The Invitational Week 97: Give Us a Break

Winning jokes on the worst that could happen/could have happened.

Emmett Kelly as “Weary Willie” / Bettmann Archives

Hello.  Are you ready for some jocularity? 

Yeah, neither are we.   

Two weeks ago, when we launched the contest whose results are published today, we  envisioned that they would run two days after an election in which the United States reaffirmed its greatness, honoring the visions of its founders by rejecting the threat of tyranny and blunt-force governance. We’d somehow assumed that wisdom and compassion would triumph over ignorance and hatred. 

Instead, we are here. 

The contest sought to mine the humor inherent in the greatest fears of a bipolar electorate: the things the extreme right and the extreme left might dread would happen if the other side won.  The results were hilarious.  The entrants came through for us. We judged their work on Monday.  Then came Tuesday. 

We present the results today, far less convinced that they will seem funny.  We rely on a quote from some hack newspaper humor columnist, published a week after 9/11, in defense of The Style Invitational and other comedic sites: “When people are filled with grief, they need to cry.  When they are filled with fear, they need to laugh.”

The results of the political contest are below. The information about the new contest is right here:

There Is No New Contest!

No, we are not killing the Invitational. The Invitational still lives and thrives, despite and perhaps because of revolting world events. We are just taking a two-week break, and no, it is not for mourning. We’d been planning to do this for weeks.

It’s the first time we’ve interrupted the flow since we began the Substack Invitational almost two years ago. We’re going to skip two contests so that the Empress can actually have a vacation. (Without her, The Czar is like a helpless, drooling, powdered and diapered baby.)

Next Thursday’s Gene Pool will have the results of our Week 96 neologism contest — which you can still enter through Saturday, Nov. 9 — and the week after that we’ll announce a new contest but publish no results. So still, magically, there is an Invite every week.

The Laughtermath: The dire predictions of Week 95

In Invitational Week 95 we asked you to put yourself in the head of either a total Trumpster or total Harrister, consumed with fear of what this terrible other person would do starting Jan. 20, and jokingly predict some terrible consequence. The contest deadline was Nov. 2, three days before the election.

Third runner-up:
Of a Harris win: A zombie apocalypse ensues, led by all the dead people who voted for her. (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Second runner-up:
Of a Trump win: Everyone named Jack Smith will be fired, just to be on the safe side.  (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.) 

First runner-up:
Of a Trump win: January 6 will become a new national holiday, which we will observe by breaking into the nearest building and pooping in it. (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

And the winner of the “I Don’t Give a Shitake” mushroom plushie:
Of a Trump win: Trump will stage photo-ops at the renamed Tomb of the Unknown Sucker.  (Kevin Dopart, Washington D.C.) 

As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.

No Endorsement: Honorable mentions

Assuming Trump would win …

Not only will all lawn mowers and leaf blowers have to be powered by gas engines, but so will tricycles, flashlights, and wristwatches. (Gary Crockett)

The Washington Monument will be renamed the Arnold Palmer Monument. (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.; Lee Graham, Reston, Va.) 

Colin Kaepernick will be banned from kneeling to tie his shoes. (Jesse Rifkin, Arlington, Va.)  

Hurricane relief will consist of crossing out the disaster area on a map with a Sharpie so the storm never happened. (Daniel Galef, Cincinnati)

The Presidential Seal will be killed and eaten by RFK Jr. (Gary Crockett) 

History books will be required to refer to the Biden administration as “the Usurpation.”  (Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md. ) 

All big strong men in the United States will be required to follow Trump around weeping. (Duncan Stevens)  

Rudy Giuliani will be given a Humanitarian Service Award for donating a luxury Manhattan apartment and many valuables to a deserving Black family.  (Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.) 

Trump will issue an executive order replacing all miniature-golf windmills with with oil rigs. (Kevin Dopart)

“Jeopardy!”  contestants will be permitted to give a wrong answer so long as they add “A lot of people are saying.” (Jesse Rifkin) 

Alaska will be returned to the Russian Empire in exchange for prime dachas for Trump and his coterie. (Stephen Dudzik)  

Justices Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor will fly their U.S. flags upside down. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

As the new Wellness Czar, Melania will replace Obamacare with Ireallydontcare. (Kevin Dopart)  

Welcome your new Attorney General, the ghost of Roy Cohn. (Daniel Galef)

Trump will spend the week before his first State of the Union address going over all the details with his advisers, choosing what to cut and what to add so as to create the best possible playlist. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

Trump will announce a new policy to let in female immigrants who are “my type.” (Stephen Dudzik)

Assuming Harris would win:

School nurses will be so overworked providing gender-reassignment surgeries during regular school hours that lice will spread unchecked. (Daniel Galef)

Harris will celebrate her win like Brandi Chastain. (Jesse Frankovich)  

The military will be forced to move from the Pentagon to make room for the new headquarters of Planned Parenthood. (Jon Ketzner) 

Mattel will be ordered to make all Barbie and Ken dolls with genitalia — but in partnership with Lego, so the parts can be changed easily. (Kevin Dopart)

The emboldened woke left will invent so many new pronouns that they will outnumber nouns. (Daniel Galef)

She will install handholds on the border wall. (Jonathan Jensen)

She’ll put tampons in all the men’s public toilets . . . which will clog them, because you’re not supposed to do that. (Daniel Galef)

With no one to protect them, our women are forcibly groped and kissed by reality TV stars. (Steve Smith, Potomac, Md.)

Because of her the draconian tax on billionaires, Donald Trump will have to use a public defender.  (Terri Berg Smith, Rockville, Md.)   

The Department of Transportation will be renamed the Department of Trans.  (Lee Graham)

The headline “The Laughtermath” was submitted independently by Jeff Contompasis, Jon Gearhart, and Tom Witte; William Kennard wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, Nov. 9: our Week 96 contest for new words drawn from any of 36 seven-letter ScrabbleGrams “racks” we supply Click on the link below.

The Invitational Week 96: The Tile Invitational XI

We now enter the coveted Real-Time Segment of The Gene Pool, where Gene responds to your questions and observations, which were made in Real Time. Today’s Q’s and O’s (so far) is a potpourri, including belated Qs and O’s about this story by Rachel Manteuffel, about cancer and Donald Trump, a story that now seems a bit sadder. PLEASE send your Observations and Questions right here. They will be dealt with with alacrity and gusto, a promise employing an amazing sentence that uses the expression “with with.”

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Q: Last week, you asked about our biggest disappointments by people we trusted. Mine was when I learned that my childhood hero, Buzz Aldrin, had endorsed Donald Trump. I was a toddler when he walked on the moon! I grew up drinking TANG, devouring anything to do with NASA and the space program. I cried when Apollo was canceled.

I have followed Dr. Aldrin through the years. I cheered when he punched that obnoxious moon landing denier in his idiot face. I eagerly studied the Aldrin Cycler, and I still think it's the best way to get to Mars.

I can only imagine that Buzz is a single issue voter, and he's gotten close to Elon Musk because Musk has the biggest rocket ever built, he wants to colonize Mars, and he's been promised a seat on Starship. That's all that matters to Buzz.

So my hero went over to the dark side. I felt betrayed and disgusted, deeply saddened. Today I no longer care about space exploration, because it makes me think of my hero, now dead to me. 

A: I love Buzz, too.   I no longer try to figure out why some sane, decent person supported Trump.  I’d had an idea, a few weeks ago, of interviewing someone I know – someone I respect and whose judgment I rely on, professionally – for a column establishing why a reasonable individual might go Full Trump.   So we had a preliminary discussion, and the results made no sense and elucidated nothing.  For example, I asked him why he could support a rapist, and he responded that Trump is obviously not a rapist, because if he were a rapist he would have been jailed for it long ago.  BOOM.  Total ignorance and / or willful denial. A smart person being stupid in this one case. That’s not a column.

Q: Regarding your short piece from yesterday, dog people always imagine that the world in which people who are not them suffer is not so bad because their innocent dogs are so oblivious.... until someone is caught abusing dogs. Then, the effect on beings who are not them matters. Here's a thought experiment. Imagine the government being run by people who actively promote betting on dogfighting. To the death. That's how women feel today. Not only because an unbelievably better qualified woman lost (again!!!) to the abomination that is Donald Trump, but because his campaign was even more misogynistic than last time; the known consequences to women are much more concrete and extremely well documented and communicated; and.... apparently a majority of the popular vote was cast by people who DO NOT CARE. I'm glad your dog is happy but please -- don't try to make some parable about how life goes on because a well-cared for dog belongs to a man who doesn't believe in dogfighting.

A: Can’t disagree with anything you say.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Just click on the headline in the email and it will deliver you to the full column online. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

Today’s Q and A will be kinda short. I am exhausted. As are you. Some good stuff in there, though.

If, somehow, you are feeling generous (I don’t blame you if you are not) here is the button to upgrade your subscription to “paid.” It’s $50 a year, or $5 month-by-month. ’Twould be mighty nice of you. Also, note how I put the apostrophe, correctly, in front of, and not AFTER, the T. Even Dickens didn’t do that. Unless he did. I can’t be bother’d to check.

