Ancient history: humor newsgroup banning?
Stephen Hui
I was perusing the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny.reruns (which
recycles posts from the rec.humor.funny newsgroup that are often a decade
old) when I came across a post titled, "The joke that made RHF
infamous". At the top of the post is an editor's blurb, which reads:
[Ed: This is it! The big joke that got rec.humor.funny splattered on
the front pages of major newspapers and banned at the University of
Waterloo and Stanford!]
I was just curious: did this really happen? When? I read rec.humor.funny
daily, so access has evidently been reinstated - when did this happen?
Seems like an interesting incident in UW history.
Steve
--
Stephen Hui (519) 747-4855
sh...@calum.uwaterloo.ca http://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~shui
Stephen Hui
>So, what was the joke?
Given the history of this joke at Waterloo, I decided not to tempt fate by
posting it here. If you're curious, subscribe to rec.humor.funny.reruns,
and read the article which is titled, "The joke that got RHF banned", or
something like that. It should only be five or so articles old.
To tell the truth, I found it neither particularly offensive nor
particularly funny.
Chris Doherty
In article <ECKuL...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>,
"Okay, so a Math student, a professor, and an SIRC Coordinator walk into a
bar..."
--
Chris Doherty cpdo...@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Chris Palmer
In article <ECLJ4...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>posting it here. If you're curious, subscribe to rec.humor.funny.reruns,
>and read the article which is titled, "The joke that got RHF banned", or
>something like that. It should only be five or so articles old.
It's actually titled:
"The joke that made RHF infamous"
Cheers,
Chris.
--
Mail: crpa...@undergrad.uwaterloo.ca
Homepage: http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~crpalmer/
William Gray
Stephen Hui (sh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
: >>Given the history of this joke at Waterloo, I decided not to tempt fate by
: >>posting it here.
:
: >Were you afraid of getting uw.general banned?
:
: I was afraid of getting *me* banned.
Well, I looked on rec.humour.whatever and it was beyond the old
postings, so I can't find it. Tempt fate! Post it! Or e-mail
it to me (wvgray@novice) and _I'll_ post it. I'm out of here
in 1.5 months, so what's the worst they can do?
--
William Gray wvg...@calum.uwaterloo.ca
4X Computer Engineering University of Waterloo, CANADA
Paul Prescod
In article <ECrL4...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>,
William Gray <wvg...@novice.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Stephen Hui (sh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>: >>Given the history of this joke at Waterloo, I decided not to tempt fate by
>: >>posting it here.
>:
>: >Were you afraid of getting uw.general banned?
>:
>: I was afraid of getting *me* banned.
>
>Well, I looked on rec.humour.whatever and it was beyond the old
>postings, so I can't find it. Tempt fate!
Well, all of these things are at DejaNews. http://www.dejanews.com .
Search for: The joke that made RHF infamous
It's pretty mild ethnic stereotypes. It is certainly not illegal in
Canada, though it is tasteless. It certainly isn't near the level of
offensiveness as "No means harder." And no, it isn't a very funny joke,
even if you bought into the stereotypes. If the press of the day had a
field day with this then they were even more pitiful in their handling of
Internet issues then than they are now.
Paul Prescod
Nic Hesse
In article <ECrL4...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>,
William Gray <wvg...@novice.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>Stephen Hui (sh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>: >>Given the history of this joke at Waterloo, I decided not to tempt fate by
>: >>posting it here.
>:
>: >Were you afraid of getting uw.general banned?
>:
>: I was afraid of getting *me* banned.
>
>Well, I looked on rec.humour.whatever and it was beyond the old
>it to me (wvgray@novice) and _I'll_ post it. I'm out of here
>in 1.5 months, so what's the worst they can do?
>
>--
>William Gray wvg...@calum.uwaterloo.ca
>4X Computer Engineering University of Waterloo, CANADA
I won't post the joke, but here is the URL.
http://www.clari.net/rhf/jokes/88q4/nonbook/vent.html
Nic Hesse
Jack Cooper
In article <ECLJ4...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Stephen Hui <sh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>So, what was the joke?
