Seriously Funny: Mexican Political Jokes as Social Resistance

Notes

243 Notes Prologue 1. I made a preliminary analysis in Mexico encadenado: El Legado de Zedillo y los retos de Fox, Colibrí, 2001. 2. Recently, I discovered that a history student used my book to write his dissertation and publish a book. In August 2013, after wide protests, he was fired from his full-time position at the School of Philosophy at UNAM; however, the dean refused to introduce my letter to the file, since I requested to remove the Ph.D. degree and she was the main adviser. Introduction 1. Regarding the nineteenth century, Sergio Fernández (in González Ramírez, 1974) says, “The Mexican people, in spite of their rancor or maybe due to it, laughed more and better. He the ridiculer and with incredible rage liberated his passions as he tipped outside of himself. In the struggle he gambled his life and for that the very inside of that game of his was death, price of his revolutionary spirit.” 2. The result was a book called El deterioro del presidencialismo Mexicano: Los años de Luis Echeverría, Editores Asociados Mexicanos, S. A. de C. V., 1986. 3. See, for example, my book on ethnic jokes (Schmidt, 2006). 4. From my collection of anecdotes. When I was nominated for the Scientific Research Academy Award, one of the jury members asked, “Why give Samuel the award, since he only collects jokes?” 5. During a conversation with Luis Donaldo Colosio, I asked him what his nickname was, and he refused to tell me. Chapter 1 1. This also affects publishers. For example, the publisher of the first version of this book insisted that it was necessary to prove that the book was a serious enough work to go to a publishing house, and he proposed that it should be titled Humor en serio (Serious Humor). Another title could have been We Laugh at Politicians Because They Laugh at Us, but this is probably not commercial enough. 2. The volume of cartoons by Trino called Fabulas de policias y ladrones may give the impression that the cartoons are not political because they concentrate on assailants and often specifically on bank robbers, even though they certainly are political, since their central theme is the police. 244 • Notes to Pages 19–21 3. For a long time it was suggested to me that I should write a book about Mexican political jokes so that I could become rich. I finally wrote this book (Schmidt, 1996), but neither the publisher nor myself has become rich because of it. 4. “While the serious individual tends to be solemn and anxious about how things may turn out, the individual with a rich sense of humor tends to be more relaxed, less disappointed by failure, and in general happier” (Morreall, 1983:122). 5. Refer to an excellent discussion on this theme in Eco (1989). 6. “Since each of our childhoods as with the childhood of civilization, our hostile impulses toward our brethren are subject to limits and progressive repression as that of our sexual impulses” (Freud, 1973:91). From my collection of anecdotes: On a certain occasion while dining in the home of an Israeli diplomat in Mexico City, I met an official from the Mexican president’s press office. When he asked me about my work, I told him that I researched political humor. He stated that under no circumstances would he allow the telling of jokes regarding President de la Madrid. But he then changed his mind, saying that since what I did was scholarly, I should after all recount a few of those jokes. Later on, he asked me to provide him with a study regarding jokes about the president; however, he refused to pay for the service, so it never came to fruition. It’s one thing that I laugh at the president; it’s another that I should work for free for him. 7. Here, all political jokes have been handled in the same manner; nevertheless, a great distinction must be made between what is written for television—for such programs as Lechuga and Salinas, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report—and those that are told by people in general. 8. According to Udall (1988:xv–xvi), this idea is attributed to an advisor of President James Garfield. 9. This joke has been told about Fidel Castro and...