Humor Fail

A friend just posted this following joke on Facebook. I was sorely tempted to argue with her conclusion there, but I have no desire to get into a social networking comment war. So I'll indulge myself here ... and then link this post on Facebook, so people can comment war me anyway. ;-)

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am,"replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

Of course, the point of the joke is to demonstrate the general superiority of Democrats, and the cluelessness of Republicans that makes political disagreements their fault. Amusing, but specious, for a number of reasons I fell compelled to point out:

1. There's no indication that the lady doesn't know where she's supposed to go; she just doesn't know exactly where she is. Last time I checked, Democrats also sometimes get lost.
2. There's no indication that she doesn't know how to keep her promise (i.e., how to navigate her balloon to reach a destination once she knows the directions), merely that she is lacking a piece of information that would help her complete that task successfully.
3. She doesn't expect the man to solve her entire problem (i.e., take her to meet her friend); she is requesting help with the information she lacks.
4. She didn't blame the man for her being lost; she blamed him for not providing information that was helpful to her.
5. And this is the key problem that the smug Democrat's response obscures: his technically correct data was not something that the woman could use. Perhaps she doesn't use GPS data to navigate; maybe she needs a town name, or a street name, or a landmark, because that's how the directions she has are written.
   

It should also be noted that Democrats are just as frequently full of hot air, balloon-powering or otherwise. :-)

Ultimately, this is a failure to communicate, and it's on both parties. The woman and man were equally at fault getting snitty with one another instead of trying to establish a common language and resolve the situation. The woman could have followed up by being more specific about the kind of data she needs; the man could have sought to improve the usefulness of his information by finding out the kind of data the woman had at the time and figuring out how to adapt his response to that data type and framework to fill the gaps.

Yeah, yeah, I get that it's a joke; but like a racial joke, it's an indicator of a potentially serious underlying problem with stereotyping people who are different from us. The joke will be a lot funnier when the divisions it highlights aren't having such serious consequences for all of us. Which will be good, 'cause I like to laugh!