>
>and read the article which is titled, "The joke that got RHF banned", or
>something like that. It should only be five or so articles old.
>
>particularly funny.
>
Although I don't remember the joke precisely (it was either a Greek
ethnic or Jewish ethnic joke, or a combination of the two) I do remember
that the KW Record actually did a feature on the controversy. Brad
Templeton, the originator of the group and moderator at the time, had
a few disagreements with other Net folks. One fellow in particular was
bothered by Brad's moderating style and selection of jokes, and took
particular offense to the one in question. He responded by writing a
lot of letters, including ones to Stanford, Waterloo and the K-W media.
Brad got a small measure of revenge by revelling in the ensuing controversy
and incorporating some of his adventures into a FASS scene in FASS '91.
Brad was actually cast as his protagonist, a computer hacker banned from
campus for distributing tasteless jokes. It resulted in one of the better
written and executed song parodies, a take off of "Music in the Night"
from "Phantom of the Opera".
Brad, who probably lurks here from time to time, will undoubtedly
correct me if I've massacred any of the details.
>Steve
>
--
== Jack Cooper - Arts Computing Office, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Can.
== E-mail: ja...@watarts.uwaterloo.ca||Web Page: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~jack
== "I've got just four friends I will let advise me:
== Me myself and I and the evil twin inside me" - Carolyn Arends
Ray Butterworth
On Fri, 4 Jul 1997 18:46:15 GMT,
ja...@watarts.uwaterloo.ca (Jack Cooper) wrote:
>Although I don't remember the joke precisely (it was either a Greek
>ethnic or Jewish ethnic joke, or a combination of the two)
Actually it was most insulting to those of us with Scottish ancestry,
since it implied that a Scot would commit murder as revenge for being
tricked into paying for a meal.
- Ray (a Boil on his maternal grandmother's side) Butterworth
William Gray
James Nicoll (jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
: Deny you your degree for disgracing the University?
:
: What exactly happened to the 'no means yes' fellows, anyway?
From what I understand of that situation (I assume you mean the one
at Queen's) the "No means yes" thing was actually one step in an
escalating 'war' between two residences. The all-girls residence was
putting up signs such as "No means it's too small" and other such
jokes, and the all-guys residence were countering. Then the
impeccable journalistic skills of Maclean's stepped in and the
rest was (misreported) history.
Then again, if you believe everything in Maclean's, you have other
more severe problems to deal with.
James Nicoll
In article <ECt5r...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>,
William Gray <wvg...@novice.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>James Nicoll (jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
>: Deny you your degree for disgracing the University?
>:
>: What exactly happened to the 'no means yes' fellows, anyway?
>From what I understand of that situation (I assume you mean the one
>at Queen's) the "No means yes" thing was actually one step in an
>escalating 'war' between two residences. The all-girls residence was
>putting up signs such as "No means it's too small" and other such
>jokes, and the all-guys residence were countering. Then the
>impeccable journalistic skills of Maclean's stepped in and the
>rest was (misreported) history.
>Then again, if you believe everything in Maclean's, you have other
>more severe problems to deal with.
Actually, I am not a Maclean's reader. Why read a second-rate
imitation of Luce's rag when I can get the Economist?
Hmmm. Judging by when the event occured, I must have followed
in the Record, Imprint and uw. groups.
James Nicoll
Neil Murray
Ray Butterworth (rbutte...@math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
: Actually it was most insulting to those of us with Scottish ancestry,
: since it implied that a Scot would commit murder as revenge for being
: tricked into paying for a meal.
Well, some Scotts, that is. There's some of us (aye, I'm 100%
Scottish as far back as I can trace) that can laugh at the stereotype that
Scotts are penny-pinching.
**************************************************************
Neil Murray (oh...and George, Peetey and Tarac too!)