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This just in, from the great Jeff Tiedrich:

This is Gene.  The following sentiment  just got tweeted:

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Q: I loved Rachel’s story. It leads me to an overwhelming question: What kind of a name is “Manteuffel”?

A: It is of German origin.  One of Hitler’s most decorated generals was Hasso Eccard Freiherr von Manteuffel, a genius at panzer warfare.  Interestingly, he was never a Nazi.  He was also five foot two, so is likely not related to Rachel, who is five foot ten and of a completely different gender. Still,  she  sometimes calls him “Uncle Hasso.”  Uncle Hasso was briefly imprisoned after the war, but came to a noble end.  He  became an influential politician in West Germany, and lectured on military strategy  in perfect English at American colleges.  He was a good and brilliant man who had just happened, um, to work for Adolf Hitler.    

Q: In the last Gene Pool, you addressed a reader, anonymously, in response to the reader’s complaint that YOU were his or her biggest disappointment.  You said he or she was making certain untrue assumptions, but declined to publish the question or answer.  Can you elucidate, even a little?

A: The writer said she was deeply disappointed in me when my wife and I got separated and I subsequently became romantically involved with Rachel, who is three decades younger than I am.  I welcomed the criticism but said honestly that I could not answer it because I would inevitably invade the privacy of others.   Her question was valid, as was my answer.  I did not resent it.  That’s it.  

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Q: From Rachel’s story: "And while sometimes I got to do-over whole meals, there was sometimes no joy in food. It all tasted like soy sauce."

Not Indian curry? I mean, she really missed an opportunity here to fight your fight. 

A: Rachel likes Indian curry.  It is our only substantive  disagreement.  It only slightly threatens our relationship.

After the story came out, she did get a communique from the friend of a friend, also a chemotherapy survivor, saying, “YUP,  SOY SAUCE!  That’s the taste I was trying to think of.”

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Q: Geez, I had hoped to see him spend some time in prison, or at least home detention with a big ol’ cankle bracelet. Now the inmates truly run the joint. 

— Stephen Dudzik

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Q: This election has confirmed for me that the average American is stupider, and more racist, sexist and selfish than I gave them credit for.

A: “Give them credit for” is an excellent use of a verb phrase.   It reminds me of the occasional sports headline that reads like this:  White Sox “clinch” worst season ever.  

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Q: Finally, finally after a day of despair, I have seen a joke that made me laugh. It appeared on Reddit originally and was reposted by a friend to Facebook. Here it is.

Why did Kamala Harris lose the election? She lacked conviction.

Is it a good joke?

A: No.

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Q: Tonight (Monday, 11/4/24), a commentator on ABC News with David Muir reported that, in response to Trump's recent rally performances, a source close to Trump said "it's almost like he's trying to lose."

Could he BE trying to lose? It occurs to me that he can make a lot more money as a loser, than a President. Given some of his recent "investments," he won't be able to pump them up the way he can now. Not to mention the millions he can raise to keep himself out of jail. And there's another windfall in political donations if he immediately says he'll run in 2028. If he wins he won't be able to run again, so why wouldn't he want to run this scam as long as he can?

Tom Logan, Sterling, Va

A:  No.  Trump did not WANT to lose.   That makes him a loser.  He thinks like a child. Also, he very VERY much wanted to stay out of prison.

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Q: One more observation on the election. I turned 70 last month and Trump’s campaign is the only one I can remember that based 100% on lies. 

Trump: “Crime is up!” - Fact: Crime is down. 

Trump: “We have open borders!” - Fact: Border crossings are lower than at any time in the Trump administration.

Trump: “The economy is terrible!” - Fact: The economy is better than just about any wealthy country.

Etc, etc. Fox News is responsible for an awful lot of this. The public, or a little more than half of it, is living in a different reality. 

— Sean Clinchy, Charlottesville.

A: Also, all true. 

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Q: Does Trump's win mean that we can go back to when America was great, like, can Jimmy Kimmel bring back "Girls Jumping On Trampolines?" Tom Logan -Sterling, VA

A: That’s Day One, what Trump means by being a Dicktator. Kimmel will be ordered to.

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This is Gene. I am calling us down, because I am really, really exhausted. I’ve been thinking of writing every day in the Gene Pool, because you are responding very well to it. Talk me out of it, please. Thanks!

Also, please keep sending in questions and observations, because I need them and will respond to them at length. Send them here:

See you on the weekend. Or, sigh, maybe tomorrow, if briefly.