Minister Burke, the joke is on you

Do you like jokes? I like jokes. In fact I heard a really good one recently that I feel compelled to share with you:

So there's this tourist travelling across Canada, and he decides to visit one church in every province that he stops in. So he gets off the plane in British Columbia and visits a church, and they have a phone line directly to heaven that costs 100 dollars to use. He doesn't use it, of course, because that's an obscene price for a phone call, period. So he heads out to Alberta and finds that at the next church they have the same line to heaven, but this one costs 80 dollars. Thinking there might be pattern to this, his next stop is a church in Ontario and sure enough, there's another phone line to heaven and it costs 50 dollars. He heads to New Brunswick next, where it costs 20 dollars, and finally he runs out of room to head east in Canada and makes his last stop in a church here in Newfoundland, where he discovers that the line to heaven is only 25 cents - the reason being, of course, that he's already there.

Aww.

But wait, it gets better:

While he's stopped over in Newfoundland he hears someone mention that they've got the same thing over in Ireland; so obviously, he jumps at the chance to continue his investigation of these bizarre heavenly phones. Of course, when he gets there, he realises they have a totally different pricing scheme on the other side of the pond, and he's told that it'll cost him about 300 pounds to use their line to heaven. Naturally, he makes the call and then leaves his wife behind.

Hah, I love that one. Unfortunately I can't take credit for it though, since I got it from federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn. Or maybe I didn't. At this point, I'm not really sure if I did or not, and apparently neither is Mr. Hearn or Education Minister Joan Burke.

Honestly I'm not entirely sure Joan Burke is in any position to criticise anyone for over their choice of comedy (or lack thereof). Based on everything I've ever heard her say both in and out of the House, I can only assume that she is the sort of person who enjoys Mallard Fillmore unironically:



That aside, the joke in question - which apparently neither CBC or VOCM will reproduce in print medium - is pretty tame as far as sexist jokes go, to the point where I firmly believe that anyone finding it legitimately and/or offensively sexist desperately needs to get out more (Lorraine Michael, are you reading this?). If it makes you more comfortable, feel free to imagine the protagonist as a woman and replace the word "wife" with "husband" and it's essentially the same joke, although this might make it somewhat more difficult for the Education Minister to claim moral outrage about it.

Also, claiming moral outrage over a joke you never actually heard except through hearsay seems like an extremely frivolous and hilariously trivial thing to do that no sane government member would ever actually follow through on. Or at least, you would assume as much, until you remember that our provincial government has gone completely overboard in its grudge match with the federal Conservative party to the point of being so desperate to come up with something to offset recent spending announcements that they've resorted to trying to make a mountain out of what they heard might be a molehill (but aren't really sure).

Ironically, what Joan Burke and the provincial government don't seem to realise is that by blowing up at the federal Conservatives over everything they do and actively trying to make sure none are elected to the House from this province, they'll create a situation in which the only jokes they'll be hearing from federal Ministers in another (likely) Harper minority government will all start with "so, there's this Newfie..."