Joke... joke... joke!!!

Today, I said sorry to a colleague for a joke I made a few days ago.

I gave a very animated presentation. But before I went straight to my presentation, I tried to write albeit spontaneously in my mind a big bang opening. It was a joke about how excellent the local codes for children of Davao and Bohol were that other local government units copied them word for word. I said the joke in front of my officemates, knowing that it would bring the house down. Everybody indeed laughed. But somebody in the crowd took offense. The joke was not about her. It was about two provinces that were very far from where we were. But the joke hit her hard. Helping governments craft local codes was her project after all.

My colleague confronted me after my presentation. I said sorry then. I did not mean to put her project in a bad light. And I said sorry again earlier today.

This week, a local governor said a joke about the President. He called her the “luckiest bitch.” His remark became the global quip of the day. The opposition saw the opportunity to argue that even the President’s allies have a low regard for her.

In last week’s televised confrontation between ZTE-NBN witness Jun Lozada and the President’s men, Jun joked about feeling like a contestant in the TV game show, One vs 100. He also joked about the President’s men wearing suits while he was only in a white shirt. The President’s men were offended, saying that their coats and ties had nothing to do with the issue at hand.

I said sorry to my colleague. The governor said sorry to the President. Jun did not say sorry to the President’s men.

We say sorry for having blurted out jokes if we do not mean to offend. We do not say sorry when the jokes are meant to be, as a saying goes, half-truths. Hillary Clinton did not say sorry when she called Barrack Obama’s campaign a “change copied from Xerox.”

But if I were the President, I would be really furious if I were called a bitch.