Comments on: Funny Bones, 1941

By: Researcher

Researcher — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:07:38 +0000

“That’s really an unkind thing you say about lawyers…”

(Giggle. The risks of the profession.)

The other thing lawyers tend to do (from my experience) is make definitive statements on any and all topics. And if you don’t want to make a definitive statement about something you’re not 100 percent sure of, you choose a related point and discuss it until people forget the original question.

(My dad and grandpa are/were lawyers and it took many years to realize they did that. In fact, I notice myself doing it regularly. Early training, you know. [My sisters do it too.])

You may have a valid point about politics, though, Mark B, since Lee spent a fair amount of time in Washington DC and he could have picked up the habit there. (Politicus pontificus: a lawyer who’s gone into politics.)

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:27:34 +0000

I used to like listening to Biden when he was a guest on Imus’s program. But a few minutes of him this afternoon and I was out finding something else to do.

That’s really an unkind thing you say about lawyers, though. Remember, Biden hasn’t been a practicing lawyer for at least 35 years–he was elected to the senate at age 30. So, you should change your comment and direct it at politicians–or senators.

I can’t speak to your comment about Rex Lee–he was just the brand new dean of the law school when I left BYU. But he gave at least one good talk, back in 74 or 75 about limitations on the exercise of power.

By: Researcher

Researcher — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:14:17 +0000

“Really, gentlemen,” said the candidate, “with all this uproar I can hardly hear myself speak.”

“Well, cheer up,” shouted a man, “you aren’t missing much.”

We were out and about today and managed to miss Obama speaking on the radio but heard Biden. The longer he talked, the more evident it was that he was a lawyer by training. (I didn’t know that for sure, but just looked up his bio and it says he got his JD at Syracuse.) Lawyers have a particular ability to be able to talk extensively without actually saying anything. Rex Lee, the former solicitor general and president of BYU, was really good at it.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:30:12 +0000

And yet that’s one of the few that made me smile, probably because I had to stop and figure it out, and I enjoyed the 1940s-flavor of it. Contrast that with the doctor, the engineer, and the politician, which you’ve probably heard twice in the last month — whatever novelty that one had was solely in finding it was as old as it is.

The other one that made me laugh was how the Irishman was distantly related to his brother. That could so easily be adapted as a Mormon joke!

By: Eric Boysen

Eric Boysen — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:40:34 +0000

With Nanjing fresh on people’s minds the China/Japan joke was probably considered funny from a distance but less so a few months later. From a perspective separated by both distance and time it has lost a lot of its punch, and I fear I would have to explain it to my teenager.

Somehow I think jokes about the European theater might have a longer life. I can think of a lot of ways to create jokes similar to the above that involve Germans & Poles, Germans & Czechs, Germany & Hungary.