The Sunday Times food writer Michael Winner risks jail every week. He tells Jewish jokes. Worse, they invoke Jewish stereotypes and they tempt us, howsoever reluctantly, to laugh at Jews. He gets away with it because he is Jewish.

It's a truism that Jewish jokes are at their most amusing when told by Jews, Irish jokes by the Irish and Islamic jokes by... duh, are there are any Islamic jokes? And so forth. Why? Because the narrator's race adds a touch of self-deprecating irony. Most jokes have ...
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