Word: joking
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...ollege campuses and grade-school playgrounds in all parts of the U.S. last week, youngsters - and many of their elders - were laughing at a new kind of joke that had spread across the nation with appalling thoroughness. Called variously sick stories, gruesome jokes or Bloody Marys, these gags get their laughs by making fun of decapitations, amputation, disease, death - in short, every variety of horror-provoking subject dealing with physical disability. The jokes range from the mild to the bloodthirsty. Samples...
...vaudeville joke In addition to being the butt of tired jokes, Newark (pop. 465.600) used to be a sprawling municipal Skid Row choking in its own web of rail lines, express high ways and traffic-snarled streets. The sun, rising above Manhattan's skyscrapers ten miles away, glinted off broken bottles in the ring of slums pressing in on Newark's business district. A daily flood of commuters poured in-doubling the population-then poured back into the suburbs. At night those who remained in the city saw the streets grow sullen and creepy...
Williams has dug into the prose, focusing every sharp-eyed, cockeyed image, finding a broomstick for every daffy, airborne prank, split-seconding every sottish or schoolboy joke...
...biggest weekly (circ. 12,000), decided this year to give readers a more piquant refresher course in press freedom. In a Page One editorial. Editor-Publisher W. Fen wick Keyser (Yale '35) confided that he put together a "front page which is by way of being a big joke to all of us fortunate people who enjoy the privileges of a free press." The joke: every news story on the page was bogus...
...only drawback to Editor Keyser's big joke was that the subjects of his phony stories failed to see it. Democrat Mike Birmingham promptly sued Republican Keyser-a longtime critic of his administration-for $1,000,000 damages. A second suit (for $500,000) was filed by Chairman of the County Property Review Board Christian H. Kahl, whom Keyser had playfully reported to be "hiding out in the sand dunes near Ocean City." County State's Attorney Frank H. Newell has summoned a grand jury to consider criminal proceedings against the editor. Last week, as other victims...