Main address: d...@mgl.ca
Work: ne...@kit.microage.ca
School: RIP, June 26, 1997
Under heavy construction: http://www.mgl.ca/~doc
**************************************************************
Walter C. McCutchan (Duke of URL)
In article <ECF4K...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Stephen Hui <sh...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>I was perusing the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny.reruns (which
>recycles posts from the rec.humor.funny newsgroup that are often a decade
>old) when I came across a post titled, "The joke that made RHF
>infamous". At the top of the post is an editor's blurb, which reads:
>
> [Ed: This is it! The big joke that got rec.humor.funny splattered on
> the front pages of major newspapers and banned at the University of
> Waterloo and Stanford!]
>
>I was just curious: did this really happen? When? I read rec.humor.funny
>daily, so access has evidently been reinstated - when did this happen?
>
>Seems like an interesting incident in UW history.
>
Not just history at UW -- but history of the "net".
[N.B. Before you read the following.... it does contain "the joke"
so if you don't feel up to it, don't read it.]
url: http://www.clari.net/rhf/rhfban.html
Below is the history of the incident as told by Brad Templeton, so
readers should be aware there is a certain amount of editorializing
that expresses his opinion(s).
>It all started in late 1988. rec.humor.funny had been running for
>around 17 months, and was doing very well. I had set up a system so
>that I could deposit accepted jokes into a queue directory, and once or
>twice a day, the computer would automatically select a random joke from
>the directory and post it to the net.
>
>On November 9, 1988, the computer picked the following joke to post
>
>The joke that made RHF infamous
>
>br...@radio.uucp (Brian Glendenning)
> Radio Astronomy, University of Toronto
>( rec.humor, rec_humor_cull, racist (mildly), chuckle)
>(Relayed From prabhu@mitisft)
>
>
>A Scotsman and a Jew went to a restaurant. After a hearty meal, the
>waitress came by with the inevitable check. To the amazement of all,
>the Scotsman was heard to say, "I'll pay it!" and he actually did.
>
>The next morning's newspaper carried the news item:
>
>"JEWISH VENTRILOQUIST FOUND MURDERED IN BLIND ALLEY."
>
>
>Now this joke has some mildly racist overtones, and so I made a minor
>mistake in forgetting to follow my usual policy on such jokes, namely
>to encode the joke in what is known as rot13 encoding.
>
>Our policy here has always been to not judge jokes based on their
>politics, only on their comedy. This means that jokes like the above
>can make the cut.
>
>The bad news was that November 9, 1988 was the 50th anniversary of
>Krystallnacht, the horrible night when the Nazis burned and smashed the
>property and temples of German Jews, considered by some to be the start
>of the worst of the holocaust.
>
>This coincidence of dates proved to be too much for Jonathan E. D.
>Richmond, a graduate student at M.I.T. at the time. Richmond took
>serious offence started a campaign against me on the net. That sort of
>thing (and offended person starting a posting campaign against
>something that offended them) happens all the time on the net, and by
>and large most people weren't offended at all. He called for me to be
>"replaced" as moderator, or barred from the net. He didn't realize that
>those things don't happen on the net, that it's an anarchy, and each
>person who builds something gets to run it and has no boss who can
>replace him or her.
>
>Richmond was disturbed to find that just 4 other posters agreed with
>him at that just about everybody else laughed at his efforts or
>generally disagreed with the idea of anybody being censored for a
>politically incorrect joke or other posting. During the debate, in
>fact, a far nastier joke indirectly critical of Richmond appeared that
>ended up getting me in a bunch of trouble.
>
>Usually, when would-be banners get derided, they go away, but Richmond
>was not to falter. First he called my company, hoping to get me fired.
>I do wish I had had the quickness to realize this and pretended to be
>my boss, so that I could assure Richmond that I would be fired, but
>alas I just told him that I owned the company.
>
>He hunted around for a while and eventually called the Kitchener-
>Waterloo Record, the 85,000 circulation daily newspaper in the town in
>which I was living. At the Record, he found Louisa D'Amato, an
>Italian-Jewish reporter who was quite sympathetic to his complaint. I
>gave D'Amato a nice interview on the matter, since she pretended to be
>sympathetic to my view when she called me. (I've learned since then...)
