jokes

Well, a comedian who just happens to be her daughter-in-law!

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but comedian Sunda Croonquist’s mother-in-law Ruth Zafrin was not kidding when she filed a lawsuit against Sunda for telling so many jokes about her. Croonquist capitalizes on their ethnic differences in her envelope-pushing jokes — she is half-black and half-Swedish, was raised Catholic, and married into a Jewish family.

A typical joke goes something like this. On a first visit to her mother-in-law Ruthie’s house, Croonquist says, "I walk in, I say, 'Thank you so much for having me here, Ruthie.' 'The pleasure’s all mine,' she replies, 'have a seat.' Then she whispers, 'Harriet, put my pocketbook away.'"

Zafrin filed the lawsuit (along with her daughter and her daughter's husband), when material on Croonquist's website made it easy for people to figure out the in-laws' identities. Croonquist is accused of "spreading false, defamatory and racist lies" in comedy club routines that have even been aired on Comedy Central. Croonquist agreed to remove any offensive comments on her website but refused to pay a settlement. (Her husband's law firm is handling her case. Awkward!)

Zafrin isn't exactly giving mother-in-laws a good name. It seems that there would've been a less alienating way of handling this, like, say, asking Croonquist to cut it out! Who do you think is in the wrong?

We all know that when we're in a bad mood, a joke can temporarily lift our spirits. But Dutch researchers set out to figure out precisely why. And although you may think, as many researchers do, that it's because positive emotions counteract negative ones — the researchers set out to prove that it's more than that.

They showed a group of men and women a series of pictures. First, they were shown negative images, and then two kinds of positive stimuli — funny and nonfunny. More people said that their moods were lifted by the funny stimuli (the jokes) than the merely positive stimuli.

The reason, according to the researchers, is in the actual cognitive work it takes for us to "get" a joke. Take this joke, for example. A terrified father calls a doctor and tells him, "Doctor, my child just swallowed a fountain pen!" When the doctor tells him he'll rush right over and asks, "What are you doing in the meantime?" The father replies: "Using a pencil."

Figuring out the punch-line is the kind of distraction that can make us feel better. "What they are suggesting is that humor," says Ed Dunkelblau, PhD, a psychologist and past president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, "is an effective way to redirect anxiety."

So let's toast to (corny) jokes that make our brains work a little harder!

Over the years, I've gone from being the woman who uneasily laughs when a man tells a sexist joke to being the person who rolls her eyes and says, "You know, I don't find that funny, and it makes me pretty uncomfortable."

At the risk of being called a "humorless feminist" (I mean, if it were funny, I would laugh!), I think it's important for women to be honest if a joke makes them uneasy. It may also teach that person that you're not going to be a party to your own denigration, and the jokester may spare the next woman his "humor."

According to sociology and psychology professors at the University of Granada, sexist jokes have serious repercussions. They found that when men listened to sexist jokes, they were more likely to be tolerant when presented with cases of violence against women. It makes sense — being comfortable with putting women down could desensitize someone to more tangible forms of harm against women.

Whether these findings seem convincing or not, how do you respond to sexist jokes? Has your response evolved over the years?