Wed Feb 09 2000 07:00:
The joke interpretation colloquium is over now. We will surely miss
you. If you want to see us again, just turn on your TV to... Channel
2!
Mike Popovic presented a breathtakingly transgressive and hermeneutic interpretation of the joke. For those of you who weren't here yesterday, the joke is:
Q: What does a WASP Mom make for dinner?
A: A crisp salad, a hearty soup, a lovely entree, followed by
a delicious dessert.
Mike's analysis:
obviously a big joke in entomolgy circles, the jokester counts on his victim not thinking outside his field when he hears the word "wasp". thus, hilarity ensues as the other meaning dawns upon the listeners upon hearing the punchline.
I think this is the correct interpretation. The fatal error of the joke manufacturer was to write down the joke, thus showing his or her hand too early.
Many were confused by the acronymic expansion of WASP. WASP is an acronym for a simpler time, expanding to White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. There used to be a time at which the ethnicity "white" was considered to have sub-ethnicities, "Anglo-Saxon" being one of them. This view of things stopped being feasible around 1975, so the term "WASP" is something of a verbal coelacanth.
