A news joke met with silence because no member dared admit ignorance.

Evidence

Those few times when members joked about the news, nobody responded, and the jokes fell into a silent void. Ray, a chunky man with a salt-and-pepper beard, was an exceptional character because he kept track of political affairs. At a Buffalo Club feed in 1989, he made a quick crack about Jesse Helms, a vocal arch-conservative member of Congress, and Helms’ efforts to censor art. The response was total silence. I wondered if maybe everyone disagreed with him - but then, I knew that several had had abortions themselves, at the time when Helms was most famous for his condemnation of abortion. I tentatively guessed that they were silent because none knew who Helms was, and each feared that the others did.’* But I was not entirely sure of this interpretation until Betsy explained how silence worked to hide ignorance. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 800

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Members avoided serious conversation and stayed ignorant of each other’s basic facts — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 779; Group silence over the news masks members’ shared ignorance, as each fears revealing it. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 805