BYU student swipes old jokes; Eric half-heartedly responds
The Daily Universe, student newspaper at good ol’ Brigham Young University, ran a letter to the editor on Feb. 9 that read as follows:
Bad moon pricing
Recently, there was an article about a man selling an acre on the moon for $20. I must say, I am opposed to buying a plot of land on the moon for such a price. Don’t get me wrong, I love the moon, but I just don’t think $20 for land is viable for a college student these days. The main reason: opportunity cost.
With $20, you could supply yourself with food for an entire week, unless you’re a freshman with dining plus, in which case it is only two days. You may say, “but the moon is made out of cheese, and that’s way more food.”
However, I’ve learned through some secret sources, that it is primarily made out of oxygen, silicon and iron, which have nothing to do with cheese.
With $20, you can support a homeless child for months. As advertised on TV, it costs only 39 cents per day to help Pablo have shoes on his feet and corn in his mouth. You could help him for 51 days.
Finally with $20, you can find out whether someone likes you. Simply hand them $20 and ask “Do you like me?” If they say yes, you win. If they say no, you’ll actually save money by avoiding the costs of taking them out on dates. Combine that with all the time you’ll save, and you’ll notice $20 is too much to give up.
Jon Harmon
Portland, Ore.
A few readers brought this letter to my attention because of the remarkable similarity between the final paragraph and the closing paragraphs of this old “Snide Remarks” column.
Obviously Jon Harmon was familiar with the column and appropriated it for use in his I’m-trying-to-be-funny letter. I was flattered, bemused, and a little annoyed, but not much. And before I could decide what kind of response, if any, I should give, someone else wrote to The Daily Universe complaining about Jon’s letter, only for different reasons. It was published on Feb. 12:
Narrow-minded moon
In the recent letter, “Bad moon pricing,” (Feb. 9) the author steps outside the bounds of humor and into the realm of offensiveness. He turned the ads that run on TV asking for our help in fighting poverty by providing needy people with the basic necessities of life into a joke by stereotypically giving the name Pablo to all who suffer in such a way and minimizing the relief such organizations bring. In an effort to be comical, he has offended countless readers who don’t think it’s funny to make fun of the terrible living conditions of some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.
It’s just inherently wrong to take the pleas for help that bring sorrow to our hearts and turn them into a quick laugh. Stereotyping is one of the great ills that plague our society, and it shames me to see that it is still very much alive.
What is one to think after seeing such an outrageous letter in the readers’ forum? I might begin to wonder if BYU really is the kind of place where I would want my children to study, after seeing the way that some people make such discriminating jokes at the expense of others’ suffering. As we “Enter to Learn” I certainly hope this mentality does not reflect the manner in which we will “Go Forth to Serve.” The author owes us all an apology, and I’ll be waiting for it.
Hyrum Hemingway
Menomonie, Wis.
Now, I didn’t think Jon Harmon’s letter was funny, either (though not for lack of good material to steal from!), but Hyrum Hemingway’s response was so … well, typical. Read any day’s letters in The Daily Universe and you’ll see at least one like that.
So at last I wrote a response and submitted it as a letter to the editor. Alas, several issues of the paper have been published since then, and my letter has not seen the light of day, so I am forced to conclude they won’t be printing it. So here it is for you:
Two recent letters in The Daily Universe caused me great alarm. First, “Narrow-minded moon” (Feb. 12) criticized a previous letter-writer (”Bad moon pricing,” Feb. 9) for making light of a serious situation: He had joked about the TV ads in which viewers are encouraged to donate money to help starving children.
Now, the writer of “Narrow-minded moon” makes a good point, and he doesn’t seem at all sanctimonious or humorless, nor does he make me roll my eyes. But he missed the REALLY offensive thing about the “Bad moon pricing” letter: The part about giving a potential date $20 to find out in advance whether she likes you was blatantly ripped off from an old “Snide Remarks” column published ON THESE VERY PAGES in November 1997!
What’s that, writer of “Bad moon pricing”? You figured there was no one left at BYU who remembered “Snide Remarks,” or who bought the “Snide Remarks” book in which that column was reprinted, or who had browsed at www.ericdsnider.com/snide/how-to-do-stuff-better and read that column? Figure again, my friend! You’re busted. I might begin to wonder if BYU really is the kind of place where I would want my children to study, after seeing the way that some people at BYU steal other people’s jokes. For shame, sir. FOR SHAME.
Eric D. Snider
Portland, Ore.
The fact that Jon Harmon is from Portland and I now live in Portland is probably a coincidence. Jon Harmon, are you reading this? (I assume Hyrum Hemingway isn’t.)
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:31 am
I seem to remember a John Bytheway talk tape entitled “Dating 911″ or something like that where he makes the same joke (hand her a twenty-spot, get a yes/no answer, move along). When I first read said column (back when the earth was still cooling) I assumed that’s where you got it. But I could be making this all up.
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:08 am
I hope Mephibosheth isn’t making it up. Because I would just find it way too funny to have some sort of Snider vs. Bytheway battle for ownership of the moon joke. Preferably in cage fight form.
February 22nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
I wish BYU-I students were as adept at writing Shocked and Appalled letters to the editor as BYU students are.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 am
“Dating 911″ came out on March 1, 1998, about three months after the Snide Remarks column in question. If that joke is on there, perhaps John Bytheway stole it, too.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:41 am
Look on the bright side, Eric… at least he didn’t try to plagiarize your “Titanic” column.
Also, John Bytheway’s “Dating 911″ tape had a 1998 release date according to Amazon.com, which would mean it was released after Eric’s column. Assuming Bytheway did make that joke on one of his tapes and “Dating 911″ was the tape… maybe he ripped from Eric too? *shrug*
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 am
I shudder to think how many Hyrums Jon most certainly offended with his letter to the Daily Universe editor. He owes them all an apology.
