Bookshelf Battle

It’s a joke as old as “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

You get in an elevator, someone asks what button you want them to push, and you say, “Women’s lingerie.”

It harkens back to the old days, the 1940s and 50s when there were big city department stores with elevators and operators who would shout out the floor being stopped on, “First Floor, Dinner Ware…Second Floor, Hardware…”

Basically, you think of something funny that could be on that floor and usually the funniest is “Women’s lingerie.”

Read more in “The Chronicle of Higher Education” here.

Apparently, this joke was told at a professor’s educational conference.  A female professor offered to hit buttons for those on the elevator and when asked which button he wanted pushed, a male professor joked, “Women’s lingerie.”

Smartest joke to make in today’s ultra-PC environment?  Probably not.

Worth ruining his career over?  Absolutely not.

Come on, people.

Here’s the thing about the #metoo movement.  I know, an evil owner of a penis daring to mansplain about women issues.  The dreaded patriarchy strikes again.

But seriously.  While it’s great women are finding justice for inappropriate activities that otherwise would never have been heard about….it’s pretty ridiculous to string this guy up for making one of the oldest jokes in the world.

Let’s have some common sense.  Let’s use our brains.  Let’s be rational and reasonable.  You cannot, you just cannot, absolutely cannot take this man who was a professor for many decades, who makes a silly joke that millions have made for decades and lump him in with the likes of Harvey “Casting Couch” Weinstein, Matt “I Can Lock My Office from My Desk” Lauer and Bill “Slip ‘Em a Mickey” Cosby.

Sorry.  You just can’t.

I agree #metoo is, on the whole, a good thing that will clean out a lot of bad dudes from the world’s proverbial closet.

But just as it is important to recognize valid claims, so to is it important to call out bogus claims and to tell the people who make them these claims are dumb.

I’m sorry…but this claim is dumb.

3.5 READERS: “Oh you evil man, how dare you tell this woman how to feel…”

My penis doesn’t prohibit me from having opinions…just as vagina ownership has not kept women from sharing their opinions with me…and boy howdy, do they know how to share them.  I haven’t met a woman who was shy about that, let me tell you.

This is just silly.  It’s the rush to offense culture run amuck.

Further, I think the male professor should file his own complaint.   Hey Professor, if you happen to be one of my 3.5 readers, I wrote your counter-complaint for you:

I was outraged when the female professor assumed that I was asking to be led towards women’s lingerie out of some misguided belief that there was an underlying, inappropriate sexual connotation.  In actuality, I like to wear women’s lingerie and shame on this person for not realizing that the lingerie was for me!

Yikes.  Now there’s a cross complaint that would make the academic world’s explode.

Comedy is dying.  It just is.  Pretty soon, they’ll be coming after the chicken joke.  Animal rights activists will say it is none of your business why the chicken crossed the road because whatever the chicken was doing, it was between him and who or whatever was on the other side, so how dare you butt your nose in where it doesn’t belong?

On another note, it’s time to take a good, hard look at colleges, what courses are being offered, whether anything these navel gazers who can’t even think critically about a silly joke are worth the tens of thousands of dollars that students have to borrow.

Sigh.  In high school, I knew all these kids who became plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc.  They skipped the navel gazing and they make bank.  Idiot that I am, I signed up for the navel gazing and all I have to show for it is copious debt and this blog that is only read by 3.5 people.

Speaking of, what say you, 3.5 readers?