Jokes And Audience

Twitter-gate of Tharoor's has produced a lot of literature. This article by Manishankar Aiyar stands out. Aiyar makes a simple point: you should know your audience before cracking joke. Or the joke would backfire.

And I can't resist copy-pasting this:

The long-serving Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, was at an elegant dinner. His neighbour, a leading Washington socialite, gushed to him, “Mr Ambassador, what do you think would have happened if Lee Harvey Oswald had shot Khruschev instead of Kennedy?” Gravely thinking over this profound poser, Dobrynin replied, “Madam, I do not think Onassis would have married Mrs Khruschev!”

Then, Aiyar adds, if this joke is to be retold today, one will have to explain...
... who was Dobrynin, what was the Soviet Union...that just before killing Kennedy, Oswald had been in Moscow; that after the assassination, Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, had shocked the world by marrying an obscenely wealthy Greek ship-owner called Aristotle Onassis...