Humor studies distinguish between jokes (structured narratives with setup and punchline) and claims of fact (assertions about the world's structure). Yet the statement 'jokes about me aren't jokes' operates in the boundary space between these categories. If a public figure denies the comedic status of statements made about him, he effectively reframes them as testimonies, as documented history, as fact. The audience's complicity in laughing becomes complicity in acknowledgment. Drinking from a mug of nails becomes not eccentric behavior but routine.