“An Irishman walks out of a bar” (bar joke)

“A guy walks into a bar…” is a typical form of what has been called the “bar joke.” “An Irishman walks out of a bar” is a joke about a joke, or a “meta-joke.”
 
“An Irishman walks out of a bar” was cited in print in 2001 and “An Irishman walks past a bar” was cited in 2009.
 
“Why can’t Irishmen be lawyers?”/“They can never get past the bar” is a similar joke.
 
   
Wikipedia: Meta-joke
Meta-joke refers to several somewhat different, but related categories: self-referential jokes, jokes about jokes (also known as metahumor), and joke templates.
 
Self-referential jokes
This kind of meta-joke is a joke in which a familiar class of jokes is part of the joke. Examples of meta-jokes:
(...)
. An Irishman walks past a bar.
 
MetaFilter
Brevity?
Here:
An Irishman walks out of a bar.
posted by fidelity at 2:26 PM on December 20, 2001
   
Google Groups: alt.atheism
Just a bit of humour . . .
Puck Greenman
7/15/04
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:37:28 GMT, “Fear gan dia”

with calm deliberation, and malace
aforethought, wrote:
>An Irishman walks out of a bar..
 
I suppose there is a first time, for everything.
   
Google Books
A Guy Walks Into A Bar…:
501 Bar Jokes, Stories, Anecdotes, Quips, Quotes, Riddles and Wisecracks
By Michael Lewis
New York, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.
2005
Pg. 138:
An Irishman walks out of a bar.
 
Google Books
Stealing MySpace:
The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America
By Julia Angwin
New York, NY: Random House
2009
Pg. 164:
This time, in acknowledgment of the early hour, he started with the shortest joke he knew:  “An Irishman walks past a bar.”
 
Twitter
Brad Benson
‏@badbrad002
Here’s a joke for ya:  An Irishman walks past a bar.  No seriously, that’s funny, right?
2:07 AM - 4 Mar 2009
 
Google Books
The Mammoth Book of One-Liners
By Geoff Tibballs
London: Constable & Robinson Ltd.
2012
Pg. ?:
An Irishman walks out of a bar . . . well, it could happen!
 
Twitter
ur maggesty
‏@maaggiekaate
“So an Irishman walks out of a bar… no really, it can happen” #stpatricksdayjokes #lol
10:23 PM - 17 Mar 2013