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I think the joke I came up with is inoffensive enough (provided you're not Vladimir Putin), but I figured I could use a sanity check by more socially astute people before posting it anywhere else.

Q. Why does Putin support jailing LGBT people?

A. Because he secretly participates in drag queen contests in Moscow's gay bars but he always comes in last place. One day Putin thinks "Aha! If I have all the gays jailed then I will have no competition in the contests! Drag queen of the year here I come!"

Eh, it'll probably offend some people, but it's tame compared to what South Park and Family Guy put in a typical episode. My only criticism would be that the punch line is too wordy and cumbersome.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it's lamer than a horse with 3 broken legs.

muse wrote: ↑2019-03-29 09:05pm On a scale of 1 to 10, it's lamer than a horse with 3 broken legs.

Well I did think of this when I was half-asleep so... probably.

muse wrote: ↑2019-03-29 09:05pm On a scale of 1 to 10, it's lamer than a horse with 3 broken legs.

So it still has a leg to stand on?

Tribble wrote: ↑2019-03-29 09:27pm So it still has a leg to stand on?

Yes, but it's not going anywhere, and will soon be euthanized to end the suffering.

Still, one has to wonder how bad Putin must be to get last place at EVERY gay bar in a major city...

He likes going around bare-chested, so...

I think the better joke would be:

Why did Putin start jailing the gays in Russia?

Because he once wrestled the wrong kind of bear.

I think just as a general rule if your punchline is 6-7 times longer than your setup, your joke needs work.

Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that.

Vendetta wrote: ↑2019-03-30 08:38am I think just as a general rule if your punchline is 6-7 times longer than your setup, your joke needs work.

Brevity is the soul of wit, and all that.

Yeah. The punchline's too clunky.

Jub beat me to improving it though.

Or maybe this as a punchline?

A. As Putin said: "drag queen of the year, here I come!"

Maybe that changes the three broken legs to three merely paralyzed legs?

SolarpunkFan wrote: ↑2019-04-04 08:39am Or maybe this as a punchline?

A. As Putin said: "drag queen of the year, here I come!"

Maybe that changes the three broken legs to three merely paralyzed legs?

No.
Jub's version combines something that is "Putinesque" behavior "guy wrestles a bear" with the "some gay people are called bears" to create a plausible narrative.

Yours tries to establish that Putin is an avid cross dresser/drag queen, which is not related to anything people would readily attribute to him.

It's like saying

Why is Trumps' golf swing exceptionally stable? - Retractable bone spurs.

The same would not work for "Why is Trump a great sprinter?" - because the assumption that Trump moves faster than a waddle is disrupting the cognitive acceptance of your joke. People would be so preoccupied by the impossible prerequisite that the joke falls flat.

If you really wanted to make a joke about Putin as a drag queen you could go with:

Why is Putin so obsessed with staying in power? Because he's always wanted to be a queen.

Even that's a pretty so-so joke that needs context to work. Using drag queen is also too long a term for a good punchline unless you can relate it back to the setup better.

As an - offensive - example you could go with:

What do you call a cross-dresser being towed behind a truck? A drag queen.

That joke works because it plays off of the word drag though it's a shitty joke for being bigoted as hell and thus still isn't funny.