A favorite joke about the Obama administration, that is, about President Obama’s penchant for running the government out of his Blackberry rather than through his cabinet, used to go as follows: “Quick, who’s the National Security Advisor?”
The National Security Advisor—who as everyone now knows is General James Jones—has ruined a perfectly good joke, and the bitter irony of it is that he did so by attempting to tell a joke of his own, thus making a public scandal of himself, and revealing his name to millions who previously had not the remotest inkling that he existed.
Speaking last week before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, General Jones was videotaped in the act of attempted humor. According to Ha’Aretz, this is more or less what he had to say:
A Taliban militant gets lost and is wandering around the desert looking for water. He finally arrives at a store run by a Jew and asks for water.
The Jewish vendor tells him he doesn’t have any water but can gladly sell him a tie. The Taliban begins to curse and yell at the Jewish storeowner. The Jew, unmoved, offers the rude militant an idea: Beyond the hill, there is a restaurant; they can sell you water.
The Taliban keeps cursing and finally leaves toward the hill. An hour later he’s back at the tie store. He walks in and tells the merchant: “Your brother tells me I need a tie to get into the restaurant.”
Telling a joke about greedy, sneaky Jewish businessmen before a Jewish audience raised some eyebrows. “Can you imagine him telling a black joke at an event of African Americans?,” said one attendee, adding that it was “wrong on so many levels.” Three of those levels are:
1) It is not a Jewish joke; tricky-merchant jokes are told about Greeks, Armenians, Arab Christian minorities and other Levantine survivors; and
2) It is not funny to begin with; and
3) It was especially not funny the way that Gen. Jones told it.
By attempting to tell a generic Levantine joke that was never funny to begin with, Gen. Jones betrayed a blindered view of what is happening in the Middle East: Every side, he implied, simply is engaged in sneaky maneuvering for position, and the way to solve the problem is to split everything down the middle. He can’t tell a Jew from an Arab (or a Greek or an Armenian, if the Muslims hadn’t killed or exiled the millions of them that used to live in the Middle East).
A better joke expresses the differences in character between the contending parties: A scorpion sitting on the East Bank of the Jordan River asks a frog to carry him across. “What if you sting me?,” the frog demurs. “Why would I do that?,” counters the scorpion. “Then we’d both drown.”
The frog is persuaded and takes the scorpion on his back. Midway across the river the scorpion stings the frog. “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die!,” protests the frog. “This is the Middle East,” the scorpion replies. Other punch lines come to mind, e.g., “You love life and we love death.”
April 26th, 2010 | 12:44 pm
I’d always heard the punchline as “I can’t help myself, I’m a scorpion, it’s my nature….” Seems apropos that way as well…
April 26th, 2010 | 1:29 pm
I guess it would have been OK if it had been about a Scottish store owner?
It is a mildly funny story about what is perceived to be a national characteristic, can we make no jokes about such matter now? Perhaps not.
PCness gone crazy.
April 26th, 2010 | 1:40 pm
A friend sends in the joke that Jones should have told:
So, three murdering jihidis walk into a bar and order fruit juice. The Imam behind the bar serves them juice, and gives them a note from the Syrian Mukhabarat telling them to blow themselves up in a hotel in Amman and kill as many American contractors as possible. Attached to the note is a set of keys to a red Honda Civic in the parking lot with eight kilograms of plastic explosive in the trunk courtesy of the IRG. The jihadis succeed in their mission and fifty-five people die. Who is to blame? The Israelis, for building apartments in East Jerusalem.
April 26th, 2010 | 2:14 pm
Imagine if someone in the Bush administration had told the joke Gen. James did.
April 26th, 2010 | 3:43 pm
Imagine if an anti-semitist told a joke about Gen. James Jones’ mother.
April 26th, 2010 | 3:46 pm
Who are you to decree that it was “never funny to begin with”?
April 26th, 2010 | 4:03 pm
Context is key (in this case, the context was inappropriate), but the joke itself is actually amusing. It got a smile out of me, in any case. Certainly funnier than the scorpion joke, which is more of a morality tale in any case.
It is something I could easily imagine a Jewish comedian saying under different circumstances.
April 26th, 2010 | 6:04 pm
Give the guy a break. The joke was funny. Pretty harmless if you ask me.
April 26th, 2010 | 6:31 pm
2) It is not funny to begin with; and
You’re wrong about that too.
April 26th, 2010 | 7:13 pm
The joke tells us more Jones than any of his prepared comments. I’m a psychoanalyst; and I guarantee that any student of the unconscious would label Jones an out an out anti-semite.
Off the cuff is when we don’t have our false face prepared to b.s. the audience.
April 26th, 2010 | 8:33 pm
Gen. J. J. made the joke on April 21 but the Semites did not get offended until April 26? It’s like that record breaking catfish caught down in Texas where the measurements weren’t published for a couple of weeks. Maybe Dennis Ross gave the the joke to J. J and maybe Dennis Ross stuffed the catfish and put it on a “stretcher”.
April 26th, 2010 | 9:04 pm
How about this?
Arnie the Analyst is clueless and David Goldman with his “joke” is perverse.
April 26th, 2010 | 10:55 pm
So, does the joke correctly portray the typical character of the Jewish businessman and the Arab or not? Also, who do you suppose came up with this joke, an Arab, a gentile, or a Jew?
April 26th, 2010 | 11:15 pm
I’m a psychoanalyst;
Get a job.
April 27th, 2010 | 3:04 am
My problem isn’t the joke, which is funny enough. I might even use it myself (while giving credit to Spengler, of course).
The problem, as I see it, is that a man was selected for that position, while being foolish enough to tell any joke at all at such a function. Though honestly, this is the first I’ve heard of this incedent, so I don’t think it’ll wind up being that big a deal. General Jones can be thankfull it wasn’t GW that’s in the White House.
April 27th, 2010 | 10:19 am
more jokes, please
April 27th, 2010 | 1:30 pm
I have received numerous jokes for eventual use by Obama administration officials, none of which, however, would be approved for posting on a family site. The best I can do is offer a punch line and let readers fill in the joke as best they can:
“Does this bomb vest make me look fat?”
April 27th, 2010 | 3:11 pm
Do you reveal you secret sins by what you laugh at as well as by what you say? Very well, I confess. I got a smile from Jones’ joke. Both of Goldman’s jokes – yes I know the second was only the detonation of a punch line – made me laugh.
Must be the way he told it.
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