A Conversation about Fat Jokes

Last updated on: December 29, 2014 at 5:56 pm by Mark Shea

A Conversation about Fat Jokes 2014-12-29T17:56:46-07:00 Mark Shea

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A reader wrote me in puzzlement because some Anonymous crashed her embroidery blog with a (to her) cryptic remark:

And it continues! I’m not even sure what “pastry pontiff” means. And Anonymous was off-topic — his/her comment wasn’t about hardanger embroidery at all!

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “On the Last Day of Christmas”:

why do you follow the pastry pontiff mark shea?

It’s a reference to the poet laureate of the third grade playground, Rick DeLano, producer of “The Principle” Apparently somebody (not me) wondered where he got the money for his goofy movie on the “science” of geocentrism. His reply was a poetic rejoinder to the effect that I am fat. No. Really:

Concerning the Financing of “The Principle”, And Other Matters……

Many of our less-friendly objectors have made inquiries as to the financial aspects of our project.I would never wish to preempt what promises to be an entertaining- even comedic!- quest on their part. ;-)However, in a spirit of giving as good as we get, I reply:

There is a Pastry Pontiff, I’m sure you know his name.
He rattles cups and rattles nerves and genr’ly fans the flame
Of his great Inquisition into a dang’rous bunch
The film they made cost almost half enough to buy him lunch.

Anonymous people think this is brilliant and have joined in, just to make super-clear for the less literate in the crowd that they mean me. Cuz you can never be too careful to make sure that everybody gets the joke, since poetry is, like, hard and stuff (especially for people whose main reading runs to Geocentrism Explained, Mein Kampf, and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion) So we also are also treated to:

On the Retirement of “The Pastry Pontiff”

Reader Hugh Beaumont writes:

It really is not kosher
To engage in this kibbitz
He’d rather your ad hominems
Were ad hominy grits.

I reply:

Yes, “Pastry” is ad hominem.

It’s true.

You’re right.

Touche!

Henceforth, the “Pastry Pontiff”

shall remain

just plain

“Mark Shea”

Get it? He means me. Funny, amirite? (By the way, I totally have to give him props for “ad hominy” for being both clever and majestically hypocritical). My reader, having surveyed the literary oeuvre of DeLano and Co, remarks:

Classy! I was envisioning some sort of connection to Hot Cross Buns or holiday baking (and I kept thinking of a pope all flaky and delicious). This is a great article about how fat jokes are the go-to jokes for people criticizing Gov. Christie, and how lazy and not cool that is.

Meh. People who can’t handle fat jokes should not be governor of NJ or writing blogs read by a lot of people–especially if they engage i controversies with those people. Fact is, I’m, ‘ow you say? “portly” (and that’s after having dropped 80 pounds). So if I can’t cope with fat jokes from third graders I’d better hang up my spurs. As a fat guy, I think Chesterton is right: to be fat is to be laughed at. It’s just that being laughed at is not being rebutted (it’s just being BIG BUTTED! HA! I SLAY ME!) But seriously, that DeLano needs to resort to this has “pathetic” written all over it.

To which my reader replies:

I agree that it makes DeLano look pathetic. As for Chesterton’s comment, I believe a fat gal would disagree, given the extraordinary pressure placed on women to look “hot.” : >

Fair enough. I’m not super-tuned-in to gender differences when it comes to fat jokes since pretty much the only fat person I tell jokes about as I sit around the house (AND I MEAN AROUND THE HOUSE! NYUK! NYUK!) is myself. My mama taught me you don’t discuss a woman’s figure and my Lord taught me that charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Our culture’s obsession with looks is one of the major contributors to our profound shallowness and breathtaking stupidity. Any civilization that is willing to pay professional tanner Snooki Polizzi $32,000 to speak at Rutgers has lost the right to criticize a woman based on her looks.

That said, I do have to confess that the spectacle of… well, big-boned nuns galumphing about in sensible shoes and short-cropped iron gray hair to give praise to the goddess has prompted me on more than one occasion to run my pic of Sr. Orbis Rotunda:

The people attracted to inflicting liturgical dance on the rest of us, like the people attracted to displaying their theories about nudism for the rest of us, are virtually never the people who should be doing these things. They are worse than egoists: they are rude intrusive egoists demanding the rest of us applaud them as they trample over our worship of God with their obnoxious Heylookitme junk. I think the proper response to a rude intrusive egoist, especially one who hogs the limelight while Jesus Christ is in the room, is laughter. Their problem is not a fat body, but a fat head (though the body doesn’t help and is a proper object for criticism when it is precisely the body and nothing else in the act of dance that is being thrust into the limelight in order to hog that limelight.) If a nun feels the need to dance before the Lord, let her do it in her cloister or living room like good St. Teresa of Avila. She even used castanets!

Uncategorized

Mailbag

Previous Post

January 23, 2014

Photo Journal of the March for Life

Next Post

January 24, 2014 Hopeful News for My Mom

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 September 2006 June 2006 July 2005 April 2005 May 2002 April 2002 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz