Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Resignation Joke


Analyzing humor can be a pretty solemn pursuit. However, I must thank Richard Raskin of the Danish blog 16:9 for researching Groucho's famous resignation from the Friars Club. I am even more grateful that Mr. Raskin produced an English version of his essay. I wanted to use the line "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member," or some variant thereof, in an email. I went searching the internet, and of course found numerous paraphrases of the line Groucho used in a telegram when he decided he had made a mistake in joining the Friars Club. Google led me to the 16:9 blog, and this link will spare me the need to expend any more energy typing.