Talk:Irish jokes

non sequitur
''They stem from a long tradition of colonist humour whereby the invading country must portray the invaded land as stupid, thereby justifying the 'civilising effect' of invasion. In North America, these jokes replace Irish people with Polish people.'' This leads to the inevitable question "When did the US colonize Poland?". It would actually be nice to get a citation about the linkage between colonialism and these style of jokes. I always thought that every country had this kind of joke about some neighbour or rival (Aussies and Kiwis for example). Sabine's Sunbird  talk  21:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. This article makes some extravagant claims that try to link the prevalence for Irish jokes to a general rule that invaders generally take the mick (excuse the pun!) out of those who live in the lands they invade. Almost as if it's trying to make some political point. This doesn't particularly stack up as the section above suggests: the US never invaded Poland. Nor did Germany invade East Frisia. And it doesn't explain the prevalence of blonde jokes, Jewish jokes, lawyer jokes etc. And some 90 years after Irish independence there is no sign of Irish jokes going away. Anyway, how about some examples of Irish jokes to add some colour to the article? --Bermicourt (talk) 19:52, 5 July 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S. See East Frisian jokes, translated from German Wikipedia, for a more balanced and informative article of this genre. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:16, 7 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The intro to this article, as you highlight, is unsourced gibberish. I'm going to take out some of the wilder claims until sources can be found. Jonchapple (talk) 12:41, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

OR + unsuitable

 * It can only be assumed that the Irish joke has survived the era of political correctness as a consequence of the fact that the Irish are white (i.e. not black) and that the successful English propaganda of the 1840s-1930s has created a global acceptance that the Famine was simply a tragedy or Act of God (and not the subject of deliberate genocide in the way that the Jews were in 1930s-40s Germany and its annexes. This, of course, totally glosses over the fact that Ireland of the 1840s had adequate food for its population but that its grain was being sold to England and the US, or being shipped to Australia to feed England's new colonies and convict settlements there – forcing the dispossessed native Irish to live off a single crop of potatoes grown on minuscule plots of land that were subdivided on every succession (Catholics were denied primogeniture succession rights under the anti-Catholic Penal Laws).

This is rather unsuitable in style for this reference, plus it provides no sources and may thus be considered OR. Unless someone is willing to clean up the mess, I'm taking it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.225.244.206 (talk) 13:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)