because that is essentially what comedy is, right? Pointing out things that cross boundaries and delivering them in a usually funny or sarcastic voice. In her book Fey says, “I am not mean, and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both” (234). As long as both parties understand that a joke is truly all in good fun or with good intentions, it has potential to be hilarious. My friend who made the joke at Jacob was not mean, though, sometimes Jacob can be quite fragile. We’re working on it. Society needs these good “rough jokes,” lest we turn into a society of tedious pencil pushers.

Work Cited

      Fey, Tina. “The Windy City, Full of Meat.” Bossypants, Little, Brown and Company, 2013