WASHINGTON, D.C. It was, said Clayton Furthnot, President of the National Council of Smart Alecks, the biggest “no-brainer” of his 62 years on earth. “And that’s saying something, given his lack of brains,” says George Sundpath, his counterpart at the American Federation of Wise Guys with a laugh to telegraph that he’s “only joshing.”
K Street, Washington, D.C.: “Everybody check your lobbyist, somebody’s got mine.”
What brings smiles to the faces of the two trade association bigwigs is the announcement yesterday that their groups will merge, forming the largest voluntary organization of mildly offensive verbal humor purveyors in America and possibly the universe. “This is HUGE,” says Sundpath, to which Furthnot ripostes “Almost as big as your flabby gut.”
Wisecrack-a-Palooza 2022.
The difference between a smart aleck and a wise guy is “slight, almost imperceptible,” says Professor Alton Birdsell of the University of Illinois-Kankakee’s Center for the Study of Annoying Personal Traits. “In Germany, you cannot calibrate the space between a wisenheimer and a weisenheimer,” he notes, “and the same is true here, where a smart-aleck is defined as a wise guy and vice versa.”
The two organizations hope to achieve economies of scale, selling one of their two headquarters along with the fully-depreciated office equipment it contains. “That Kinolta 1000x copier has seen better days,” says Furthnot, to which Sundpath replies “It’s never been the same since Bring Your Kid to Work Day in 2018 when your daughter photocopied her big butt on it.”
“Sweetie, Daddy’s just about ready to go–are you done in there?”
As with any large business combination the transaction faces legal scrutiny from both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s anti-trust unit, but neither man expects difficulty obtaining the necessary approvals. “Are you kidding?” Furthnot asks rhetorically. “Our lawyers make more than theirs do, and we’ve also purchased a few Congresspeople at end-of-season markdowns.”
That sounds a lot like my family gatherings.