>
>Back in 1988, "Internet" was a new word and much of USENET flowed over
>plain old modem links via a protocol called UUCP. Usually one big site
>in a town would make the long distance call to bring in the news, and
>send out the few local articles that were generated, and other sites
>would talk to that site with local calls. So it was with my site and
>the University of Waterloo (my alma mater), which acted as hub for the
>area.
>
>Richmond convinced D'Amato to write a very negative story on the idea
>of a joke forum where politically incorrect jokes could and did appear,
>and in particular on the idea that the University, acting as an
>ordinary USENET hub (like thousands of other universities around the
>world at the time) was facilitating all this.
>
>The story she wrote appeared on the front page of the paper on December
>1, 1988. I got permission from the Record to post it to the net.
>(A url to that story is at the end of this posting.)
>
>Reaction
>
>This story surprised me, and upped the stakes. Over the next week,
>stories appeared almost every day, either on the front page or on the
>front page of the local section. The citizens of the town actually took
>no notice of it, and in spite of D'Amato's thought that they would, but
>the University did. It had to be seen to act, or felt it did. It shut
>off my link, and said I could have it back if I agreed not to send
>jokes that were offensive or "in bad taste."
>
>I said I would, and asked for the University's official guide to taste,
>but they never provided it.
>
>The moment the word got out I had been banned from the University's
>computers, at least a dozen sites offered to call me directly to allow
>the feed of rec.humor.funny to go out to the world. So it was never off
>the air.
>
>In the meantime, I decided to have fun with the University. I still did
>a feed to them, as well as the uncensored feed to the real world. But
>for the U's feed, any joke that was even mildly offensive was replaced
>with a message that had the same headers and title, but the body was
>replaced by a notice stating that the University had asked that jokes
>in bad taste not be sent to it. Sort of like the South African
>newspapers with the blank spots where censored stories used to be.
>
>The rest of the world also covered the event, and Richmond also talked
>to reporters at his local Boston Herald. Whoops. They did a page 2
>story on it which wasn't all that kind to Richmond. I can only assume
>that he realized the press was a dangerous tool. Getting me banned had
>not made him a popular figure at MIT or on the net, and he got hassled
>apparently as he walked around the campus, though nothing physical was
>done. At any rate, he never talked to the press again after that.
>
>While stories were also done in the Toronto papers, it was odd that
>nobody noted the original joke was submitted by somebody at the
>University of Toronto.
>
>I got pretty scared the by press over-attention, and did the smart
>thing and declined to talk to reporters. Since then I have never had
>anything but sympathy for those people whom Mike Wallace says, in a
>dour and critical voice, "refused to talk to 60 minutes."
>
>The ban was in place, and hundreds of letters were written to the K-W
>Record (more than they got on any other issue that year -- that's the
>power of the net, even then) and to the University, but it seemed it
>was all settling down.
>
>I only got one letter from the general public in this case. A big
>packet of apparently hand-typed-for-me notes from a Nazi living in
>Sarnia, Ontario. Not a neo-Nazi, but an "I fought for the Fuhrer in the
>war" Nazi, saying how great it was that people were telling Jewish
>jokes on the computer. One of the scariest things I ever got.
>
>Good thing, I guess, that D'Amato failed to mention one minor detail in
>her story about me as leader of the network of anti-semitic computer
>nazis. I'm Jewish enough myself that had I lived there, Hitler might
>have put me and my family in the camps.
>
>Of course, other than providing a harrowing week, being banned was
>great for business. I had just released the first jokebook based on
>rec.humor.funny, and had put "Banned at the University of Waterloo"
>stickers on them. I'm sure I sold a lot more books due to the ban. And
>rec.humor.funny quickly surged to become the most widely read thing on
>the net. That fame helped me start ClariNet, the largest circulation
>electronic newspaper on the Internet. Today our number of paying
>subscribers is more than 14 times that of the Kitchener-Waterloo
>Record. This is a lesson for those who want to ban things -- in the end
>you only help the people you want to ban.
