When is a joke not a joke? When it is told by a politician. Helen Clark once said that she gave up being funny in public because nobody, meaning the media mostly, knew when she was being funny. That was a shame. She is capable of being very funny, in her drily acerbic way. But she knew how to read a room, and she knew when the room wasn’t laughing.
Timing is all. Also, there is another criterion: a joke is not a joke when it is not funny. The telling of unfunny jokes says a lot about the joke teller. Take the case of the now-former National Party candidate for Taieri, Stephen Jackass. Just joking. Ha,
