Monthly Archives: May 2019

Joke About Trump and Wine Day

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The joke:

Today is National Wine Day. To mark the occasion, congressional Democrats sent over to President Trump a Subpoena Grigio.

How I wrote it:

The topic caught my eye because the handle “wine” has a lot of associations that can be used to create punch lines.

The other possible handle in the topic is something like “holiday.” But my instincts told me that it might be more fun to link the topic to pop culture, the technique that I call Punch Line Maker #2. Because President Trump seems to dominate the news, I tried to write a political joke.

The handle “wine” is associated with all the various types of wines. I ran through the types in my head and landed on “pinot grigio.” The Democrats have been issuing a lot of subpoenas to the Trump administration, so I decided to construct a wordplay punch line connecting “subpoena” and “pinot grigio.”

How to make the joke clear in print form was little tricky. “Subpinot grigio” and “subpoenot grigio” seemed potentially confusing to readers. But I thought “subpoena grigio” would work well because “grigio” makes the connection to wine obvious all by itself without having to explicitly include any part of “pinot.”

I try to write political jokes that are unlikely to split a mass audience, like this joke. Whatever you think of the Democrats and their subpoenas, everybody can agree that they’ve been issuing a lot of them, of all different types.

Joke About Goodwill’s Hand Grenade

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The joke:

In Florida yesterday, workers at a Goodwill store emptied a donation bin and found a hand grenade. That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to The Salvation Army?

How I wrote it:

To construct the punch line I used my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

The first handle of the topic is “Goodwill store,” which is associated with its rival, “The Salvation Army.” The second handle is “hand grenade,” which is associated with “army.” The punch line uses the two different meanings of “army” to link the two topic handles in a surprising way.

I knew that “The Salvation Army” had to come at the end of the joke because my Joke Maximizer #2 is “End on the laugh trigger.” But to set up that laugh trigger properly I needed an angle to smoothly connect it to the topic.

My first attempt at an angle resulted in this: “Apparently competition is really heating up with The Salvation Army.” But any ruthless store competing with another store might conceivably leave a hand grenade at the rival store. So stating that The Salvation Army did so wouldn’t be very surprising. I felt that a bigger surprise for the audience would arise from their making the connection between “army” and “hand grenade.”

So I came up with a more effective angle that eliminates the competition aspect entirely. The angle “That’s weird. Wouldn’t you donate a hand grenade to…” directs the audience’s undivided attention to the wordplay in “The Salvation Army” and gets a bigger laugh.

Joke About Trump and Mother’s Day

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The joke:

It’s Mother’s Day. But President Trump told Melania he couldn’t give her a card because the IRS is auditing it.

How I wrote it:

The topic of Mother’s Day drew my focus because holidays tend to have lots of associations that can be used to create punch lines.

To write this joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The handle “Mother’s Day” is associated with, among other things, “giving a greeting card,” which has the sub-association of “giving a document.”

So I turned to pop culture and brainstormed situations where a celebrity is involved in giving a document. President Trump is much in the news for refusing to hand over his tax returns to Congress, so I decided to base my punch line on that.

But writing the joke like this wouldn’t have made sense: “It’s Mother’s Day. But President Trump is refusing to hand over his Mother’s Day card to Congress.” Trump would give his Mother’s Day card to Melania, not to Congress. And the logic of the joke requires Trump to not give Melania the card.

So I added a reason, based on Trump’s statements about his tax returns, why he might not give Melania a card, arriving at the final version: “But President Trump told Melania he couldn’t give her a card because the IRS is auditing it.”

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.” This joke shows how to put that into practice as you compose the wording of your angle and punch line.

Joke About Woody Allen’s Memoir

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The joke:

A New York Times report says that multiple publishers rejected Woody Allen’s memoir. Woody Allen defended the book, calling it “a touching children’s story.”

How I wrote it:

I went with my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic. This punch line uses wordplay to link an association of “Woody Allen”–child molestation–with a sub-association of “memoir”–children’s story.

A few readers expressed reservations about the joke, feeling that it’s unfair. Here’s why I think the joke is fair and therefore okay to laugh at:

The punch line is true. By “true,” I don’t mean factually, provably true; the punch line just has to be accepted as true by the audience for them to laugh.

I judged that most of my readers would accept as true that Woody Allen molested a child because most people in the business and entertainment worlds seem to accept it.

The news article that I based the joke on (link) details how Allen’s career has cratered as a result of the allegations. Even actors like Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, and Michael Caine have said that they regret having worked with him.

The joke “punches up.” Allen has been a world-famous celebrity for decades and he’s won four Oscars. Until recently he occupied a position of considerable power compared to almost everyone. That means he’s fair game.

The target of the joke is not a victim of circumstance. Unlike some celebrities, Allen doesn’t suffer openly from mental or physical health problems or some other condition that he can’t help. If he did, he’d be off-limits for jokes. Instead, Allen allegedly made a deliberate choice to do something very bad. So again, he’s fair game.

Humor is subjective, of course, and not everybody will enjoy any given joke. But this joke got more than three times the favorable response that my jokes usually get on Twitter and Facebook. So apparently most people agreed that it’s fair.