Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Schlechten Zeiten macht für die größten Witze?

Watching Hammer and Tickle, a documentary about jokes under Communism, and the jokes are great, but it's scary how people were jailed for five years or more for telling jokes against the Communist regiems.

Jailing people for joking ended in the 1950s as a general rule, but it's still a bit scary that that happened. I think I'd probably have been jailed under Communist rule! Although that probably would have been more for something like sedition...

However, it was interesting in the documentary how they linked an increase in people's freedom to joke about the regiems running their countries to the way those who allowed it were also the first to relinquish the Communist rule. But if you live somewhere where the country's leader thinks mis-spelling his name is some kind of sign of treason (something that would have been easy to do with a name like Nicolae Ceausescu), I guess you would have to be somewhat careful regardless!

Two East German soldiers are standing at their post on the Berlin Wall. One soldier says to the other, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" The other soldier replies, "Why do you ask?" The first says, "Well, if you are, I'll have to arrest you..."

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