Granddad telling kids Irish jokes

[SulisMum]

DS (aged 9) told me an Irish joke last night which he had got from his granddad. I gave him a little talk about how it wasn't nice to make jokes about different nationalities and suggested he didn't repeat it - but only after I'd laughed about it with him. (I actually laughed involuntarily as it was a reasonably funny joke).

DS's response was that his granddad had also told him a joke in which the Englishman was made to look silly.

Questions for the MN jury?

How would you deal with your DC telling jokes based on national stereotypes?
Should I tell my dad not to furnish DS with more similar Englishman/Scotsman/Irishman jokes?
Should I be flamed for laughing?

My twopeno'rth.

I grew up in a massively racist household, where the "n" word was the only word for black people that I knew, until I was about ten and said it in a friend's house. The horrified faces of her parents taught me a valuable lesson.

Black jokes, Irish jokes, Scots jokes, Welsh jokes, Asian jokes, sexist jokes were all freely told in front of me.

But I grew up, got an education, wised up.

You soon realise that racist idiots are racist idiots, whether you are related to them or not.

To be honest, I see the older members of my family of a product of their time/lack of education.

I get more pissed off with the likes of Frankie Boyle/Ricky Gervais, etc, who make sexist jokes and jokes against people with disabilities, and nobody seems to give a hoot.

They have no excuse.

Yeah me a racist, with my husband and best friend both of different races.

And it's racist not rascist, you silly bint.

tawdry, you're spot on. I always make it my buisness to challenge it though. Had to listen to a rant about single parents at work today, and i just let rip at the obnoxious women sounding off, about them all being benefit cheats.

While you can never stop people thinking, or even saying downright nasty things, you can always object and challenge whats being said, and thus not be a passive bystander.

Just out of interest Tawdry, would you pull up the older members of your family if they made a fairly mild Englishman/Irishman/Scotsman joke like curry freak seems to expect?

curryfreak, do you choose your battles or do you "just let rip" at everyone who has a more reactionary opinion than you?

CurryFreak is like this all the time, I've seen it in action on other threads. It reminds me a lot of ; this

Dave Allen (or are most people on here too young to remember him?), who was a brilliant comedian, used to tell the most dreadful jokes about the Irish. :)

Yeah, wheels, I do. I think I'm seen as a bit of a snooty mare.

But I deal with it

Oh, sorry, just read your question again.

I don't get too exercised over the milder English/Irish/Scottish jokes. I tend to roll my eyes and groan, as they are never that funny.

I do get snotty about the stronger stuff.

I never knew people thought "flid" was a thalidomide reference

I thought i was a contraction of "flip your lid"

but then I also thought "loon" was a bird and "fucktard" was "fucking bastard"

I do think sometimes people go out of their way to be offended

I still want to know what this pious brand of humour is that doesn't put any one person or group at the the butt of the joke.

Is it all knock knock and why did the chicken cross the road jokes?

I can remember my parents telling Irish jokes in the 70s and possibly the 80s. They were right-on politically active people who went on marches about issues of social justice, and taught me that racism was horrible and stupid (e.g. explained the graffiti about Blair Peach when I asked). But Irish jokes weren't seen in the same light. Haven't heard either of them tell an Irish joke in decades, though - times have moved on.

I wouldn't tell an Irish joke that rested on the premise that Irish people are thick today - because it's nasty and unfair. But obviously I laugh at Father Ted. Laughed at a joke about an Irish/English wedding where the English and Irish stumble over the Lord's Prayer (Catholics and Protestants use different versions) because it's not attacking one group over another AND because it's true - I've been at such a wedding where half the room carried on and half stopped.

Jokes about national stereotypes are popular across the world, it's just the nationalities that change. And I think it's fair game between nations that haven't oppressed each other e.g. France and England. Would tell a German joke if it wasn't about Nazis - as someone said, if it's about a national characteristic such as sticking to the rules.

I still think that "flid" is a horrid word. My mum has a friend affected by thalidomide and he refers to himself as a "flid", quite happily. It seems churlish of me to tell him that he ought to be offended by it. It's his disability, not mine. I'm not going to get offended on his behalf.

at Greensleeves not understanding.

Oh, and prettybird, I used to sneak out of bed and crouch on the stairs to watch Dave Allen - if I got caught I'd pretend I had had a nightmare. Particularly funny as my Dad's family are all Catholics so I had some idea of those stereotypes about priests and nuns.

