Bizarro is brought to you today by Candice's Coupon Club of Carolton.This is a gag suggested by my friend, Phil Witte. People suggest ideas to me all the time, 90% of which are puns. I like puns, but only when they are somehow surprising and fresh, as I think this one is. People groan at puns when they feel they could have thought of it themselves. You can only get away with puns when they are completely unexpected.
In my opinion, the contrast between the serious nature of the political issue and the foolishness of the pun makes this one work. Also, who among us has not known (and will one day be) an addled elderly person not quite clear on the concept?
9 comments:
It's a good pun. I've also seen, "Free Tibet... with purchase of equal or lesser value."
...greater. Greater value. It's a subtle, but apparently important difference. That's how my dad's shop went out of business, for example.
I remember this same joke in an episode of The Family Guy.
Peter is seen at a Free Tibet rally at which he says to a protestor "I'll take it", he then calls China saying "I have something you may want, but it's going to cost you. That's right, all the tea" referring to the expression "Not for all the tea in China."
http://www.planet-familyguy.com/pfg/?s=episodes&id=17
or the equally funny "Free Hat" episode of South Park, which takes this pun and reverses it.
Funny, I read this as a person (typical of many people) who see something being given away and want it because it's free, regardless of what it is. That acquisitive mentality, combined with ignorance.
I'm pretty sure this was a popular gag all over the UK around the time that Special AKA had a hit with 'Free Nelson Mandela' in 1984.
"Free Nelson Mandela?"
"No thanks, I've got three already."
Memory is failing me but this may stem from a rare live appearance of the band on TV show "Saturday Live" (our version of SNL) and probably involved Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson.
There you go. Token Brit out. You can turn the music back down now.
Simpsons did it.
I hate when I come up with a joke I think is novel and hilarious, and I excitedly tell my friends, and they're completely blase because some guy cracked it years ago. Hate it.
A good one and one that was used in the sixties by British cartoonist Mel Calman, (He of the wonderfully simple pencil line)
He showed an irate feminist brandishing a sign reading ''Free women Now!'' and an innocent looking bystander asking if he could have one?
Yes, this is definitely one of those ideas that a lot of people get independently. I remember musing about the fact that Michael Jackson did the music for the movie "Free Willy." I couldn't do a cartoon about it in Bizarro, of course, because pedophilia is one of those subjects editors don't like to see in the funnies.
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