badly constructed joke

It's a long-established hermeneutical truth that a well-executed joke shouldn't be immediately subject to multiple interpretations. I just saw this on my Twitter feed:

If diamonds are a girl's best friend and a dog is man's best friend, who really is the dumber sex?

The tweet was made by a woman, tweeting on behalf of single moms. Given that context, the implication is that men are the dumber sex because women wisely value diamonds, which are both more expensive and more durable than dogs. (Not to mention the fact that diamonds don't shit, puke, or bark incessantly.)

But think a little further, and remove the joke from its quasi-feminist context. Aren't dogs members of the family? Doesn't that make dogs, with their touching loyalty and obvious love for people, worth far more than diamonds? Who, then, is the dumber sex?

Of course, I'm not really taking a stance, one way or another, on which sex is dumber (although I'd gladly vote male, given that most violence is caused by young males). My point, though, is that the joke was sloppily conceived and poorly executed. Bad joke.


_