Make Lawyer Jokes a Crime? Maybe Just Bad Ones

Heard a great lawyer joke last week.

Group of law-school graduates is taking the Bar exam in Pasadena. One falls to the floor in an epileptic seizure. Starts turning blue. Only five of 500 test takers put down their pencils to help. Bar officials refuse to give the five extra time on their exams. Ba da boom!

Oops, sorry. That’s a true story.

What was that joke?

Oh, yeah, I remember.

President of the California Bar Assn. holds a press conference in Century City. He announces--deadpan--that lawyer jokes should be classified as hate crimes.

Best one I’ve heard since someone told me the difference between a lawyer and a catfish! (One is a bottom-dwelling garbage eater; the other, a fish.)

No, wait a second.

This guy’s not kidding.

Imagine that: Lawyer wants to classify anti-attorney speech--known to laypeople as jokes --as criminal. Hey, why should a lawyer care about constitutional protections, about free speech? We’re talking hurt feelings here.

Can’t you just see the public-service announcements: Dis an attorney, go to jail .

The possibilities boggle the mind:

You are charged with asking why lawyers don’t go to the beach. In a tense courtroom moment, you confess: “Yes, your honor, I told the joke. The reason lawyers do not go to the beach is because cats keep trying to bury them.”

In a truly perfect world, you would be convicted. But not for telling a lawyer joke. You would do time for telling such a bad one.

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At his press conference, state Bar President Harvey Saferstein compared lawyer-bashing to racism and sexism, inasmuch as lawyer jokes negatively brand an entire class of people.

Class? Lawyers? In the same sentence?

But seriously, the comparison is spurious. Unlike women and members of racial minorities, lawyers aren’t born that way. They have a choice. Don’t like the heat? Stay away from ambulances. I mean, change professions.

The beautiful thing about lawyer jokes is that lawyers come in all colors, all religions and from all social strata. Plus, there are so darn many of them. In Los Angeles County, there’s about one lawyer for every 160 people. Making fun of them is a democratic pastime.

Anyway, lawyers are not some downtrodden, defenseless group. This group lives to argue, lives to conquer, lives to see the other guy lose.

Saferstein’s illogic would be funny except for the connection he drew between lawyer jokes and last week’s murderous rampage in San Francisco that left nine people dead. Implying that such humor is part of a continuum that ends in murder stretches the boundaries of credibility.

It’s not just jokes that tick him off. Saferstein also objects to the Miller beer commercial in which a cowboy, who has lost his bass boat in a divorce, ropes and hogties his wife’s attorney at a mock rodeo. Nor is he pleased with the Reebok spots that suggest a perfect planet is one where there are “no lawyers.”

“When lawyer jokes become the basis for prejudice and bigotry, a line has been crossed which can lead to dangerous situations,” said Saferstein.

Comparing the acts of a crazed gunman to asking how many lawyers it takes to change a light bulb (How many can you afford?) is political correctness gone amok.

If Saferstein’s logic is sound, how then to account for the fact that no murder sprees have been reported against other popular subjects of theme jokes: blondes, dumb men, cucumbers?

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If lawyers are worried about being the butts of jokes (and this is a suspect position since attorneys are among the worst offenders when it comes to repeating them), maybe they should try to boost the public trust.

In that spirit, the American Bar Assn.’s recent announcement that it will launch a $700,000 campaign to improve the public image of attorneys is a step in the right direction.

Suggested campaign motto: Lawyers are people, too. Medical proof on file.

In an adversarial, overly complicated judicial system such as the one we are stuck with, it’s only natural that people get frustrated.

Frustration that expresses itself in humor is healthy. Asking that lawyers be put in some protected class of people--or suggesting, as Saferstein did, that lawyer bashing is “hate speech that is as heinous as all other forms of bigotry”--only makes lawyers look foolish.

Lawyers, why not just take your lumps? Learn to laugh at yourselves.

Or weep, if you must, all the way to the bank.