Dude, who even knows.

25th February 2021

Post reblogged from Opposite over Adjacent with 60 notes

squareallworthy:

dagny-hashtaggart:

transgenderer:

its so weird to me that like “polack jokes” were like, apparently a fairly common thing at least as recently as the late 90s, and yet like, totally disappeared, like, i was born in 1999 and i dont think ive ever heard a polack joke

I mean, I was born in the late ‘80s and I don’t recall seeing polack jokes in any media made after I was born. Doesn’t mean they didn’t exist, but I’m iffy on “fairly common.”

So in 1982 there was published a book called Truly Tasteless Jokes, full of just what you would expect from the title – jokes about racial and ethnic minorities, the disabled, gays and lesbians, and so on. It was a huge bestseller and inspired a wave of sequels and imitations that lasted until the mid-eighties.

And that’s the last I remember of Polack jokes. After the publishing fad passed, they were gone. It was as if the books, by codifying an oral tradition, killed it.

(Funny that this trend never comes up when people are talking about 80s nostalgia.)

By the time I was hearing them the Polish angle was like a vestigial framing device keying you in that the premise was “design that defeats its purpose”

  1. the-grey-tribe reblogged this from squareallworthy and added:
    Well, did only the jokes get less common, or did Poles, as a visible and legible ethnic group in the US, get assimilated...
  2. zexreborn reblogged this from rendakuenthusiast and added:
    I remember these, but I was always under the impression that part of the joke was “who honestly hates polacks still in...
  3. theresponseblog reblogged this from isaacsapphire and added:
    Although I was in Europe and heard exactly the same jokes told but it was about the Irish, and I'm told that in Poland...
  4. jumbo-the-mumbo reblogged this from rendakuenthusiast
  5. arcticdementor reblogged this from rendakuenthusiast
  6. northshorewave reblogged this from baconmancr and added:
    Huh, no one in my area would self-ID as a Polack (though no one self-ID’d as much of anything; we were all very...
  7. baconmancr reblogged this from rendakuenthusiast
  8. rendakuenthusiast reblogged this from isaacsapphire and added:
    I remember reading Polack jokes in the older issues of Mad magazine that I came across as a kid (70s and 80s vintage)....
  9. isaacsapphire reblogged this from northshorewave and added:
    I remember anti Polish sentiment as still lingering, although more in subtle hiring discrimination and what is now...
  10. rustingbridges reblogged this from dagny-hashtaggart and added:
    my grandfather made polack jokes somewhat regularly until his death, and I think I heard them from some of his friends...
  11. firebatvillain reblogged this from transgenderer and added:
    I heard them growing up in the 90's. The punchline was always that Polish people are stupid. They were often very...
  12. hirosensei reblogged this from squareallworthy
  13. kontextmaschine reblogged this from squareallworthy and added:
    By the time I was hearing them the Polish angle was like a vestigial framing device keying you in that the premise was...
  14. bergamotz reblogged this from squareallworthy
  15. squareallworthy reblogged this from dagny-hashtaggart and added:
    So in 1982 there was published a book called Truly Tasteless Jokes, full of just what you would expect from the title --...
  16. transgenderer reblogged this from dagny-hashtaggart and added:
    jerry seinfeld lied to me!