Re: [BP] stupid Polish jokes

[Cuyler Page]

Withold, By golly, you are right about the essential easterly direction of ethno targets and making fun of invaders.   Here in British Columbia, Western Canader, we have lots of jokes about prairie farmers, but then too, they are invading our nice warm central BC paradisian lake country in their retirement.   And then, Ontario is an easy target because it begins to look so much like the invasion from the States, and of course Quebec provides all kinds of bigger laughs because of the funny lingo (my former comic actress partner really stuck her foot in it during a solo performance at a Government dinner do in Victoria when she went into her standard British music hall comedy Fifi Le Phew routine, not realizing that the table immediately in front of her was the Quebec delegation and they did not laugh at all!).   And then there are big guffaws for the archaic maritime provinces, but the best of all is saved for the most eastern of all, Newfoundland, where lingo and lifestyle offer endless opportunities to revel in western superiority, and everything else is west of there so they really get a good dose of humour.   I always wondered what those to the west of BC used to laugh at us, but that was answered when a Native Indian employee of mine became friendly enough to tell us that at home, her people enjoyed referring to us White guys as "The Pink People".   cp in colourful bc ----- Original Message ----- From: Witold KArwowski To: BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 8:27 PM Subject: Re: [BP] stupid Polish jokes Basically it looks like going east has some kind of geographical logic in it but as you can guess during the Soviet hegemony most of the jokes where about Russians (during WWII German occupation we used to make idiots of the prevailing power using song and joke) and political forces associated with them. The difference was in the 50ties you could end in the labor camp for that later it could get you into trouble maybe less grave than that. Working in the Soviet Union in the eighties I heard Russians enjoying making fun of the distant tribe called Czukcza settled in the far east reach of the empire by the Bering Strait. The jokes sounded mostly the same as Russian jokes i  Poland. I remember wondering if the geographic logic still works, what kind of jokes Czukcza listen to. Ethnic jokes in Poland were used mostly as a weapon of political fight with the aggressors. The rich collection of the Jewish jokes in Poland were put together in books written by the Jewish authors and even being ethnic it was not insulting and quite funny sometimes. So it was really surprise for me to find Polish jokes here since we never occupied USA so what could be the reason to fight us with a joke (the concept of making fun of someone just because he different origin or religion never appeared as funny to me). When I came here 16 years ago the Polish jokes where quite popular (sometimes sounded exactly like Russian jokes in Poland). Since the guys who like to tell them looked usually like in dire need to lift their self-esteem it did not really bother me. Now I do not hear it anymore so I was kind of surprised by finding it in BP and even more coming from you Py - I really enjoy the lecture of your posts and I wait for the book written by you. In the meantime you can read the "A Question of Honor" by Lynn Olson and Stanley Cloud so at least you will know what put us into funny position exercised after WWII.     Witold       Your right.....I thought about a letter of apology..but then I got to thinking.When I was in France ;the french used to tell stupid jokes about the Belgium's......nobody appreciated these jokes but the french ..so Im dying to ask who do the Poles tell jokes about ................Py