wed 07 jan 2009 21:02:21 — witte de withstraat
an ethnic joke
my friend oleg, who is originally slovak, just sent me this ethnic joke told by czechs: "Do you know why there are fewer Slovaks now? It is because Hungarians stopped fucking sheep." this is a classic case of "i guess you had to be there". had i been there, i would of course know that czechs are supposed to despise hungarians slightly less than they despise slovaks.
long ago i read somewhere that the chinese had a legend on the origin of the japanese -- that some banished chinese went to japan and had intercourse with monkeys.
there must be somewhere a compendium of disparaging ethnic jokes.
when i was growing up in america there was a whole genre called "polish jokes" based on the premise that "polacks" were somehow dimwitted. this never especially confused me until i grew up and started to meet some polish people, and found each of them to be considerably more intelligent than i was. i'm fifty years old now, and still waiting to meet my first stupid "polack". i'm sure they must exist, but i will have to take it on faith -- because it's inconceivable to me that anyone capable of actually speaking the polish language could simultaneoulsy be an imbecile. meanwhile the origin of the working class american superstition that polish people are stupid, was never adequately explained to me.