ABSTRACT
A famous television newswoman told this joke last month at a fund-raising dinner for a women's college: A woman needed a brain transplant. The man said, "Just substitute woman, black or Jew for 'man' in that joke and tell me how it sounds." At about the same time, American Greeting Cards launched an ad campaign in Newsweek, Life, and other magazines. The newswoman, seemed shocked when the author phoned and raised questions about her joke. In truth, no man could get up at a fancy banquet and tell a joke about how stupid women are. The double standard is rooted in identity politics and fashionable theories about victimization: men as a group are oppressors; jokes that oppressors use to degrade the oppressed must be taken seriously and suppressed. Commercial attempts to increase the amount of sexual antagonism in America are never a good idea.
