Dress like a lion
Elliot Tebele and Josh Ostrovsky , compared with Davon Magwood
After the Cecil the Lion outrage, a Black comic jokes he should dress as a lion so his death at the hands of police would get white people's attention.
Both accounts reposted the tweet to their millions of followers without attribution. (paraphrase)
@fuckjerry and @thefatjewish (Instagram), 2015find on YouTube ↗
“Going to start dressing like a Lion. That way cops know that if they kill me. White people will avenge me”
Twitter, 2015quote source ↗find on YouTube ↗
Not two jokes but one: both accounts reposted Magwood's tweet without credit, so every beat matches.
- Premise 40/40
- Structure 30/30
- Punchline 28/30
- Premise40/40Both are Magwood's tweet: dress as a lion so a police killing would get white people's attention.
- Structure30/30A repost of the tweet itself, down to Magwood's grammatical error in Tebele's copy.
- Punchline28/30Same payoff that white people would avenge him; the reposts' exact text is not quoted on record.
Setup
Reposted tweet: going to start dressing like a lion.
Setup
Going to start dressing like a lion, amid the Cecil outrage.
Turn
So police know what happens if they kill him.
Turn
So police know what happens if they kill him.
Punchline
Same line: white people would avenge him; text not quoted on record.
Punchline
White people would avenge him.
Scores and beats are our editorial reading of the public record, not a ruling.
Context
When and where
Magwood tweeted the joke on July 30, 2015, during the Cecil the Lion outrage. @fuckjerry and @thefatjewish quickly reposted it without credit, Tebele's copy keeping Magwood's grammatical error.
What followed
Magwood published an open letter to both accounts saying he is "not producing" work so they can profit from it, and Kumail Nanjiani pointed out the irony of a white guy taking a Black comic's joke about being Black. Ostrovsky later added Magwood's handle to the post, and the case came up again in the 2019 #FuckFuckJerry boycott.