| | That one was sort of limited. Some of the others were OK. The extended paraody of Part 1 was probably the best of the lot. The Japanese one was the funniest because it was direct. That said, parodies in general tend to self-defeating and I did not see anything in the "Smart Ass" video that actually cut to the essential characteristics. That is what makes humor work.
Take ethnic jokes. Most of them are "fill in the blank." You could tell the same joke with Ruritanians, Zamundi or San Marcans. On the other hand, Jewish jokes tend to focus on specific (albeit stereotypical) characteristics of Jewish culture. There was an item on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" about fuzzy teddybear covers for urns. You can put your relatives ashes into something huggable. To which, one of the contestants quipped in that Long Island accent, "Oh, so now you hug your mother." See, that's funny and it would not work with a Pancho, Paddy or Charlie Chan or whatever.
Two English gentlemen were at their club, reading newspapers. After about an hour, the one said, "I heard you buried your wife. So sorry." About an hour later the other replied, "Had to. She was dead, you know."
Or, OK, one warm spring day in Montreal the two old friends Armand and Gaston are walking through a park enjoying the day when Armand hears a bit of a rustle behing a bush and he looks over... He nudges Gaston... They see two pairs of feet on the grass, a man and a woman making love. "Ah, so sweet, ssss,sssss, let's move's along... not to disturb them... Oh, yes, young love..." And Gaston looks back one more time and his eyes go wide. He grabs Armand and drags him back, "Oh, the horror! the horror! What an unnatural crime...." No, no, she's not dead. She's English.
In Eastern Europe, diacritical marks differentiate people. The Croats say about the Serbs, "Hard c, soft dick."
Then there are occupations. Jokes about jobs tend to be specific. Like the one about the mechanical engineer, the civil engineer and the programmer who were in a car crash.... Fill in the details appropriately, the punchline is: ... the programmer says, "Let's go back to just before the crash and try it again with the windows rolled down."
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