What Do You Call 1,000 Lawyers at the Bottom of the Ocean?

Okay, more reasons for people to hate my profession...

The line leading into First District Court in Hempstead Monday morning was long and frustrating, but it was the punch line in a lawyer joke that got two rabble-rousing comedians arrested.

"How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?" Harvey Kash, 69, of Bethpage, said to Carl Lanzisera, 65, of Huntington, as the queue wound into the court. "His lips are moving," they said in unison, completing one of what may be thousands of standard lawyer jokes.

But while that rib and several others on barristers got some giggles from the crowd, the attorney standing in line about five people ahead wasn't laughing.

"'Shut up,' the man shouted," Lanzisera said. "'I'm a lawyer.'" The attorney reported Kash and Lanzisera to court personnel, who arrested the men and charged them with engaging in disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.

You know, the appropriate response to the lawyer's statement would have been to ask him how it felt to screw widows and orphans out of money every day, or politely inquire if his family still spoke to him.