Agree with the grain of truth about nationalities. Having worked with many Germans, there is a very strict "you stick to the rules regardless how barking" attitude which is funny/irritating/endearing (depending on the context) much like with my experience of Americans is that they're always right, and America's the best country in the world. Ever. Everyone else sucks.

I suppose with really offensive jokes they can be funny, because they're forbidden/outre. e.g. watching Chris Rock (early stuff) he can be a right mysognist twit, but it can be funny

Irish jokes are no different than blonde or woman driver jokes and are harmless.

Best to remember that what may seem inoffensive to one person can deeply hurt another.
Am amazed (and angry) that comedians still get away with disabled jokes.

Why didn't you just post the joke? If it made you laugh, it can't be that bad!

Whatever it was, I think you were right to discuss the context with your DS. I've never heard an Irish joke which wasn't nasty.

Edam makes a good point about countries which haven't oppressed each other. Father Ted was brilliant - but partly because they got the caricature so right, being Irish themselves.

Surely is a distinction between jokes based on demeaning stereotypes (the Irish are drunken, fighting thickos who love to bomb people) and cheap ridicule and observational humour (which yes, can be cutting and to the point about a person/group/nationality etc). It's not "political correctness gorn mad" to find some jokes cheap, distasteful and perpetuating of harmful negative stereotypes.

There's also a distinction based on who tells the jokes. "Right on" social justice "types" who are English telling Irish jokes in the 70's were, well, not as right on as they might think. I will listen to any Irish person tell an Irish joke. Or a Scot. Or someone Welsh. Or, well, pretty much any other nationality apart from English people. I am about as far from a tricolour waving Irish nationalist as you can get, but I don't like to hear English people say demeaning things about my country.

I don't like English people telling jokes about Irish people being thick because, to be honest, I've come across this attitude to Irish people in real life. My driving instructor, bless him, seems to spend part of every lesson telling me stories about quaint/rowdy/drunken/stupid Irish people he's met matched with a knowing nod and "you'll know what I mean..". I smile and nod because he doesn't mean it and he's a good instructor and yes, because I would look like a total twat if I challenged his easy stereotypes. He doesn't mean it as banter, either. However, people who think that there isn't significant negative stereotyping of Irish people still at work in parts of the UK are a bit blind. The people who think that these jokes are harmless - or that woman driver jokes are harmless - believe that really, it means nothing because 'no one thinks that way nowadays'.

But they do..

Obviously, I am far more outraged by "jokes" about learning disabled people. Frankie Boyle, for example, is a twat. You can laugh at him telling jokes about the Scots til the cows come home but if you find yourself tittering at his jokes about people with Down's you are complicit in it, I'd say.

I've never heard a "Paki" joke which wasn't nasty either, am trying and trying to think of innoffensive nationality jokes, there must be some?

arses - quite right, my point was even my very liberal parents thought Irish jokes were OK, although there were horrified by racism. Most people thought they were OK. Times, thankfully, have changed.

Eugh I hate Frankie Boyle. He's just offensive without being funny, always going for the "shock" factor. Very boring and very disappointing.

Conversely, Brass Eye's paedophile special had me in stitches because it was clever and well-thought out, IMO.

I think that really funny things tend to have a hint of tragedy about them - which is why jokes at other people's expense can be genuinely funny, as can jokes about death, disability, paedophilia etc.

But there is a fine line between nasty and comic - usually jokes about disability are only genuinely funny when told by someone who is themselves disabled - because they live the reality and understand the nuances. In the same way that Irish jokes told by an Irish person who has lived here for a while, and has experience of racist attitudes, would have that. IIRC Dara O'Brian does a bit of this.

The point about the power dynamic is a good one. Disabled people can make jokes about themselves, as cupcakes pointed out regarding a friend who was affected by thalidomide. Able-bodied people making the same joke would just be mean. That's the line that Frankie Boyle crosses when joking about children with Downs Syndrome: they're a vulnerable group who can't defend themselves. He can still make the joke if he likes, for cupcakes and people like her who enjoy edgy humour, but he shouldn't be surprised if most of the country think he's an ignorant moron and a bully as a result.

Maybe that's why people don't think Irish jokes are racist or offensive anymore because Ireland is richer now, an equal to Britain in the EU and the tension of the NI situation has been defused (har, har, excuse offensive pun) with the Good Friday Agreement etc. The power dynamic between Ireland and Britain has changed so maybe people think Irish jokes are 'harmless'. For me though, they hark back to a time when they were not harmless but were a way for people to express contempt.