Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

You know that funny polygamy joke Romney tells? It’s not his.

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Mitt Romney always gets a good yuk when he tells his “polygamy joke“:

“I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman … and a woman … and a woman,” Romney quipped at the 2005 St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Boston. He made the same joke on Don Imus’ 2006 St. Patrick’s Day show.

Not a bad line.  Too bad Romney (or his staff) didn’t come up with it.  It appears to have been invented by the notoriously naughty Stanford University Marching Band, which got itself in trouble for using it at a game at BYU on (oddly) Sept. 11, 2004.

Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland publicly apologized and the Stanford Band agreed to impose sanctions on itself after it performed a halftime show that mocked Mormonism at a home football game against Brigham Young University on Sept. 11….

Most controversial was a swipe at polygamy in which the Band’s assistant manager, senior Tom Hennessy, pretended to marry all five Dollies, who donned wedding veils for the skit. [Band announcer Mark] Ruben spoke through the public address system about the sacred bond “between a man and a woman … and a woman … and a woman … and a woman … and a woman.”

The joke was not lost on Brigham Young fans, and the visiting contingent unleashed a hail of boos.

Nothing like stealing material from someone else for your self-deprecating jokes!

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Comments

    • that old?  I couldn’t find any reference to it before the Stanford incident, but maybe I don’t get out to enough LDS comedy clubs.

  3. how funny people think it would be if the joke were reversed as follows and told by a politician of either sex: 

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    I believe marriage should be between a woman and a man … and a man … and a man,” Romney quipped at the 2005 St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Boston. 

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    Just sayin’.

    • Well, I’m all for it!

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      However, there’s no popular referent for that joke.  It wouldn’t be funny, it would be confusing: “What’s s/he trying to make fun of?  I don’t understand…”

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      The difference isn’t the joke teller, or the gender per se, it’s that one joke clearly refers to something most people can identify, and the other doesn’t.  It needs more context to make it funny, perhaps adding an obvious layer of irony somehow.

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      So… it’s not as funny, but I’m not really sure what point you were trying to convey?

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      P.S. I’m serious about that “all for it” part.  I’ve never been married, but I’ve been in relationships with women who were in relationships with other men at the time, with all of us knowing about it and happy with it and hanging out together sometimes.

      • acceptance that it’s somehow more natural (understandable, palatable) for a male to have multiple wives (or mistresses) than it is for a female to have multiple husbands (or…do we even have a word…men with whom she is having multiple affairs).  That’s all. 

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        If Kerry Healey were a Mormon, let’s say, how acceptable or funny would that joke, as I described it, be?  Not very.  Men with multiple female partners?  Natural.  Women with multiple sexual partners?  Slutty.  So my main point is the double standard that might make Romney’s joke worth a good-natured laugh in some settings while the joke in reverse would most likely be greeted with polite ha-has or an uncomfortable silence. 

        • The reverse just isn’t funny.

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          “take my wives, please”  = funny

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          “take my husbands, please” = not funny

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          Unless of course there was actually a woman who had multiple husbands. 

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          It’s not a sexist thing; or double standard thing.  It’s just not humorous.

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          • “take my wives, please”  = funny

            “take my husbands, please” = not funny

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            “Take my wives, please” is not funny.  Neither is “take my husbands,” actually, but that’s not the point.

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            Rodney Dangerfield was what was funny about the “take my wives, please,” not the substance of the joke as there is no substantive difference between taking wives versus taking husbands. 

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            And you miss my point, as well.  I’m not arguing whether  inverse is actually funny; I’m simply stating that the sexist double standard exists, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.  It has ever been thus. 

              • Thank you, Gary, for the life lesson.  I wouldn’t have guessed, having been a female in the Army for six years, that there are double standards in the world.  I wouldn’t have guessed that women are treated differently in business, education, and the grocery store. 

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                I’m grateful, however, for your patient instruction on the nature of life, the natural order of things, and how it is my role to “deal” with your brand of reality.  Thank you!  It’s so very 1972 of you. 

        • Well, the quickest way to dessicate a joke is to analyze it.

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          The original joke is funny precisely because polygamy is not considered natural at all.  This perception of deviance is a problem for a Mormon; hence Romney’s attempt to deflate it with humor.

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          Your version isn’t funny because there is no history of multiple husband polygamy, and therefore it is not a source of unease or discomfort.

          • It was, as I understand, designed to highlight the feminist angst, manifesting itself in the singularity of a joke but really the result of festering bitterness, of women over the decades.

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            Our sisters in bondage, trapped in inequality, unable to equality conjure up those old rib-kickers such as “there was a young MAN from Nantucket…”, or “A traveling salesMAN visiting a farmer had to sleep in the barn with the man’s daughter….”

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            And, I feel your pain.

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            Sisters, I have seen the other side of the mountain and I may not get there with but on the other side, it’s stand up comedy.

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            Q: What do a clitoris, an anniversary, and a toilet have in common?
            A:  Men usually miss all three.

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            p.s.

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            Did you hear the one about the bi-polar guy on vacation? 

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            Wrote back to his Doctor:  “having a great time; wish I were dead.”

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            Ba-dum-bum.

  5. All the politicians do it, so it seems.  Tweak ’em; make ’em yours.  I think “nothin new under the sun” is from Ecclesiastes, but I didn’t check nor attribute. My bad.

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    You think Mr. Patrick’s “Enough already with “the right” versus “the left.” Let’s focus on right versus wrong,” was original?  I remember President Reagan saying it:  “We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong.”Reagan

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    Or, this one: Howard Kurtz wrote in  “Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine: 

    There are cycles in media culture, and this one too may pass. After Watergate, the press backed off — too far — on Reagan. But there’s not much reason for optimism. The media seems increasingly unable or unwilling to resist larger trends afoot in the culture — the fast-food lure of cheap conflict, the crack high of scandal, the opiate of cynicism.

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    Sounds like Mr. Patrick’s (and I’m guessing he read the Kurtz book):

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    “Well, cynicism is an opiate, too, a comfort drug. And it’s everywhere. It helps us brace ourselves against the pain of disappointment, to endure the letdown we have come to expect. Some of our politicians and some of the media, frankly, are dealers, peddling cynicism by tearing down anything positive and hopeful.”

    • It’s interesting that Mr. Patrick borrowed from a Republican then a critic of the Clinton Administration.

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