Okay, this is funny

In an earlier thread, MEH asks:

Maybe I missed the Memo, but what does the IRA have to do with 9/11?

John Thacker gives the correct answer:

There was a (false, sadly) hope that the experience of actual terrorism in NYC might make some of the Hibernian fools realize that it's not so romantic when it hits home, however nice it sounds to struggle against perfidious Albion across the Atlantic.

But Paul Zmrisek gives an answer that is better than correct:

The Irish joined forces with the Jews to carry out 9/11. Haven't you heard of the dread Roth IRA?

Puns are the lowest form of humor. But that didn't stop me from laughing.

Comments

Why, I resemble that remark!

Posted by Gil Roth | October 30, 2007 2:19 PM

I have to hand it to Paul, best pun I have seen in a long while.

Posted by Yancey Ward | October 30, 2007 2:43 PM

Yeah, I scratched my head for a second and then laughed out loud at that one.

Posted by Chris | October 30, 2007 3:11 PM

Hey, you actually made my surname worse! I wouldn't have thought it possible.

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | October 30, 2007 3:43 PM

Great pun, though a bit tarnished, as the late Senator William Roth, he of the actual Roth IRA, wasn't a Member of the Tribe. (Hint: he was William V. Roth, Jr., and his son is William V. Roth, III -- it's nearly unheard of among Jews to name children after their living relatives. Also: some of his dogs over the years bore the names Ludwig, Wolfgang, Brunhilde and Wilhelm IV.)

Still and all, a wonderfully absurdist response to an equally absurd political stance.

Posted by Gary | October 30, 2007 3:50 PM

A visitor from our London office did look at me strangely when I mentioned making my annual IRA contribution.

Posted by pst314 | October 30, 2007 9:32 PM

Come to think of it, if you put some money into the Roth with the understanding that you may need to take it out again if your income this year turns out to put you over the legal limit, that could be considered a Provisional IRA contribution.

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | October 30, 2007 10:44 PM

it's nearly unheard of among Jews to name children after their living relatives.

It's only nearly unheard of among Ashkenazi Jews; Sephardi Jews do it all the time.

Did like the pun though.

Posted by Mich | October 30, 2007 11:40 PM

Puns are not the lowest form of humor. On the contrary, it takes effort to make a pun, and it takes effort to understand the pun. You need to have the vocabulary references for the wordplay, and in this case, you need to know two very different things that the acronym IRA stands for, and also what a Roth IRA is. On top of that, you need to know that Roth is a common Jewish name in order for the pun to work.

Kindly do not pick on the pun, which is a complex form of humorous wordplay, and which should be appreciated when such a brilliant example is made.

That was a great pun.

(There will follow at least a dozen puns that do not take a great deal of thought or effort to make. I stipulate that not all puns are brilliant. But they all take some intellectual effort to create.)

Posted by Meryl Yourish | October 31, 2007 9:51 AM

Don't laugh too much. During the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), a leading interpretation among British die-hard Conservatives was that a "Yiddo-Sinn Fein alliance," financed by Moscow gold, was attempting to bring down the British Empire from within so as to establish a global Judaeo-Masonic hegemony. (For a detailed dscription of this nefarious plot, see J. Banister, "Our Judaeo-Irish Labour Party" [London: Britons Publishing Society, 1923]).

Posted by Gustave | October 31, 2007 10:31 AM

Why is it foolish or romantic to want to see an end to British colonialism in the north or Ireland?

Posted by Diarmid | October 31, 2007 11:38 AM

Why is it foolish or romantic to want to see an end to British colonialism in the north of Ireland?

Posted by Diarmid | October 31, 2007 11:39 AM

Meryl, of course puns are the lowest form of humor! That's in the same sense as that a foundation is the lowest part of a building.

Posted by Alex | October 31, 2007 12:54 PM

Nothing is lower, either meaning lowest common denominator or most foundational to humor, than the simple pratfall. Og probably made his kid laugh by tripping over a deer carcass he brought in and dropping a club on his toe, long before language. By comparison, puns are high comedy, indeed.

Posted by rvman | November 1, 2007 12:06 PM

re: IRA and 9/11..

Remember that U.S. citizens (individuals, churches, other non-gov orgs) funded the majority of IRA terrorism. And the U.S. government made some effort (some will argue we could have done much more) to shut this down but was largely unsuccessful.

The same is true of much of the funding of radical islam - as much as we'd like to condemn a given government (like SA), we should not demand more of them that we demanded of ourselves (esp. since SA has been attacked multiple times, and we had few, if any, IRA sponsored murders in the U.S.).

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