I'm with David... 14:34 Aug 16, 2010
Obviously saying "he/she was the brunt of the joke" is incorrect. In this case, the correct expression would be: he/she was the butt of the joke.
However one can certainly "bear the brunt of a joke." I found this wild-and-interesting example online: Abdera was a city in Thrace, whose inhabitants bore the brunt of dumb-ethnic jokes since at least the days of Cicero in the first century BCE. (The "brunt" is the blow or force and one can interpret some jokes as being pretty unkind, prejudicial, etc. which make them akin to a "hit" or a "blow." Don't you think so, too? :-) | 
peer agreement (net): +1