They will be waiting for it.
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
This is just like BYU…no ethics.
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
“In an effort to be comical, he has offended countless readers who don’t think it’s funny to make fun of the terrible living conditions of some of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.” [emphasis added]
“Countless” readers because Hyrum didn’t bother to take a count. If he had taken a count, he would have ended up with the following number: 1 reader offended, all other readers don’t care.
By the way, I have been to Menomonie, Wisconsin, while serving in the Wisconsin Milwaukee Mission. Hyrum is complaining about something this nitpicky and stupid because there is absolutely nothing else to do in Menomonie in the winter other than get hypothermia and/or frostbite just by opening a door and going outside for 30 seconds. They practice getting offended over nothing just to keep their body temperatures above 15 degrees.
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
This is just like Jason Wright…taking any opportunity to rip on BYU, whether it makes sense to do so or not.
February 22nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
“Also, John Bytheway’s “Dating 911″ tape had a 1998 release date according to Amazon.com, which would mean it was released after Eric’s column. Assuming Bytheway did make that joke on one of his tapes and “Dating 911″ was the tape… maybe he ripped from Eric too? *shrug*”
The tape was released then… it’s possible Bytheway made that joke live during one of his many talks or whatever he does. My point is, we don’t know that the first time Bytheway made the joke was on that tape. And even if it was, when did he start recording it? March? I doubt it.
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Fascinating about the John Bytheway thing. Does anyone else besides Mephiphishbosh actually remember him making the joke, though? I ask because this particular “Snide Remarks” column was quite popular in its day, and I got a lot of comments from people who especially like the $20 bit. And no one ever said they’d heard that joke somewhere else. So I wonder if Meph’s memory is faulty, or if the Bytheway joke was actually substantially different and Meph has combined them in her mind, or what.
Anyway, obviously I didn’t steal the joke from John Bytheway. I’d be pretty stupid to complain, even semi-jokingly, about someone stealing it from me if I had stolen it from someone else in the first place. If Bytheway did make a similar joke somewhere along the line, it’s probably a coincidence. (Or he stole it from me. But that’s not likely, either.)
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
When you’re as funny as Eric is, you’re just bound to get ripped off… It’s too bad you can’t put a little TM at the top right corner of every joke you print, ’cause that would be funny–to me, at least.
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:47 pm
I’ve never sat through an entire John Bytheway talk or tape, so I certainly haven’t heard him make the joke at all, which is why there’s a lot of qualifications in what I said. If he actually did rip the joke (and that’s a big “if”), I really can’t imagine it was intentional, and the same might be said for Mr. Harmon. It’s pretty easy to hear something funny somewhere and reuse it without being able to recall where you got it from.
BYU has the same trouble with “ethics” as any conservative religious college. They set high standards for their students and staff, inevitably someone doesn’t keep those standards in a public manner, people attack the institution for it. IMO, someone pushing a minor plagiarism through an editorial in the student paper isn’t much of a death throe for BYU’s ethics claims.
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
You mustn’t take Jason Wright seriously when he rips on BYU, ClobberGirl. He grew up in Provo, and all kids who grow up in Provo go one of two ways: They enthusiastically, fervently love BYU, or they vigorously, irrationally hate it. Jason chose the latter. Any chance he gets to rip on BYU, he does so. There is very little actual thought behind it. He no more genuinely believes BYU is a cesspool of poor ethics (or that this is a prime example of it) than anyone genuinely believes it takes four Polacks to screw in a lightbulb.
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:06 pm
“Any chance he gets to rip on BYU, he does so. There is very little actual thought behind it.”Hmm… kind of like BYU’s evangelical Christian club.
But now I’m just being a brat.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Actually, I remember when I first read the column in question, the $20 date joke did sound kind of familiar, like something off of a Disney movie of the week in 1987 or so. I’m sure the idea was original, though, and I could be completely off on that idea.
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:59 am
I’m not saying Eric stole the joke from Bytheway… I’m just saying that if there is a similar joke on one of Bytheway’s tapes, that doesn’t automatically mean he stole it from Eric.
February 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Funny thing about funny things: if something’s funny, chances are more than one person has thought it or said it, without stealing from each other.
And the shocked and appalled reaction to something said as a joke is almost always even funnier than the joke itself. But I’ll bet old Hyrum would be shocked and appalled to find out we’re laughing at him.
February 25th, 2007 at 12:14 am
I guess my main point here is that we don’t know for sure that this kid stole Eric’s joke. Maybe Eric should be less quick to jump to conclusions.
February 25th, 2007 at 10:48 am
So Brandon, you’re saying that if you had written a joke that was in a very popular column, and then someone used that joke later, you wouldn’t “jump to the conclusion” that he had stolen it from you? YOUR first reaction would be, “Oh, he must have come up with that identical joke on his own, or else maybe stolen it from somebody other than me?” I think Eric’s response of assuming the identical joke had been stolen from him is pretty reasonable and is probably what anyone’s reaction would be.
February 26th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I listened to the Dating 9-1-1 tape a couple of times, but I don’t remember any reference to the joke. It seems like it would have been out of context anyway, since the overall point was to give good dating advice. It was somewhat funny and insightful, but I think I’d groan at the gags now. Consider the following dialogue between John (the Dating 9-1-1 show host) and the mobile date tech, whatever his name was (may not be verbatim):
“John, can I be frank?”
“No, you were Frank last time.”
“What’s that?”
“Sorry; go ahead.”
I’m offended that jokes like that used to make me laugh. I owe myself an apology.
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
I wonder why The Daily Universe didn’t print that letter? Oh yeah, because you have to pay for advertising, no matter how cleverly disguised as a letter to the editor (not very in this case).