Friday, September 28, 2007

Did You Hear The One About The Lawyer?

Whether you realize it or not a big reason why lawyer jokes are so big is because there has been a consistent effort for decades to push that frame and ridicule lawyers by business groups, conservative talk radio hosts, newspaper columnists, websites like Drudge Report, and now Fox News. You rarely hear positive stories about attorneys even though they are available, but if you want to attack attorneys then you pretty much have a research library. Of course there is the idea that people just like bad news, but if that is the case I have one question. Where are the greedy CEO jokes? "What did the CEO do when he had record profits? He cut benefits and shipped all the jobs to China." We're just not trained to react to that. So, next time someone tells you a lawyer joke feel free to laugh, even lawyers do, but do know that they or you only know that joke because someone else wants you to know it. Think about it.

4 comments:

  1. read my post about domestic violence in MS on my blog this week and you might see why more than a few people have such low opinion of lawyers.

    when are you going to go to godaddy.com and spend the 8 bucks for a domain name?

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  2. There has actually been a serious scholarly book written about the history of lawyer jokes--Marc Galanter, Lowering the Bar (U of Winconsin Press, 2005)--that could be relevant. I haven't read it, so I don't know how relevant, or in what ways.

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  3. www.cottonmouthblog.com
    www.cottonmouthblog.net
    www.cottonmouthblog.org

    I bought all 3 on godaddy in the spring.

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