[BlogEntry] Halle Berry To Convert To Judaism….for the jokes

Taking a page straight out of a Seinfeld episode, Halle Berry offered a rather telling apology for a "Jewish slur" she said on the Tonight Show. They were doing one of those bits where they take pictures of her and use a computer to distort them, and when she came to one with a big nose she said "And this one is my Jewish cousin."

Yikes. 10 years ago we wouldn't have called that Jewish slur, we would have just called it a bad joke.

20 years ago, Don Rickles would have said the exact same thing and followed it up with "Just kidding, I love the Jews, my agent is Jewish" and he would have killed.

These days the audience is silent, the Tonight Show producers edit out the segment, and the star offers an apology the next day.

The funny thing about her apology, though, is that she claims she was simply repeating what had been said backstage by "the three Jewish girls that work for me." So Ms. Berry, in repeating the joke, forgot one of the cardinal rules of the ethnic joke – you can only tell jokes about the race/ethnicity/sexual orientation/religion that you personally belong to. Because if you're not, then you must have meant it in an offensive manner, you see. (Note sarcasm).

In other words, she could have told a black joke and the audience would have laughed. Or she could have had her people send out a press release stating that she's converting to Judaism. Both would have been ok.