Comedian Sunda Croonquist is being sued by her in-laws for mocking them in her act. Croonquist claims she’s been making in-law jokes for years and that her husband’s family was fine with it and thought it was funny. They’re suing because she supposedly posted information on her website that can be used to reveal their identities. Croonquist is of African-American and Swedish descent and her mother-in-law is Jewish. Her jokes highlight the cultural differences and subtle racism in her husband’s family. In video of her act, above, she recalls an incident in which her mother-in-law loudly told someone to hide her purse the first time she met her, and talks about her sister-in-law questioning her ethnicity within earshot. “She’s got light hair and light eyes. What kind of black person is she?” Croonquist’s imitation of her mother-in-law’s accent is pretty funny, and she also mocks her sister-in-law’s Jersey twang. Her in-laws aren’t happy with the jokes, though, and are trying to get her to stop mentioning them:
To Croonquist, the in-law jokes seemed like a natural routine after living through one comical culture-clash moment after another: She is half-black, half-Swedish, grew up Roman Catholic and married into a Jewish family.
And she’s not shy about making the in-laws the butt of her jokes.
Take the one about her mother-in-law’s reaction to news she was pregnant with her first child: “OK, now that we know you’re having a little girl I want to know what you’re naming that little tchotchke. Now we don’t want a name that’s difficult to pronounce like Shaniqua. We’re thinking a name short but delicious. Like Hadassah or Goldie.”
Or her first visit to her mother-in-law’s house: “I walk in, I say, ‘Thank you so much for having me here, Ruthie.’ She says, ‘The pleasure’s all mine, have a seat.'” Then, in a loud aside, ‘Harriet, [sic: she says Elliot] put my pocketbook away.'”
Croonquist said there was a time when her in-laws would laugh with everyone else at the black-member-of-a-Jewish-family jokes. “They played my tape at Passover one year, and they loved it!” she said.
But things changed after Croonquist, promoting upcoming gigs in New Jersey, posted information on her Web site that, according to her in-laws, allowed pretty much anyone to figure out the identities of her in-laws.
They sued in April in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, where they live. The action seeks unspecified damages and demands that Croonquist remove any offensive statements from her Web site, Croonquist says she would drop any language her family finds offensive, but refuses to pay any settlement. Her lawyer has filed a motion to have the suit dismissed, and a judge is scheduled to hear it on Sept. 8.
[From ABCNews via Fark]
As a result of this lawsuit, Croonquist’s husband and her two daughters are now estranged from his side of the family. I checked her official website, and Croonquist still has material up about her in-laws. According to ABC News, she’s still making jokes about them in her act, but is no longer using their first names. It doesn’t really matter now though since everyone knows who they are after this lawsuit. I wonder if her mother-in-law thinks that making her point is more important that being able to see her granddaughters. It makes you think that Croonquist’s act must be pretty close to reality if her in-laws have resorted to suing her over it.
Sunda Croonquist, her husband Mark Zafrin and mother-in-law Ruth Zafrin:
damn, this stuff makes me angry. If people don’t want for other people to talk about crappy stuff they’ve done or said, don’t do or say the crappy stuff in the first place!
I’m not her in-law, but apparently this was Croonquist’s experience with her own– are we not allowed to say what we think of people’s crappy behavior?
This is terrible. People need to thicken their skin.
Of course, this is probably the most publicity she’s ever gotten, so her in-laws have done her career quite a favor!
Sorry but what family member would sue another? Like people didn’t know already, going by the comedian’s act grand mother is not one to shay away from being a outright bigot to someone face, I’m sure she was bragging about my daughter-in-law the comic.
So she wants to sue because something posted on the website and not have a relationship with her son and grandkids
how sad.
Jane Q. Doe: I thought the exact same thing. She is really not a celebrity. If you Google her all that show up is article talking about the lawsuit. I wonder if this was planned and the suit will get dropped later on.
Because I know when I see a comedy act, I immediately go home and research every single person mentioned in every single act to find out where they live and what they look like…
(Way to not bring national attention to it and yourselves, dum-dums…)
After reading the story it seems that they probably didn’t like her to begin with. If she ever happens to make it big I guess she’ll have one side of the family she won’t need to take care of.
Considering some of the very racist things they’ve done towards her, I’d say they owe her the satisfaction of lampooning it in her act.
umm, has her mother in law ever heard about talking to each other rather than suing them?
I’m Jewish and I have to say that it’s not funny when non-Jews make jewish jokes. I think a lot of black people feel the same way, in regards to white people making fun of blacks. There is just too much of a painful history for it to be funny for outsiders to make fun. I believe in the 1st Amendment so I think this woman can run her mouth if she wants to, but there is such a small jewish population in this country, that a lot of people really believe in the stereotypes because they don’t actually know any Jews. Who knows if the stories she tells in her act are really true or if they are just exaggerations and lies.
