The joke:
Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday but they’re still arguing about the details in Washington. The Republicans are only agreeing to set clocks back half an hour and the Democrats want to buy everybody in America a new clock.
How I wrote it:
I wanted to do a joke about Daylight Saving Time (DST) because it was in the news. Also, it’s an event that affects everybody in the U.S. That means I could use the topic of DST to write a joke about a pop culture figure of my choice.
For example, the last DST joke I wrote stated that, when resetting his clocks, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo was “always putting his hands in the wrong place.”
This time I decided to write a DST joke that reflects the negotiations about spending going on in Washington. More specifically, I decided that my first topic handle would be “Daylight Saving Time” and my other topic handles would be “Republicans” and “Democrats.”
That is, I would use my Punch Line Maker #1–Link two associations of the topic–twice. First I’d use it to write a punch line about the Republicans and second to write a punch line about the Democrats. I wanted two punch lines because if my joke only made fun of one party I’d probably split my audience.
My first punch line links the DST association “set clocks back one hour” with the “Republicans” association “don’t agree to stuff.”
My second punch line links the DST association “clock” with the “Democrats” association “give people free stuff.”
My angle “still arguing about the details in Washington” guides the audience smoothly from the idea of DST to the punch line(s) about what the political parties want to do about it.