Laura Bush

There was some feigned controversy recently over Laura Bush's joke that her husband had tried to milk a male horse. In fact, the joke was on the people who thought that she was describing some form of bestiality: the point of this old farm joke is that someone tried to do something exceedingly stupid that would get him kicked across the farmyard in half a second.

My grandfather was a farmer in Arkansas for many years, and one of his favorite jokes was this:

Q: How do you know when it's time to wean a child?

A: When he comes in and says, "Pa, gimme a chaw of tobacco. Ma's been in the bitterweed again."