2 & 4- I personally don’t see any purpose in dredging up old racist humor. But that’s just me.

As far as sexist humor goes, a couple of weeks ago the high council speaker subjected us to a long, involved, rather horrible joke about someone’s wife running away with a police officer.

Lots of laughter at the punchline, mostly from the older, single male population of the ward. In previous years I would have smiled at the joke (out of politeness since I was sitting on the stand) but I think I’ve either matured past that point or am simply too jaded to worry any more about what people think.

On another topic, I was exposed, very briefly, as a child visiting Eastern Arizona, to humor poking fun at the Scandinavian settlers. I’m sure there’s not much of it left anymore since the old Scandinavian families have been assimilated by now. If that’s what you mean by racist humor, pour it on. There’s the old standby about the bishop calling Brother Peterson to pray. A dozen men stand up. “I meant Pete Peterson!” Two of them sit down.

A few gems from Sanpete Tales would be appreciated sometime if there’s a copy of that kicking around one of those SLC libraries.

Also, I would think you could successfully do a compilation of the terrible racist “humor” you mention in an appropriate way. Perhaps you could just present the post, and then not open it to comments? Anyhow, I think it would be instructive, historically, to see how far (or not) we’ve come.

I suspect that joke would go in the sexist rather than the racist pigeonhole.

So, my questions: anybody else ever heard this joke? and, anybody ever heard it at church?

I haven’t found it yet, but I’m also looking for the point where we crossed from generic American humor to collecting or writing jokes based on Mormon culture. That’ll be fun to look at, won’t it?

But the one about the stenographer catching the boss kissing his wife–aren’t they walking a bit close to the line there? (Good on ‘em, I say!)