Monthly Archives: October 2021

Joke About Bill Clinton in the Hospital

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The joke:

Yesterday former President Bill Clinton was released from the hospital after being treated for an infection. While he was there he got intravenous antibiotics, intravenous fluids, and 14 nurses’ phone numbers.

How I wrote it:

This news story got my attention because it involved Bill Clinton. When I was working for Dave Letterman I wrote hundreds of Bill Clinton jokes. So I thought I’d write one about this story for old times’ sake, particularly because Clinton wasn’t very ill.

Whenever I write a joke I try to have it say something that pretty much everybody will agree with; that way I won’t split the audience. In the case of Bill Clinton, one association that almost everybody will agree with is that he loves the ladies and the ladies love him.

So I decided to use that association of Bill Clinton. But to employ my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–I also needed an association of “treated for an infection,” the other likely topic handle.

At first I considered using the sub-association “got fluids” to write a punch line referring to how Bill Clinton got into trouble as President by “giving his fluids.” But that seemed too icky.

So instead I linked “got fluids” with a different sub-association of Clinton’s philandering: getting lots of phone numbers. To make that laugh trigger as effective as possible, I made it the last item in a list, as suggested by my Joke Maximizer #10–Use the Rule of Three.

Why did I pick 14 as the number of nurses? Because the number was clearly large but not so crazily large that the audience might be distracted by a thought like “Wait, even a major hospital doesn’t have 2,367 nurses.”

I also wanted the alliteration between “14” and “phone numbers” because my Joke Maximizer #7 is “Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.”

Joke About Aspirin and Heart Attacks

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The joke:

Today a panel of experts changed its recommendation and said that now most adults should not take daily aspirin to prevent a heart attack. But they said that most adults should take daily aspirin to prevent headaches from listening to experts always changing their recommendations.

How I wrote it:

This news item caught my eye as a possible topic because the idea of taking aspirin seemed to have associations that could lead to a joke.

I turned first to my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic. That’s because the news item invited the question, “Okay, then why should most adults take daily aspirin?”

To answer that question, and thus create a punch line, I tried to think of something in pop culture that would give people headaches.

That line of thinking led me back to the news item itself, specifically the part about the experts changing their recommendations. Experts seem to do that a lot lately, don’t they? And wouldn’t most people agree that all that aggravating recommendation-changing could cause a headache? I decided that most people would agree. So I created a punch line based on that association between recommendation-changing and headaches.

Once I had the idea for the punch line, I used my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. I did that by repeating this phrase from the topic almost word-for-word in the punch line: “said that now most adults should not take daily aspirin to prevent.” I also copied as closely as possible the key phrase in the topic “experts changed its recommendation.”

And I used my Joke Maximizer #1–Shorten as much as possible–on the topic sentence. I simplified “daily low-dose aspirin” in the news item to “daily aspirin” and “to prevent first heart attacks or strokes” to “to prevent a heart attack.” The edited topic is still true, which is important, but has been reduced to its essential elements.

Joke About Tesla Moving Its Headquarters

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The joke:

Tesla announced that its headquarters is moving from California to Texas. Which means that if the headquarters is on Autopilot, it’ll probably crash into Colorado.

How I wrote it:

The original news item was something like, “Tesla has announced it will move its company headquarters to Texas from California.” The two topic handles that jumped out at me were “Tesla” and “move.” They suggested that I use my Punch Line Maker #3 and ask this question about the topic: “What will happen when Tesla moves?”

I answered that question by using an association of Tesla cars that move, which is that they sometimes crash into things. So if a Tesla were moving to Texas, it might crash into a different state along the way. And that idea became the basis of my punch line.

To better prepare the audience for that punch line, I reworded the topic so as to make “headquarters” the subject of “is moving.” That rewording made it easier for the audience to accept the Tesla headquarters as a moving Tesla car.

To prepare the audience even more to accept the headquarters as a car, I included in my angle the phrase “the headquarters is on Autopilot.” Mentioning the troublesome Autopilot system also clarified the logic of the joke by explaining why the headquarters might crash.

To pick a specific state for the headquarters to crash into, I looked up a map of the U.S. and traced a route from California to Texas. Out of the possible crash states I picked Colorado because I liked the stop consonants and alliteration in “crash into Colorado.” That is, I employed my Joke Maximizer #7: Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance.

Joke About a Government Shutdown

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The joke:

Today the House and Senate passed a deal to avoid a government shutdown. So the good news is that the government can carry on as usual. The bad news is that the government can carry on as usual.

How I wrote it:

I decided to write a joke about this topic because it was a big news story.

The topic didn’t have two obvious topic handles to link in order to create a punch line. So I turned to my Punch Line Maker #3: Ask a question about the topic. The question I asked was, “So what happens next?”

To answer that question in a surprising way, thus creating a punch line, I used an association of the topic handle “government.” The association I chose, which was unlikely to split my audience, was “dysfunctional.” That is, I decided on a punch line that states that the government will continue to function improperly.

As I worked on the exact wording of the punch line, a good form for the angle and punch line of the joke occurred to me: “So now the government can continue going about its business. But that’s a bad thing because the government isn’t functioning properly.”

And that line of thinking led me to choose the “good news/bad news” framework for my angle and punch line. To take full advantage of that framework, I used my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. I did that by repeating “the government can carry on as usual” in both parts of the joke.

I chose the phrase “can carry on” instead of something like “can go on functioning” because “carry on” also suggests behaving in an angry or emotional way. And that seemed like an accurate way to describe the U.S. Congress.