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Specter's polish jokes a "tragedy"

U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) told a couple of Polish jokes before a crowd of a few hundred Republicans in Manhattan last week, and they went bullshit.

“He has been a longtime friend of the Polish community,” Blichasz said. “That’s why this is a tragedy, but he did apologize with the right words: It was inappropriate, and it will not happen again.”

That’s right– it was a tragedy! A tragedy! According to the president of the Polish American Congress of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania at least. And then he follows it up with a threat.

Wow!

According to the New York Post, Specter told…

…the old one about the man who interrupted him once, saying, “Hey, careful. I’m Polish!” Specter said he responded, “That’s OK– I’ll tell it more slowly.”

We always warn politicians that when they try to make with the funny, it’s like playing with old, wet dynamite.

But they never learn.

Specter launched a career in stand-up comedy about a year ago when he appeared at a Washington improv club. He told off-color jokes about Bob and Elizabeth Dole and Viagra. He told an irreverent joke about Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Barack Obama, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He made fun of former Sen. Trent Lott and his two-volume library.

But he broke the crowd up with a joke about the Americans With Disabilities Act, including a punch line too raunchy for a family newspaper. Specter said yesterday that it was an adult crowd that expected to hear jokes that were a little blue.