Girth of a Nation

So there were several things that I agree with that were brought up in class about Girth of a Nation. I also noticed that Ralphie May joked about himself first. I felt like this was a good approach especially knowing his subject matter was race-- this way instead of just possibly offending someone in the audience, he made it look like, "hey, I'm making fun of myself, too!" I also noticed a lot of his audience was southern white people-- had he been making jokes about African-Americans in front of a purely African-American crowd, I think he would have had a much different outcome. It would be like me standing up in front of a crowd of men and telling "women-jokes" like the selections from Ann Stephens or Sarah Kemble Knight. But he made it much more universal by making fun of all types of people by poking fun at his weight before he introduced the racial jokes. He also tried to down-play it by saying, "it's just a joke," but I don't think he could have said whatever he wanted to and then make anyone think it was okay by saying, "it's just a joke," but he picked the right amount of "tame-ness" to be able to make the jokes he did.