>
>Is it over yet?
>
>Early in 1989, when we thought the story was long gone, June Genis, a
>programmer at Stanford University, noted to her boss in passing that
>there had been this silly flap over politically incorrect jokes in
>rec.humor.funny. June's a libertarian, about as much against censorship
>as you can get, so she was shocked when her boss, hearing that another
>University had banned the group, decided that Stanford should ban it as
>well.
>
>So they did, shutting off the group entirely. They argued that since
>rec.humor.funny was moderated, there was no place to complain. The kept
>the unmoderated rec.humor because people could counter the jokes
>there.
>
>To this day nobody understood that logic or knows the real reason for
>the ban, but Stanford students and faculty got up in arms over the idea
>of the computer center deciding what was fit to read and what wasn't.
>
>This time the press coverage was all anti-ban. Stanford's a bit more
>famous than the U. of Waterloo, so we saw stories and editorials in not
>just the major dailies of the S.F. Bay Area, but also in magazines like
>Fortune (see the Keeping Up column in the 1989 Fortune 500 issue), the
>New Scientist, Communications of the A.C.M. and others.
>
>Stanford's administration found themselves looking like fools. John
>McCarthy, better known to many as the originator of the LISP computer
>language, called me up to say he would be leading the fight at Stanford
>to reverse the ban. Pressure by him and others caused the faculty
>senate to have the matter referred to the library committee. Anybody
>knows what a library committee is going to say about administrative
>bans of unpopular material. They reversed the ban, though it took a few
>months.
>
>Stanford also at the time was having some controversy over other
>censorious policies, such as a "fighting words" doctrine and several
>others. These were also later overturned in a victory for academic
>freedom. I'm proud to have played a small part in helping this
>victory.
>
>Waterloo, years later.
>
>During the later years, UW played with banning other groups as well. So
>did other schools. A popular target are the alt.sex groups, and when
>they banned those it finally got the swell of popular opinion against
>group banning. John McCarthy also came up to give a talk in support of
>the anti-ban efforts. In late 1991, UW finally reversed the ban, much
>to my personal satisfaction, even though I left the city of Waterloo
>that year.
>
>Lessons and Conclusions
>
>It should be noted that I never challenged the right of UW or Stanford
>to ban my publication. As private institutions, they have the legal
>right to decide what is done with their computers. I, and many others,
>however, argued that it was a violation of the strong principles of
>academic freedom. A University, we feel, should not attempt to protect
>its students, and certainly not its faculty, from the offensive forms
>of expression in the real world. In fact, even if you wanted to argue
>that some things should be banned out in the world at large,
>Universities have a special history of being the exception.
>
>It's sad that this has changed at some schools these days, and many
>people are vowed to continue to fight it.
>
>Other notes
>
>Racism is a nasty accusation. If you're accused of it, don't even
>bother answering, you can't give the right answer. Avoid talking to the
>press, even if you are innocent, unless you really know what you are
>doing.
>
>On the other hand, being banned can do wonders for your visibility if
>the people who really count know you and know the truth. It can make
>you a lot of money.
>
>Censors will never win. As my friend John Gilmore has often been quoted
>as saying, "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around
>it." That's an apt description of what happened both places it was
>banned, with tons of new paths being used to get the same data.
>
>Censors will do a lot of damage trying to win. The week of front-page
>coverage was very nerve-wracking. I'm thicker skinned now but for a
>while I thought the story was going to go seriously national, and
>people would say, "so this is what those computer nets are for." The
>story did go national years later, as the porn-on-the-net recurring
>story. I'm glad it wasn't me as the computer nazi showing up on a Time
>magazine cover.
>
>Other Links
>
>http://www.cs.oberlin.edu/faculty/rhyspj/comppolicies/stanford.edu
>http://www.eff.org/CAF/
>
>
Article from The Record: (I don't have permission to post it...)
http://www.clari.net/rhf/kwrecord.html
--
walter mccutchan (Duke of URL[tm]) fill what is empty
pc & mac group, dcs (ist) empty what is full
univ. of waterloo w...@dcs1.UWaterloo.CA scratch where it itches
abeo, abeo, abeo, actum est, comites!
