Fat American Jokes: How We’ve Become Our Own Laughingstocks

It’s Really No Laughing Matter, But That’s How We’re Taking It

I can’t say exactly when we, meaning Americans, began making fun of ourselves for being a nation of fat people, of people who have eaten their way into a state of corpulence, but it has become a comic cliche, and you know how it is with comic cliches. They invariably reflect a kind of reality.

Often, it’s a reality that we’re not as comfortable, or even comfortable at all, discussing seriously, so we couch it in humor, which somehow seems to anesthetize us against the pain of truth. And jokes of the “Americans are so fat” genre have become veritable staples in late night TV monologues.

Here is just a sampling of what I mean, covering the period from last summer to this one, beginning with Reason No. 3 from Dave Letterman’s “Top Ten Reasons I, Dave Letterman, Am Proud To Be An American.”

• “Land of the free, home of the brave, and the fattest people on Earth.” — Letterman, June 2011.
• “The World Economic Forum, which ranks economies, moved the United States down to 5th place. But we’re still the fattest, so that’s good.” — Jimmy Kimmel, September 2011.
• “PETA says that turkeys are now so fat, they can’t stand up. They’re prone to heart attacks, and they have trouble mating… no, I’m sorry. That’s what the turkeys say about us.” — Jay Leno, November 2011.
• “The FDA is now warning people not to eat raw cookie dough this holiday season. Is that how fat we’re getting in this country? Our ovens are too slow now? — Leno, December 2011.
• “Bagged salads across the country have been recalled due to contamination fears. Luckily this is America, so none of the salads were touched. God help us if something happens to our Doritos supply.” — Conan O’Brien, May 2012.
• “Lance Armstrong may be in trouble again. An anti-doping agency accused him of using performance-enhancing drugs. Federal authorities got suspicious when they noticed an American was exercising.” — Jimmy Kimmel, June, 2012.
• “Olympic organizers are reportedly struggling to fill rows and rows of empty seats. Empty seats! In fact, yesterday officials put out a casting call asking for 200 Europeans or eight Americans. — Leno, July 2012.

As I say, I don’t know when our national girth became a standup gag staple, but I’ve been posting these selections of “fat Americans” jokes for several years now, so they’re not a recent phenomenon in and of themselves. However, I have noticed a subtle drift going on in the wording. Until the last few months, the jokes have always included some explicit “Americans are fat” phrasing. But if you check out the last three, the fact of American obesity isn’t even stated. Instead, it is assumed. It has become a given. There is an implicit message about our culture in that fact.

I have some background in comedy, and one thing I know about it is that the jokes don’t work unless the audience understands the basic premise, or at least is familiar with the subject matter. The writers of the nighttime monologues also know that, and they are careful to give the audience the needed background in the setup of the joke. Thus a few years ago, for example, Kardashian jokes would begin by noting that they tended to date basketball players or had no discernible artistic talent; today those things are assumed, and the joke goes directly to the punch line.

It’s the same with the fat America jokes. Take another look at the last three, above. They assume that the audience is thoroughly familiar with the premise — the fact — that we’re a land of fat people. The jokes are now about why we’re a land of fat people. We eat junk food instead of healthy food. We’ve become stubbornly sedentary and out of shape. And note that these things are also taken as givens, not stated in the setups.

Millions of people watch the late night talk shows, and those shows’ writers know a lot about those millions, especially about what the writers can safely assume that they know. And the lesson I draw from this is that comedy writers have found that you no longer need to point out to the American public that it is populated with fat people, or that our lousy diets and increasing indolence are primary causes of this. The American TV audience already knows all that.

We’re fat and we know we’re fat and we know why we’re fat and instead of being alarmed or concerned about that fact, we are amused by it. We have become our own laughingstocks, the butt of our own jokes, and yet it doesn’t seem to bother us. The concept of ridicule being a motivator for change clearly isn’t working here. We have a major public health problem, and we are literally just laughing it off.

I wish I could see the humor in this, but I’m not having any luck.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

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Fat American Jokes: How We’ve Become Our Own Laughingstocks is a post from: CalorieLab - Health News & Information Blog

Source: http://calorielab.com/news/2012/10/04/fat-american-jokes-how-weve-become-our-own-laughingstocks/

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