Taking the piss lands Koch in the poo
Posted by Don Arthur on Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Some people are little grumpy before they’ve had their first cup of coffee. And maybe that’s why Sunrise co-host David Koch got so many complaints when he repeated this joke at 6:50am.
But how risqué can a joke be if versions of it have appeared in respectable magazines like the New Yorker and Mother Jones as well as in academic journals like Western Folklore? According to American folklorist Alan Dundes, Americans were telling the same joke about Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. Later it was updated for Bill Clinton. As Dundes says "the general public does not much care whether a given joke is old or new so long as it fits the current occasion. Old jokes updated are just as good if not better than brand new jokes."
The joke is almost certainly more than a hundred years old. Here’s a version they used to tell in the Ozarks:
One time there was two farmers that lived out on the road to Carico. They was always good friends, and Bill’s oldest boy had been a-sparking one of Sam’s daughters. Everything was going fine till the morning they met down by the creek, and Sam was pretty goddam mad. “Bill,” says he, “from now on I don’t want that boy of yours to set foot on my place.” “Why, what’s he done?” asked the boy’s daddy.“He pissed in the snow, that’s what he done, right in front of my house!”But surely, there ain’t no great harm in that,” Bill says.“No harm!” hollered Sam. “Hell’s fire, he pissed so it spelled Lucy’s name, right there in the snow!” “The boy shouldn’t have done that,” says Bill. “But I don’t see nothing so terrible bad about it.”“Well, by God, I do!” yelled Sam. “There was two sets of tracks! And besides, don’t you think I know my own daughter’s handwriting?”
From Vance Randolph’s Pissing in the Snow and Other Ozark Folktales.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 6:34 PM and filed under Films and TV, Humour.
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I remember hearing that joke about Clinton. In fact I retold it at a party a few weeks ago.
As for recycled jokes: there’s a fantastic short story by Isaac Asimov in which that mystery is explained.
Posted on 06-Dec-06 at 6:26 am | PermalinkI don’t get what the big deal is – the funniness of the joke depends on the people used in the joke. That said, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Koch’s joke and anyone upset by it, *shakes his head*. If its Howard himself, he’s been in politics long enough to know that’s politics.
Posted on 06-Dec-06 at 8:08 am | Permalinkexcept it ain’t funny
Posted on 06-Dec-06 at 8:40 am | PermalinkIt would be funnier if Costello was involved.
Posted on 06-Dec-06 at 7:05 pm | PermalinkI must have a lie down – I agree with homer – this time the joke wasn’t funny..
However if it had been about Abbott it might have been funny. Seeing as the priestly aspirant clearly had more than few hands on his cock in his uni days.
These days from what I can see of his contributions it is his own hand that circles it. Far, far too often
Posted on 06-Dec-06 at 9:11 pm | PermalinkI can’t BELIEVE Koshies explanation!
Posted on 07-Dec-06 at 7:29 am | Permalink