Welcome to Thinking Out Loud, a blog that contains postings from The Tampa Tribune’s Editorial Board and from various Tribune Community Columnists. Unlike the unsigned editorials that represent the newspaper’s institutional voice, the blog postings offer personal perspectives on the issues, personalities and events of Tampa Bay.
We invite you to participate by posting your comments. We’ll do our best to respond.
Contributors:
Joe Guidry
Joe Guidry is the deputy editorial page editor of The Tampa Tribune. He is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida. He is married and has an adult son.
Jeff Stidham
Jeff Stidham grew up and lives in Bartow. He has been with the Tribune for nearly 22 years, the last 10 on the editorial board.
William Yelverton
William Yelverton is a Tribune editorial writer who has worked for the paper nearly 22 years. He lives in the Dade City area.
Jim Beamguard
Jim Beamguard is a Tribune editorial writer. He is a native of North Carolina and a graduate of Davidson College. He and his family live in Brandon.
Jackie Papandrew:
Jackie Papandrew is a freelance writer and editor. Her syndicated humor column appears in publications in the United States, Canada and India. She lives in Largo with her husband and children. Visit her website at www.jackiepapandrew.com.
Camille Beredjick
Camille Beredjick is a senior at Chamberlain High School, an avid musician and a scribbler with a quirky sense of humor. In the fall, she will be attending Northwestern University to study journalism, political science and music, and she plans to pursue a career in journalism.
Jim Harnish
Jim Harnish is in his 17th year as Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa. He and his wife, Marsha, have two daughters and two grandchildren. He is a graduate of Asbury Theological Seminary and received the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bethune-Cookman University. He is the author of six books and numerous articles and studies. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren and cheering for the Florida Gators.
Angela Hunt
Angela Hunt is a novelist living in Pinellas County with her husband and two 220-pound mastiffs.
Sheryl Young
Sheryl Young was a Tampa Tribune Community Columnist in 2005-2006. A freelance writer since 1997, including the Tampa Bay Business Journal, Tampa Style Magazines, St. Pete Times and nationally in Better Nutrition, Today’s Christian Woman and more. She’s received a First Place Amy Foundation national "Roaring Lambs" Writing Award, and has lived in Tampa Bay with her family for over 20 years.
Christie Gold
Christie Gold teaches English and journalism at Freedom High School in Tampa where she advises Revolution, the school newspaper. She has been both the Hillsborough County Teacher of the Year and Florida Journalism Teacher of the Year. She lives on a small farm in Wesley Chapel where she trains as a competitive equestrian.
Natalie D. Preston
Natalie D. Preston is a karaoke singing, only-child pouting, Seminole Tomahawk waving, newlywed bride blushing, 50-state traveling, girlie girl who loves to shop, read, run and jump up and down on her soapbox.
Fernando Figueroa
Fernando Figueroa is a researcher, educator and lives in Riverview.
Gary Beemer
Interests include humor, politics, economics, community and world affairs, finance, people, religion, music, sports, current events, the arts and education.
Nicole Yunger Halpern
Nicole Yunger Halpern is an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where she studies everything she can get her nerdy little hands on. Desired major: life. No, not necessarily biology. Life.
Kris DiGiovanni
Kris DiGiovanni is a Tribune Community Columnist, Huffington Post contributor, Daily Kos diarist, and teacher, who recently moved from NW Hillsborough to another planet - a small beach community in Pinellas County. She also blogs at www.sandscript.wordpress.com
H. David Braswell Jr.
H. David Braswell Jr. is an Information Systems Professional. He is a native New Yorker and a lifelong NY Giants fan. He attended college in California (Cal State Northridge) and moved to Tampa in 1998.
Sean Marcus
Sean Marcus teaches creative writing, journalism and reading at Chamberlain High School. He has one son and is
expecting a daughter in early March. He can be reached at wuizabug@gmail.com
As a professional columnist who writes on matters of pressing national importance, I sometimes have to deal with difficult people. These people share a common trait - they openly admit to being men.
One such brazen fellow contacted me recently to let me know that he did not believe I actually write my columns, suggesting I must employ the services of a male ghostwriter.
“Your columns are too funny,” he wrote. “And women aren’t funny.”
This reader’s chauvinistic comments really got my goat. But after I’d calmed down, retrieved my goat and put him (or her) back in my mental barn, I started thinking about gender differences in the appreciation of humor. And I did a little research. Turns out, it has been scientifically proven that men and women process “funny” differently.
Some scientists have done some serious scientific studies, and they have discovered that women appear to think a bit more about whether or not they find something amusing.
These scientific studies threw around a lot of brain lingo with some pre-frontal cortex mumbo-jumbo attached to it, but to boil it down, women were found to take some time to truly enjoy a comedic experience. Women like sharing narratives that create a bonding moment. If a woman has something funny to say, you should probably grab a seat because the punch line isn’t coming for a while.
Women laugh more at themselves, and they don’t do crude. We’d never ask someone to pull our finger.
Men, on the other hand, like making fun of everyone. They like one-liners and sucker punches that come with a sting. They consider bodily noises an art form, from the perfect armpit fart (which I’ll admit does take some skill) to the loudest burp. Men are humor primitives – man hears joke, man thinks, “Oh, a joke,” man laughs because, well, it’s a joke. They don’t have the attention span or the desire to wait for the rib-tickling to begin.
This ability to be easily amused is a wonderful quality for members of your audience to have if you are in the business of trying to make people laugh. It also explains the appeal of such nauseatingly stupid (from a female perspective) movies as the seemingly unending “Jackass” series.
But it renders the XY side of our species (AKA men) incapable of appreciating more sophisticated female funnies. That’s why, as a professional humor columnist with a duty to tickle as many funny bones as possible - regardless of gender - I often write about simple things. It’s also why, if one of my male readers actually laughs at one of my columns, he may be skeptical that it was written by a woman.
And that is why men don’t think women are funny. In the world of wit, we occupy different planes of existence.
I really am a girl, guys, and I really do write my own material. But in order to further my comedic career and appeal to the widest possible audience, I frequently try to think like a man. Pull my finger.
