{"id":319,"date":"2007-11-17T18:16:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-18T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2007\/11\/17\/asc-highlights-jimmy-carter\/"},"modified":"2007-11-17T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-18T00:16:00","slug":"asc-highlights-jimmy-carter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2007\/11\/17\/asc-highlights-jimmy-carter\/","title":{"rendered":"asc highlights: jimmy carter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>we were treated to a fine address by president jimmy carter at this year’s american society of criminology meetings in atlanta.<\/p>\n

the former governor described a friendly yet today-mind-blowingly-incomprehensible competition in the 1970s among the governors of georgia, alabama, florida, and other states: who could reduce <\/em>prison populations by the largest margin?<\/p>\n

times have changed, eh?<\/p>\n

the talk was a love fest that put a li’l tear in this public criminologist’s eye. in particular, the ex-president rather forcefully urged the asc membership to take a more active role in documenting and describing human rights abuses in criminal Justice.<\/p>\n

there were lighter moments as well, of course. being an ex-<\/em>president is a pretty good gig, as this ol’ ice-breaking anecdote makes clear:<\/p>\n

I remembered going through China and Japan in 1981, soon after I left the White House. At that time I was asked to make a speech at a small college near Osaka. When I got to this little college, everybody was so nervous, it made me nervous. So, I got up to make a speech, and I thought I would put the Japanese at ease-the students and professors and their parents-by telling a joke. It takes so long to translate English into Japanese that I didn’t choose my funniest joke–I just chose my shortest joke. So I told my joke, and then the interpreter gave it and the audience collapsed in laughter. It was the best response I have ever had to a joke in my life.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t wait for the speech to be over to get to the green room and ask the interpreter, ‘How did you tell my joke?’ He was very evasive. But I persisted, and finally he ducked his head and said, “I told the audience, ‘President Carter told a funny story. Everyone must laugh.’ ” So there are some advantages in having been president…<\/p>\n

a few of my jokes have been translated at international meetings and, without exception, they’ve fallen flat. i’ve been tempted to insert a [THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY] note for the translator, but president carter’s approach seems far more effective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

we were treated to a fine address by president jimmy carter at this year’s american society of criminology meetings in atlanta. the former governor described a friendly yet today-mind-blowingly-incomprehensible competition in the 1970s among the governors of georgia, alabama, florida, and other states: who could reduce prison populations by the largest margin? times have changed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}