Judge, 1928-07-07 · page 10 of 36
Judge — July 7, 1928 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "How We Make Our Jokes 100% Perfect" This is a humorous behind-the-scenes piece about **Oscar C. Judge**, founder of *Judge* magazine (a real satirical weekly). The article satirizes the magazine's own joke-creation process through absurdist exaggeration. The joke: Judge describes an elaborate, ridiculous system where submitted jokes are fed into a mechanical "grading machine" (shown in the photograph) that spins at 2,000 revolutions per minute. Different staff members bet on whether jokes will be rated "Lousy," "Rotten," "Poor," "Fair," "Funny," or "Wow"—with the result supposedly determining the joke's quality. The satire mocks: - The magazine's self-importance and formulaic approach - Corporate bureaucracy and over-systematization - The pretense that humor can be mechanically perfected The absurdist wheel and betting system lampoon the impossibility of manufacturing comedy through rigid processes. It's self-aware satire about *Judge* magazine's own operations, poking fun at the notion that wit can be manufactured, graded, and polished like industrial products.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JUDGE HOW WE MAKE OUR JOKES 100% PERFECT By Jack Shuttleworth 14th Assistant to General Purchasing Agent Forty-seven years ag de med Osear C. Judge began writing jokes on a shoc-string. He wrote, “I'll make you rich if shoe-string al with me,” and sent it to the American Mercury. The American Mer- cury sent it back. He sent it to them again and again they returned it. But this young man was not to be discouraged. He kept right them until fin sent back to him. in the mail, That is DE termined young man 1 n sending it to MINATION; that is VISION; that is what decided Osear Judge to go into busi- ness for himself and in 1880 he started a magazine of his own and called it: “OSCAR JUDG JOKE BOOK, The World's Wittiest’ Weekly, on Sale at All Newsstands—I5e a oday that magazine is known as Jupar and it is read in every country of the world, including the Scandir cach week it uses t jokes, quips, ep! vian and yusands of ms and OSCAR C. JUDGE Founder of the world's wittiest weekly. bright sayings of Willy, aged 5. Now all this material must of course be graded and sorted according to size and quality. The picture on the left shows how it is done, Let us say, for instance, that a man in’ Ka kake named Horace falls down and breaks his leg. Well, his wife thinks that ought to give somebody a big zh, so she telephones Jur that her Horace has broken a leg and wonders if she should shoot him. This message is ed by Jupar’s official joke receiver as shown in the photograph and is put into the machine in the foreground and whirled around at 2,000 revo- lutions per minute. ‘The editor his staff then place bets on the outcow The editor bets on Lousy; the associate editors bet on Rotten; th sistant editors bet on Poor; the assis- tant associate editors bet on Fair; the associate assistant editors bet on Funny and the assistant associate sistant editors bet on Wow. WI it’s all over the arrow points at Lousy, so the editor wins the joke is sent to the cleaning and renovating department and from there it goes to. the finishing department, where it is polished up and wrapped in and printed in the comicbooks.com