Monthly Archives: February 2020

Joke About the Coronavirus

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The joke:

The CDC says that the risk of the coronavirus to Americans is low. So if you see somebody who’s nauseous, vomiting, coughing up blood…it’s just Mike Bloomberg after last night’s debate.

How I wrote it:

Sometimes when writing a joke you can start with a punch line and work backwards.

I wanted to write a joke about the Democratic debate, and about how most of the candidates took turns attacking Mike Bloomberg, because it was a big story.

Using my Joke Maximizer #8–Wildly exaggerate–I imagined the other candidates physically punching and kicking Bloomberg until he staggered around, woozy and coughing up blood.

So this rough structure of a joke formed in my mind: describe those symptoms, and then unexpectedly reveal in the punch line that I’m talking about Bloomberg after the debate.

But I usually start writing a joke by selecting a topic, and this time I didn’t have one; I only had a punch line.

Any topic I created couldn’t mention the debate itself because that would violate my Joke Maximizer #5–Don’t telegraph the punch line.

So instead I thought about who else might have symptoms like Bloomberg’s. And I realized that if I worded the symptoms carefully they could also apply to a victim of the coronavirus, which was also in the news. That led me to writing a topic about the coronavirus.

The topic sentence I came up with not only fit the structure of the joke I wanted but was also true; I confirmed it on the CDC website. The topic of a joke should be factually true so it doesn’t distract the audience on their way to the punch line.

Joke About Huawei Stealing Secrets

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The joke:

The Justice Department is accusing Chinese telecommunications company Huawei of stealing U.S. trade secrets. Officials became suspicious when they saw Huawei banging on a trash can in their dugout.

How I wrote it:

This news item had appeared pretty prominently in the media for a few days so I wanted to write a joke about it.

The two most likely topic handles are “Huawei” and “stealing secrets,” but I wasn’t sure an audience would know much about that Chinese telecommunications company.

So instead of using “Huawei” to help generate a punch line, I focused on “stealing secrets” and turned to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture.

“Stealing secrets” was associated in my mind with another big story at the time about how the Houston Astros cheated by stealing signs during ballgames. So I decided to base my punch line on linking Huawei to the Astros.

At first I considered ending the joke something like this: “On the plus side, Huawei was just hired to manage the Houston Astros.” But that didn’t seem to make the connection to stealing secrets clearly enough, and my Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.”

I also didn’t want the punch line to be too on-the-nose. So I ended the joke by painting a vivid mental picture of Huawei’s forbidden activity without explicitly saying “stealing secrets.”

I was pleased that “banging on a trash can in their dugout” sounded funny, having some assonance and many stop consonants.

I ended on “dugout” because I thought it was the most surprising word in the punch line by a little bit.

Joke About Pelosi’s Speech-Ripping

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The joke:

At the end of President Trump’s State of the Union address, Nancy Pelosi ripped his speech in half. Then she proposed expanding health care coverage to include pre-existing paper cuts.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write about the speech-ripping because it grabbed my interest and got a lot of media coverage, which are characteristics of a promising joke topic.

I turned to Punch Line Maker #3–Ask a question about the topic–and after trying out a few questions I settled on “What might happen if you tore up all that paper?” One answer to that question–you’d get a lot of paper cuts–became the basis of my punch line.

But I thought that ending the joke something like this would have been ineffective: “Nancy Pelosi ripped his speech in half and got a lot of paper cuts.” The joke needed an angle, to misdirect the audience on their way to the punch line.

To come up with an angle, I thought more about paper cuts and associated them with requiring medical treatment. Then I associated medical treatment with health care coverage, which is an important issue for the Democrats. That’s how I came up with the angle about Pelosi’s health care proposal.

I could have just ended the joke with “to include paper cuts.” But I added “pre-existing” to “paper cuts” because of my Joke Maximizer #7: Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.

Plus “pre-existing” made sense in the context of the joke; when the proposed health care coverage took effect, Pelosi’s paper cuts would be pre-existing. If the word didn’t make sense, adding it might distract the audience from laughing.

Joke About Apple Stores in China

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The joke:

Apple is temporarily closing its 42 stores in China because of the coronavirus. Now any Chinese citizen who wants an iPhone will have to ask their child to make them one.

How I wrote it:

I was attracted to this news item because it’s related to the coronavirus epidemic, a big story.

I used my Punch Line Maker #3–Ask a question about the topic–asking myself the natural question “How will people in China get iPhones now?”

To create a punch line, I focused on the topic handle “China.” In my mind, “China” is associated with “makes iPhones,” which has the sub-association “uses child labor.” And that sub-association became the basis of a punch line that answers my original question.

Do children still work in Chinese iPhone factories, like those run by Foxconn? I think so, based on an internet search. But what matters more to the joke’s effectiveness is only whether most people would believe that children still work in Chinese iPhone factories. And I thought that most people would, given the news stories I’ve read on the subject and the jokes I’ve heard over the last ten years or so.

Notice that the joke topic has three possible handles–“Apple,” “China,” and “coronavirus.” I never considered using that last one, because it would have been too hard to write an acceptable joke based on the associations of “coronavirus.” At this point, most of those associations would probably call to mind disturbing details of the outbreak that would make people reluctant to laugh.