Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.
November 26, 2009 8:59 AM   Subscribe

"I'm not a vegetarian, I eat meat. It's not because I love the taste of meat, it's because I hate cows." Where have I heard this joke before?

Dan Cummins was on Conan last night and the above is a paraphrase of one of "his" jokes. I'm absolutely certain that I've heard this joke in someone elses routine.. Who was Dan "influenced" by when he "wrote" this joke?
posted by bunnytricks to Media & Arts (13 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: A. Whitney Brown, who is a comedy writer and was a Daily Show Correspondent early on, had a quote very similar to this:

"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. "

This may be the basis for the quote.
posted by SNWidget at 9:02 AM on November 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


Google turns up this, which discusses a video of a comedian who says "I just hate cows so much. I eat it for moral reasons. It feels so good that more of them are dying." But the video link seems borked.
posted by Beardman at 9:05 AM on November 26, 2009


Best answer: Nevermind, an unborked version of the video is Dan Cummins'!
posted by Beardman at 9:09 AM on November 26, 2009


Yeah, I've been telling the vegetarian version of this joke for 20 years now. I'm sure it's just floating in the joke ether for all to pluck when the time calls for it.
posted by serazin at 9:13 AM on November 26, 2009


Google returns thousands of results for the phrase 'because I hate cows.' They're not all basically the same joke, but quite a few of 'em are. There is nothing new under the sun.
posted by box at 9:13 AM on November 26, 2009


Response by poster: It could be the A. Whitney Brown joke I'm thinking of, but for some reason I'm picturing a guy whose delivery is somewhere between Steven Wright and Denis Leary telling the bit. Maybe I'm just overlaying Denis Leary into my mental image because he's a well known joke thief.
posted by bunnytricks at 9:20 AM on November 26, 2009


Well, Leary has this "meat tastes like murder and murder tastes pretty goddamn good" bit, which may be what you're thinking of.
posted by eggplantplacebo at 12:16 PM on November 26, 2009


Jim Gaffigan very probably had a routine along those lines at one time or another, and his delivery is within the range. (Although, to be honest, Steven Wright and Dennis Leary are just about polar opposites in terms of delivery, so damn near everyone falls in that range.)
posted by Sys Rq at 12:53 PM on November 26, 2009


Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw once:

If God didn't want us to eat animals, He wouldn't have made them out of meat.
posted by at the crossroads at 1:33 PM on November 26, 2009


Best answer: Actually, you know what? I think it might actually be Louis C.K. or David Cross. I'm almost completely certain of it. I believe the joke includes the phrase, "cows are dicks." I'll give 'em a listen and get back to you.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:33 PM on November 26, 2009


Looking back through old photos ms.atc saved
(this was at least ten years ago)
the bumper sticker actually reads like this:

If God really wanted us to be vegetarian
Why did He make animals out of meat?
posted by at the crossroads at 3:17 PM on November 26, 2009


Response by poster: Actually, you know what? I think it might actually be Louis C.K. or David Cross. I'm almost completely certain of it. I believe the joke includes the phrase, "cows are dicks." I'll give 'em a listen and get back to you.

I think you're right, and I'm leaning toward it being Louis CK's joke, although there's the off chance it could be from the Comedians of Comedy (Posehn? Galifianakis? His style leans toward the masculine-but-mopey image I have in my head.)
posted by bunnytricks at 4:47 PM on November 26, 2009


You know, it could definitely be either of those two, or Patton Oswalt for that matter. Or Mitch Hedburg, even.

I definitely got the same deja vu last night, at any rate, so you're probably not imagining things.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:06 PM on November 26, 2009


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