08/08/2009 09:55:17 AM EST
Satirizing Faith
posted by saad
I think that if one if going to satirize faith, then one will get a better response (even from adherents of the faith) if the satire is clever and humorous. When satirists go out of their way to be offensive towards faith, the satire very often ends up not being funny and not very clever either. I have provided an example below of how one can joke about Catholic schools without hurting the feelings of practicing Catholics. By the way, I did not write this joke. I'm not sure who wrote it.
Little Tommy was doing very badly in math. His parents had tried everything; tutors, flash cards, special learning centers, in short, everything they could think of. Finally in a last ditch effort, they took Tommy down and enrolled him in the local Catholic School.
After the first day, little Tommy comes home with a very serious look on his face. He doesn't kiss his mother hello. Instead, he goes straight to his room & starts studying. Books & papers are spread out all over the room and little Tommy is hard at work. His mother is amazed. She calls him down to dinner and to her shock, the minute he is done he marches back to his room without a word and in no time he is back hitting the books as hard as before. This goes on for sometime, day after day while the mother tries to understand what made all the difference.
Finally, little Tommy brings home his report card. He quietly lays it on the table and goes up to his room and hits the books. With great trepidation, his mom looks at it and to her surprise, little Tommy got an A in math. She can no longer hold her curiosity. She goes to his room and says: "Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?"
Little Tommy looks at her and shakes his head "No".
"Well then", she replies, "was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms, WHAT was it?".
Little Tommy looks at her and says, "Well, on the first day of school, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around."
