Bad Jokes & good folks

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Good morning,

Since I am one of the folks who shotgunned Gary E last night for his bad ebonics *joke* let 
me apologize if I seemed too harsh.  For the life of me I did not see anything resembling a 
*joke*, by any definition of the term, in the ebonics lord prayer.  As Henry sez, there's no 
wordplay, no conceptual torquing, no humor, basically.  If someone sees the joke there, 
please explain it to me.  I was reacting to the contextless passing-on in Gary E's lead-in, 
quoted below, coupled with what was to me a yahoo-simplistic closing epigraph, also 
quoted below.  Not knowing lurker gary e, I did what this form of communication forces 
us to do, I imagined him on the basis of his text.  I don't think my imagination was 
unjustified, given what i took as the evidence.  Apparently the person I imagined is not 
the *real* Gary E., so I am sorry for too quickly reacting.

 I appreciate grip's remarks in response on the issue.  But to those who think the PC 
perfesser police monitor the list looking for crimes of bad thinking ideology I ask: what do 
you call the kneejerk reactions against those folks, hmmmm?  Seems clear to me there's a 
cadre of listers who jump gleefully, heels first, on anything resembling *academic* 
thought, neatly stereotyping and pigeonholing as efficiently as any mindless racist.  I 
should have asked Gary E. why he posted the thing instead of reacting so harshly; others  
ought to apply this same courtesy to the edus.

john m
>
>
>
>On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Gary Elshaw wrote:
>
>> The recent discussion of Ebonics delivered this to my in-box today

<snip of *joke*>

the *epigraph*:
____________________________________________________
> "In any case, I wouldn't want to go visit a poststructuralist dentist, who
> believes that cavities and novocaine are social constructs, nor to a
> postmodern oncologist who believes that all cancer treatments are relatively>>> equal 
because they are ideologically based.  In one case I would no doubt be
> hollering as my dentist dismissed my idea of pain as being a logocentric
> attachment; in the other, I would perhaps die after being prayed over by,
> oh, I don't know, snake-handlers or some such beautiful but nevertheless
> ineffective medicine.  And I wonder what "narrative" a postcolonial
> astrophysicist would want to tell me about the primitive life "discovered"
> on Mars?"     -Rich Cummins