The joke:
Apple’s credit card is being investigated for discriminating against women. Unbelievable. Apple even changed the name from Mastercard. It’s a Mistercard.
How I wrote it:
This news item got my interest because it raised a question: How could a credit card, especially one from Apple, discriminate against women?
But the two most-promising handles of the topic–“credit card” and “discriminating against women”–didn’t have a lot of obvious associations, a fact that normally prompts me to skip over the news item.
Still, I thought about the handles for a moment and realized that one association of “credit card,” “Mastercard,” has wordplay with “Mistercard.” And “Mistercard” could be a link to the second handle, “discriminating against women.” That’s how I backed into using my Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.
Now I knew I wanted the joke to end on the laugh trigger “Mistercard.” But I thought that wording the joke like this wouldn’t be clear enough: “Apple’s credit card is being investigated for discriminating against women. They’re calling it a Mistercard.” I thought that some of the audience might not get the play on words.
So, for additional clarity, I wrote an angle that logically connects the topic to the punch line and includes “Mastercard.”
I also added “Unbelievable” so the audience would be expecting to hear how the credit card discriminates against women and therefore get the implication of “Mistercard” a little quicker.