Old Joke Shocks Washington

"Laura leaves 'em laughing, gasping" headlines the The Washington Times: Nation/Politics - May 02, 2005. What in the world did Laura Bush say that has the nation's movers and shakers condemning her monologue as immodestly laced with sexual overtones? Is this just another example of the divide between the country mice and the city mice of our country? Do the urbanites of the blue parts of the country, not understand red state living?

'Laura Bush cracks risque jokes at the White House Correspondents' dinner,' sniffed Agence France-Presse. CNN reporter Elaine Quijano, who attended the dinner, also apparently had her sensibilities scarred by some of the first lady's quips. 'In some respects, I think for some folks it was a little shocking because she kind of crossed the line a little bit in some people's minds,' she said. 'It was very risque,' the Nation's David Korn said yesterday on Fox News. 'I was wondering what the social conservatives and James Dobson had to say about all these jokes that were laced with sexual innuendo. Not a very family-values-type speech.'

The principle shocker for the Washington elite was a generations old joke that country folk recite in various ways to poke fun at city slickers and their lack of understanding of farm life biology. Mrs. Bush recited the joke using her husband, the president, as the city slicker who lacked ranching skills because "the elite schools he attended, Andover and Yale, 'don't have a real strong ranching program. He's learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What's worse, it was a male horse.' " After laughing uproariously at this old canard, the anointed ones started raising eyebrows, condemning the joke's sexual innuendo, and using that as a way to cast wicked aspersions onto the President.

This unbelievable reaction is actually quite believable when one considers whose eyebrows were raised. These are the people who obsess on all sorts of perversions. They find perverted behavior under every rock, if the rock is in a red state. Look at the map. These are the folks who live in the blue areas of the country, the metropolitan areas. Milking a cow, at one time, was an everyday skill of American life and most people knew how to do it. Today, among the anointed libertines of our cities' societies, it seems to be a kind of sexually perverted act.

These Billy Bob jokes have been around since probably the founding of our nation. Even today there is a joke making the rounds about either a dumb blond or a dumb Democrat who requests to choose one sheep from a shepherd's herd. In this particular joke, the dumb blond or Democrat chooses the shepherd's dog. The country folk, or rubes as they are known by blue staters, know about the workings of these things. They would indeed like to see the gentrified come down to the farm and try to milk a stallion, because they know that those high and mighty uppity-ups would be kicked all the way to kingdom come by that royally ticked-off horse.