Tag Archives: Putin

Joke About Putin’s Valentine

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The joke:

Monday is Valentine’s Day, and everybody’s getting into the spirit. Even Vladimir Putin sent Ukraine a Valentine reading “Won’t you be mine?”

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about Valentine’s Day because it’s a well-known cultural phenomenon. It also has lots of associations–cards, candy, flowers, Cupid, and so on–which makes it a fertile topic for joke-writing.

Valentine’s Day is such a fertile topic that when I wrote for “Late Night with David Letterman” we did a Desk Piece called something like “How They’re Celebrating Valentine’s Day.” It consisted of about a dozen jokes linking various associations of Valentine’s Day to associations of various celebrities.

Remembering that Desk Piece, I decided to use my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. Because Russia’s possible invasion of Ukraine was also in the news, I decided to link Valentine’s Day to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

To do that, I brainstormed associations of Valentine’s Day, one of which is those little candy hearts with sayings printed on them. The first such saying that popped into my head was “Be Mine.” Luckily for me, “Be Mine” seemed to express how Putin feels about Ukraine. So I had the idea for my punch line.

Mentioning the candy hearts in the actual joke seemed unnecessarily distracting. So I simplified the joke by having Putin just send Ukraine a Valentine with the saying.

But I worded the saying as “Won’t you be mine?” instead of “Be Mine.” Shorter is usually better, but I thought that making the joke clearer was worth adding two words.

If Russia does invade Ukraine, jokes like this will be trickier to pull off. But because the tanks haven’t rolled yet, I decided this joke would be acceptable to the audience.

Joke About Vladimir Putin

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The joke:

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to run for president two more times. The law also extended absentee voting: whoever votes against Putin goes mysteriously absent.

How I wrote it:

I focused on this news item because I felt like, for a change, writing a joke about a politician who isn’t American. Plus this story made the national news in the U.S., so I thought my audience might have some interest in it.

First I distilled the news item into a topic sentence that contained only the elements I thought I’d need to write a joke. Some versions of the item had a headline like “Putin signs law that could keep him in Kremlin until 2036.” Other versions had a headline like “Putin signs law allowing him to run for two more terms as Russian President.” I adapted the latter headline into my topic sentence because it referred more directly to elections, and I sensed that I’d be writing a punch line about the election process.

Once I had a topic sentence, I used my Punch Line Maker #1: Link two associations of the topic. One topic handle, “run for president,” has the association “voting,” which has the sub-association “absentee voter.”

The other topic handle, “Vladimir Putin,” is associated in most people’s minds with “does terrible things to political opponents.” So I realized I could link the two topic handles with a punch line featuring some wordplay on “absentee voter.”

But working out the exact wording was a little tricky. I wanted to use my Joke Maximizer #6: Make the punch line parallel. But making the angle and punch line both refer to “absentee voter” would result in a punch line something like “whoever votes against Putin mysteriously becomes an absentee voter,” which doesn’t clearly communicate the idea that Putin is making them disappear. The wording that I settled on trades parallelism for clarity.

Joke About the Grammy Nominations

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The joke:

A former Recording Academy official claims that the nominations for the Grammy Awards are “rigged.” The claim was immediately denied by the frontrunner for “Best New Artist,” Vladimir Putin.

How I wrote it:

This was a pretty big news story at the time, right before the Grammy Awards show, so I thought a mass audience might be interested in a joke about it.

To create the joke I used my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture. The topic handle “rigged nominations” is associated with “rigged voting,” so I asked myself who or what else in pop culture is associated with that in most people’s minds.

Donald Trump’s impeachment trial was underway, so Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election came quickly to mind and I decided to base my punch line on that.

But I didn’t want to write a punch line that was on-the-nose, something like “She says that the nominations were rigged by Russia.” Instead, I wanted to make the punch line more indirect by ending it on “Vladimir Putin.” Another reason to end on that name is that it sounds funny to me, thanks in part to its three stop consonants.

Finally I added an angle that connects the topic and punch line in a smooth and logical way. Because Putin is a person, I made him a Grammy nominee as evidence of Russian interference. “Best New Artist” seemed like a logical category for him.

I also had Putin deny the claim of nomination rigging, which he would do if he really were a nominee.

Joke About Russia and N. Korea

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The joke:

For the first time ever, Vladimir Putin will be meeting Kim Jong Un. It’s pretty cool. They’re meeting at a fancy hotel so the reservation will read “Putin Un, the Ritz.”

How I wrote it:

I gravitated toward this news item because the handles “Vladimir Putin” and “Kim Jong Un” both have a good number of associations that might be used to devise a punch line. Plus both of the names seem to lend themselves to wordplay.

I remembered this hilarious wordplay joke that Conan O’Brien once delivered in a monologue: “It’s been reported that in high school, Kim Jong Un starred in a production of the musical ‘Grease.’ That’s also where Kim met his first wife, Olivia Newton Jong.” So I first considered writing my own Kim Jong Un wordplay joke.

But then I noticed that “Putin” sounds like “puttin’,” which I associated with the song title “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Then I got lucky, realizing that “on” sounds like “Un.”

Linking those two wordplays into a surprising new song title gave me my punch line, thanks to Punch Line Maker #4: Find a play on words in the topic.

My last task was to construct an angle that logically connects the topic to “Putin Un the Ritz.” The Ritz is a fancy hotel, and these summits often seem to take place at fancy hotels, so claiming that the punch line is a reservation for the summit seemed to do the job.