Overthrowing the Queen by Tom Mould

Author:Tom Mould [Mould, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253048035
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

WELFARE LORE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

I RECENTLY ASKED MY FRIENDS’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be president of the United States. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there. So I asked her, “If you were president, what would be the first thing you would do?” She replied, “I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people.” Her parents beamed.

“Wow, what a worthy goal,” I told her. “But you don’t have to wait until you’re president to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I’ll pay you fifty dollars. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the fifty dollars to use toward food and a new house.”

She thought that over for a few seconds; then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the fifty dollars?”

I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.

That is the end of the story. But whose story is it? Is it mine? Is it a true story? Is it just a joke? The first question is easy: no, it’s not mine. The second is a little trickier but probably still no. The third is harder and not agreed upon. Many readers will say, yes, it’s a joke (thus making the first two questions moot). But as this story made its rounds through social media, at least one man believed it was intended as true, even if he did not believe it was, commenting, “I don’t believe this happened.”1

If genres are assumed distinct, requiring different structures, formulas, styles, and even content, how could they bleed, blend, and blur so much? How could the same story be a personal experience narrative, a legend, and a joke all without changing a single word?

In the case of “The $50 Lesson,” the title by which the story above is known online, the problem has an easy answer. Jokes come in many forms, narrative being one of the most common. So a joke told as a story, even a personal one, is not only possible but common, particularly as a way to heighten the surprise of the punch line. Doing so reverses the expectations not only of content but of genre. The common exclamation “You got me,” at the end of the joke, is high praise for the joke teller who managed to make you believe you were hearing a true story when you were not. The equally common “You’re pulling my leg,” questioned during the telling of the joke, suggests the subterfuge was somewhat less successful. Blurring of first-, second-, and thirdhand stories is also common, where a true personal experience narrative may be confused with a legend and vice versa. Yet in these cases, once labeled, genres can perform different functions and lead to different interpretations, even without changing the text.

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