Alison
Didn’t hear any hear any Jewish jokes on this clip, but reactions of a Jewish woman of her son marriage to a black woman who happens to have Swiss blood in her.
A
But here is the question: are they ‘Jewish’ jokes per se? It seems like the jokes in this act are about people who happen to be Jewish. And she’s a comedian, don’t they all talk about their families?
I’m a minority too, so I’m sensitive to racial issues as well. But at some point, you have to accept that it’s not your sole purpose in life to educate all of the ignorant bigots of the world. You’d like to, but it’s simply not possible.
Some people will always have an axe to grind. In regards to this particular case, I don’t see a cadre of racist fanatics being galvanized into consolidating their power over her words. You would think that a shared history of violence and discrimination would make a person more empathetic: how silly of me.
I just don’t think that the scars of the past (and present) absolve people from having to be culpable for their own words, ideas and actions. And I certainly don’t think that the ignorance of one person should be handled with kid gloves or denied so as to prevent more outside malevolence.
No one is sacrosanct, and to expect a different kind of treatment for Statement X from that visited upon another person for said Statement X is often bunk. Cashing in on that tortured cultural status reeks to me of the worst kind of brazen and transparent ‘woe is me’ discrimination. Self-made martyrdom isn’t a virtue: it is ploy founded on a cynical and rotted crutch. If you are a grown person of sound mind, at some point (even if it’s just to clear up falsehoods or provide context) you’ll have to respond and take responsibility for *something* you’ve said. If you refuse to do that, invest in a muzzle.
Again, I’m a female and a minority, so I am overly-familiar with the struggles and the rock-and-hard-place yoke. Believe me, you’re talking to a person who KNOWS. It absolutely is pervasive–often cripplingly so–but delusions of beatification or crowning yourself King Nihilism for having endured hardship doesn’t help anyone. Do you want to get mired, or do you want to get on?
Use the strengths and tools at your disposal to be the change you want to see. Don’t cry in my lap wailing, ‘Why won’t anyone do something about how my biliousness and hateful attitudes alienate other people?’
It’s too convenient. A person can use his status as a traditionally wronged member of any group, and shout ‘racist shenanigans’ over every personal disagreement. If someone said something akin to that purse statement to me, I would be mortified if someone challenged the legitimacy of that experience because it might hurt someone else’s feelings.
I don’t need to go into details, but I was nearly raped when I was a teenager and apparently it was all my fault what with being polite and young and wearing a floor-length skirt. Oh, but he was an alcoholic, and OH, this had happened to him, and OH his poor, poor life. I was just, so, so mean! Although, I guess I would turn into something odious if I had carte blanche and no opposition.
As with anything, if you take the testimony of one person as representative of an entire group, you’re operating under a gross misapprehension of the ways that the world works.
Granted, the woman is old, and I know I’ve come across some ‘interesting’ ideas of a bygone era. Mostly, they’re not malicious, they’re just responding in a way that’s reflective of their own formative experiences. I’m black, and have lived in Canada for my whole life. You can guess what happens every winter. That’s easy to shrug, it’s only benign dimness: no one gets hurt.
Good comedy is a mirror, often thoughtful and trenchant, and is a comparatively safe space to air grievances. But it’s not being peer-reviewed for academic journals, and if this has been this lady’s personal experience, the question isn’t ‘how much of this is artful exaggeration’, or ‘how will this affect the way that outsiders view us’.
The question is ‘why is this woman’s mother-in-law such a low-class, mean-spirited, litigious bigot?’ Is she embarrassed? Good. Those statements are beyond embarrassing. And if her own son has become estranged from her, something untoward could be going on.
maybe she went too far. there’s a point to which this kind of material can be funny. and then you cross a line. ask Joan Rivers. her husband Edgar killed himself after years of being the butt of her jokes.
I don’t see those two things as being related. Even if the marriage between two people constitutes as nothing more than hurling grenades at each other (hypothetically, I’m not talking about this case), there are a lot of steps being ‘being mocked’ and ‘suicide’. If he willfully took his own life, that suggests a pathology that can’t be attributed to someone else’s actions.
wow..some people cant take a joke and obviously shes embarassed that people will now know how ignorant she is…not cuz she feels bad at all about what she said to her daughter-in-law….i feel bad for her, this is the mother-in-law from hell!
Jo ‘Mama’ Besse said: “I’m black, and have lived in Canada for my whole life. You can guess what happens every winter. That’s easy to shrug, it’s only benign dimness: no one gets hurt.”
Maybe it’s that I live far from the Americas (not to mention far from any snow) however I don’t understand what on earth it could be that happens every winter?
Can someone explain?