Editorial: All in good fun?

January 31, 2007

Telling a joke takes a soft touch. One must be careful not to be too offensive for the risk of hurting someone’s feelings to the point of personal humiliation. Likewise, the joke must not be so mild as to simply not be funny. In a way then, every joke is a tight-rope walk, a balancing act.

The lack of implied meanings and sarcasm that tone may provide makes telling a joke in printed media even more difficult. The writer finds him or herself at the mercy of the readers’ interpretation; not being there to essentially steer the reader in the proper direction with your words makes comedy of the printed form one of the hardest. So the tight-rope walk becomes one where there is no net.

Recently, Princeton University’s student-run paper, the Daily Princetonian, has come under fire for telling a few highly offensive jokes through the newspaper’s annual farce edition, self-mockingly named the Gaily Printsanything. For an insultingly digitally altered photo of the University’s president, a fake racially themed letter from a student who was not allowed admission and for an article that jokingly implied a conservative professor on campus was caught with a male prostitute, the newspaper and its staff have received serious criticism and possible legal retaliation. Albeit, they printed libelous stories about people related to the Princeton campus and landed in serious trouble for it, which is not very hard to believe. It is because of the possibility that legal action will be taken against the newspaper that Princeton and many other universities are reconsidering their annual joke papers, following the belief that the joke paper itself is to blame for the offense and not the people who wrote it. This, of course, is an erroneous assumption.

Mocking an authority figure is a bold move, to say the least. It shows that the authority figure is not intimidating while also diminishing his or her standing in the eyes of those who witness it. If done properly, however, a mock-up like this can be a sign of endearment, respect and admiration. This type of humor requires direction, though, and there must be a point being made with the joke. Princeton’s doctored photo and prostitution-themed article had no point besides being malicious for its own sake. They were, in fact, attacks. Further, racism is an extremely difficult topic to humorously treat. Only the greatest of comedic masters have been daring enough to even attempt it, and the editors of Princeton’s newspaper thought they were of this ilk. Obviously, they were not. There were a number of ways they could have written their idea about a boy who did not get accepted to the school, a number of pretty funny ways. Foolishly, the writers chose to awkwardly lampoon racism by being racist. It’s like warring for peace: the point is lost and all that remains is the terrible deed.

The staff of the Gaily Printsanything lacked ability and maturity, yet still there are some who blame the joke paper genre in general for the offense. Many universities’ traditional joke papers have been canceled out of fear of legal ramifications that would arise, an unfortunate circumstance. Our own University puts out an annual joke paper, the Foolegian, with no complaints. Around April Fools Day each year, the Foolegian appears, sheathing our standard paper. No gavels have been clacked, no legal action has been taken yet, either making us lucky or responsible. Furthermore, the Collegian’s Cake section, which appears weekly, has in the past toyed with topics that could have been considered offensive to particular people or Lasallian organizations. The reason this may be something our readers are unaware of is because, as an editorial board, we turned such offensive ideas down. The jokes were not printed. No one was offended. The Collegian recognizes the difficulties associated with releasing a joke issue and take appropriate action to not single out any one group or maliciously mock anyone, either. To us, it is just common sense.

Libel is not satire, just as slander is not lampooning, and being offensive for the sake of being offensive is not clever. All of this seems to have been lost on the editors of the Daily Princetonian. If you are going to tell a joke, then walk the tight rope. Take the risk of being unfunny in an attempt to be funny in the first place. The Daily Princetonian tried to skip the risk. They paper went headlong into the offensive in hopes that shock would save them. Shock is only a split second reaction for the public. After the effect wears off, all that remains is what the editors printed.

Conception and execution are two very different things. When a writer is dealing with a concept that has a volatile potential, then he or she better be positive that his or her execution is flawless. The Gaily Printsanything and all the legal-action-inducing joke papers that came before it are largely results of poor execution. People should not be afraid of the joke paper; it is the bad choices of the editors that need to be feared. With a responsible editorial board, a joke paper can be witty, clever and funny without ever hitting anyone—University-affiliated or not—below the belt.