# @(#)README 8.1 (Berkeley) 5/31/93
Some years ago, my neighbor Avery said to me: "There has not been an
adequate jokebook published since "Joe_Miller", which came out in 1739 and
which, incidentally, was the most miserable no-good ... jokebook in the
history of the printed word."
In a subsequent conversation, Avery said: "A funny story is a funny
story, no matter who is in it - whether it's about Catholics or Protestants,
Jews or Gentiles, blacks or whites, browns or yellows. If a story is genuinely
funny it makes no difference how dirty it is. Shout it from the rooftops.
Let the chips fall all over the prairie and let the bonehead wowsers yelp.
... on them."
It is a nice thing to have a neighbor of Avery's grain. He has
believed in the aforestated principles all his life. A great many other
people nowadays are casting aside the pietistic attitude that has led them
to plug up their ears against the facts of life. We of The Brotherhood
believe as Avery believes; we have never been intimidated by the pharisaical
meddlers who have been smelling up the American landscape since the time of
the bundling board. Neither has any one of our members ever been called a
racist. Still, we have been in unremitting revolt against the ignorant
propensity which ordains, in effect, that "The Green Pastures" should never
have been written; the idiot attitude which compelled Arthur Kober to abandon
his delightful Bella Gross, and Octavius Roy Cohen to quit writing about the
splendiferous Florian Slappey; the moronic frame of mind which, if carried
to its logical end, would have forbidden Ring Lardner from writing in the
language of the masses.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
... let us keep in mind the basic governing philosophy of The
Brotherhood, as handsomely summarized in these words: we believe in
healthy, hearty laughter -- at the expense of the whole human race, if
needs be.
Needs be.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Rude Jokes"
