Attorney's wife tells advice columnist she’s fed up with lawyer jokes
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An attorney’s wife was “deeply shocked” when the emcee at a patriotic musical program made some disparaging remarks about lawyers after expressing support for service members and others who serve society.
The wife told advice columnist Miss Manners that she was sitting in the front row during the program with her 80-year-old husband, who still practices law. “The audience did not laugh,” the woman reported. “In fact, I heard several gasps, as we are well-known in our community and I believe many people were embarrassed for us.”
After the program, the woman told the emcee that her husband had been practicing law for 55 years “helping literally thousands of people.”
“I told him that our nation was founded on laws, and both he and I were very proud of his profession and the work that he has done,” the woman wrote. The emcee apologized, but the woman “went home thinking how cruel such tasteless jokes are.”
“My husband said it was not good manners for me to express my displeasure with his remark,” the woman wrote. “I, however, have had enough of ‘lawyer jokes’ and think those who hear them and are offended should speak up. In my opinion, no one should ever disparage another person’s profession.”
Miss Manners agreed that disparaging jokes about any profession are risky and tasteless.
But Miss Manners suggested that it would have been better to let the emcee learn his lesson from the audience’s tepid reaction. The woman’s admonishment “likely only taught him the unfair and inaccurate lesson that lawyers’ spouses are even more humorless than lawyers themselves,” Miss Manners wrote.