David Evans
In article <ECyDK...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Ray Butterworth <rbutte...@math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>So no one objects to such things as having Andy McTire symbolize
>the thriftiness of Canadian Tire.
>
I always thought he was called Angus McBuck...
>How many people know why Scotch Tape is so called?
...some graphic designer at 3M really wanted to put a tartan oon the package?
--
David Evans (NeXTMail/MIME OK) dfe...@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Computer/Synth Junkie http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual
Srikant
In article <ECtDx...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
arpe...@math.uwaterloo.ca (Adrian Pepper [MFCF]) wrote:
>Here's the politically correct version of the joke.
>
> Two persons went to a restaurant. After a hearty meal,
the server
> came by with the inevitable check. One of the two
patrons was heard
> to say, "I'll pay it!"--which many people present found
surprising
> since they knew that particular person to be thrifty to
a fault.
>
> The next morning's newspaper carried the news item:
>
> "VENTRILOQUIST MURDERED"
I don't understand... I read both versions and still don't
see what it has to do with UW and Stanford ! Racist, maybe,
but why the entire ng banned by universities, and that too
only a couple of them ?
Srikant.
==============================
Srikant Cheruvu
Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo, ON
mailto:sche...@uwaterloo.ca
http://srikant.home.ml.org
==============================
David Evans
In article <ED2Eo...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Ray Butterworth <rbutte...@math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>The word [scotch] had advertising appeal,
>and eventually it became associated with all their tapes
>(even magnetic recording tape).
This reminds me of an amusing story which I really hope is true.
There was (maybe still is) a brand of recording tape called Irish (whether
or not this was an attempt to cover the British Isles with mylar is a
mystery to me.) Through some legal problem another company acquired a large
stock of Irish tape that they wished to sell but, naturally, they couldn't
label it "Irish"--the trademark courts would dispatch them pretty quickly.
Furthermore this company didn't have anything to do with recording tape, so
their own name would have the sales force of Canadian Tire hamburgers. Their
solution? The tape was branded "Shamrock".
Kryston Wesselink
In article <ED3yF...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
arpe...@math.uwaterloo.ca (Adrian Pepper) wrote:
> w...@ist.uwaterloo.ca (Walter C. McCutchan (Duke of URL)) wrote,
> in article <ED2JC...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>:
> [...]
> >I disagree. The ethnicity was of person two is most assuredly not
> >irrelevant. To me a good bit of the humour in the joke (for those who
> >can see humour in such a racist joke) is that both of the ethnic groups
> >represented have a reputation for being tight with their money.
> But person two is revealed to be a show-business person, and they,
> regardless of their individual race, have a reputation for playing
> practical jokes.
What? A reputation for practical jokes? That seems like a bit of a reach,
especially for a 30-second joke. It's *clearly* due to the stereotypical
thriftiness of the two groups...so much so that the ventriloquist sought
to deceive the Scot into paying the bill. The Scot, equally frugal,
sought his own means to even the score.
> I find the punchline rather bizarre, since it is, for several reasons,
> not suitable as a headline, nor is it a grammatical sentence.
Headline grammar bad - expert
> Mentioning the ethnic group at all in the newspaper article or headline
> would be bizarre.
Not if it was a race-motivated killing. What papers do you read anyway?
I think you should remember that the people who compose these jokes
probably don't go through the thought process whereby they chose an
occupation with 'a reputation for practical jokes' (I still can't figure
out where you came up with that...), and then sat around composing
grammatically correct newspaper headlines. It's a PUNCHLINE!! Punch! Get
it? Short, to the point, ironic!!
Most jokes have talking animals involved in bizarre sexual situations with
unlikely people, and nobody seems to say..."I think it would be hard for a
monkey to get a job tending bar..." Sheesh!
Here's a headline:
Tonight at Yuk Yuk's, Amateur Night!
Not Appearing, YOUU!