Tag Archives: Will Smith

Joke About Student Debt Cancellation

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The joke:

Senator Mitch McConnell called President Biden’s decision to cancel some student debt “a slap in the face to working Americans.” McConnell said the decision is so bad it’s like working Americans told a joke about Will Smith’s wife.

How I wrote it:

I decided to write a joke about the student debt cancellation because it was big news. Plus a lot of people seemed to have an opinion about it.

But that meant the story was tricky to write a joke about because if my joke expressed an opinion about it, a lot of my audience might disagree with that opinion and not laugh.

So I dug deeper into the debt cancellation story and noticed the McConnell quote about a slap. My mind turned to my Punch Line Maker #2: Link the topic to pop culture; I associated “slap” with Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. That’s how I got the idea for my topic and punch line.

To work out the exact wording of the joke, I thought about it logically. That’s because my Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear,” which includes the logic of the joke. If, as McConnell said, working Americans got a slap in the face, then my punch line should say that working Americans got slapped by Will Smith.

And if working Americans got slapped by Will Smith, then my joke logic should say they told a joke about his wife.

This is an example of how to write jokes for a mass audience about potentially divisive news stories. Be sure your topics and punch lines are facts, not opinions. In the case of this joke, McConnell’s quote and Smith’s slap are both facts.

Also, if a suitable joke topic isn’t apparent from the headline of the divisive story, keep reading. The detail most useful for a topic, like the slap quote, may not appear until farther down in the story.

Joke About Will Smith’s Slap

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The joke:

Yesterday “King Richard” Oscar-winner Will Smith apologized to Chris Rock for slapping him in the face at the Academy Awards. Smith also apologized to Venus and Serena Williams for not following-through on his forehand.

How I wrote it:

I wanted to write a joke about this news item because it featured a topic handle, The Slap, that a lot of people were interested in. The handle also had a lot of associations that I could turn into punch lines.

Because the video of The Slap was so memorable, I gravitated to my Punch Line Maker #5: Visualize the topic. I thought about Smith slapping Rock and brainstormed about what that slapping motion resembled.

As I did, I remembered that Smith, another topic handle, had won an Oscar for portraying the father of two tennis superstars. I also remembered that tennis players are associated with the forehand stroke. When I realized that Smith’s slapping motion resembled a tennis forehand, I decided to link those two motions in a punch line.

To make the punch line work, I did some editing to my rough draft. My Joke Maximizer #6 is “Make the punch line parallel.” So I had Smith apologizing to people in the punch line for something he did, the same way he apologized to someone in the topic for something he did.

My Joke Maximizer #4 is “Make everything clear.” So I added to the topic a reference to “King Richard.” I wanted to make sure the audience immediately got the connection between the Williams sisters in the punch line and Will Smith.

I realized that my punch line implies that Smith wasn’t very serious in his apology to Rock. But I thought my audience would accept that implication. That’s because Smith apologized to other people at the Oscars, but not Rock.