So when you think of your Toastmasters do you think of a bunch of happy go lucky goofs that are up for anything? Well…

The best advice on how to handle borderline offensive material in any context is, “When in doubt, leave it out.”

TM’s are much more conservative deep down than you probably realize and maybe a lot of them realize themselves. People that stay in TM and especially people who volunteer for stuff like judging contests have a certain inner organizational nerd. I’m over-generalizing I know, but organizational nerds tend heavily toward traditionalism in my experience. I’ve learned this the hard way in the last time I made a run at this by pushing people too far.

I live in the Seattle area, part of the Left Coast, and even here TM’s (or TM judges at least) don’t tolerate humor that’s too “progressive.” I imagine in other parts of the country it’s even stronger.

One example is a guy who made a joke about drinking too much and got a huge laugh because it came out of nowhere and was really funny. (We’re not so traditionalist to be against a passing alcohol reference, though your mileage may vary.) Then the guy extended the joke except he replaced it with him smoking pot in college.

There were some gasps and then awful, dead, silence. It was like a chill was on the room. The pot reference is the type of thing that a judge will remember and if they’re inclined, will leave you off their voting ballot entirely for. I’ll show you how in the future one or two judges doing that almost certainly mean you can’t win, no matter what the other judges think. And never mind the judging nitty-gritty. If you have a chill go over the audience after your pot reference, you have you work cut out for you just to win them over for the rest of your speech.

When in doubt, leave it out.