February 23, 2007

LET'S PUT IT THIS WAY...:

New Yorker editor denies cartoon a 'Polish joke' (VERENA DOBNIK, 2/23/07, Associated Press)

The editor of The New Yorker said Thursday his magazine never intended to offend anyone when it published a cartoon that joked about a Polish name and drunkenness.

David Remnick was responding to the reaction of some New Yorkers of Polish origin, angered by what they consider a "Polish joke" published in the Feb. 19 issue of the magazine.

Veteran cartoonist Robert Weber had sketched two children chatting at a bus stop with the caption, "My parents named me Zbigniew because they were drunk."


...they wouldn't have run it with two black kids and the name Barack.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 23, 2007 9:05 AM
Comments

If they named him after Carter's Secretary of State they'd HAVE to be drunk.

Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at February 23, 2007 10:29 AM

Gee, an unfunny, inscrutable New Yorker cartoon. Whodathunkit?
I remember when I was a kid I thought that I just wasn't "getting" the cartoons because I was too young and that, as I aged, I would see what a laff riot they were. Well, I keep aging and they keep not being funny.

Posted by: Bryan at February 23, 2007 10:57 AM

I believe it was stolen from a Ziggy cartoon.

Posted by: pchuck at February 23, 2007 11:42 AM

I believe it was stolen from a Ziggy cartoon.

Posted by: pchuck at February 23, 2007 11:45 AM

I believe it was stolen from a Ziggy cartoon.

Posted by: pchuck at February 23, 2007 11:46 AM

Bryan, the problem wasn't that you weren't old enough, it's you weren't left enough.

Posted by: erp at February 23, 2007 11:53 AM

I'm sorry for the multiple postings.

Posted by: pchuck at February 23, 2007 12:02 PM

It's a polish joke, from people who don't know Shinola.

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 23, 2007 2:16 PM

Q: What's black and blue and lies on the floor?

A: People who tell Polack jokes at the wrong time.

Actually, every culture has a line of jokes about foreigners who don't understand the language. My Polish grandfather used to tell Swede jokes.

I don't recall that either Polish of Italian relatives were much offended by ethnic jibes.
This thin-skinned lack of humor is a bad habit people are picking up from the Chardni.

Posted by: Lou Gots at February 23, 2007 6:03 PM

Have we of Polish extraction fallen so far as to feign indignation at what passes for humor in the New Yorker? I guess we really have assimilated and proudly re-hyphenate our identity as Victim-Americans.

Posted by: John at February 23, 2007 6:15 PM

In the mind of the German born wife of an academic of our acquaintance, northern Europeans are superior to all others. Her conversation was filled with little jabs at the inferior ethnicity of others including my husband's whose forbearers came from Naples and Sicily generations ago. He just ignored her and would have been very annoyed if I deigned to take notice.

However, one day at a ladies tea (those kind of things were popular then), she asked me if my husband minded mafia jokes? I smiled sweetly and said probably no more than you mind Nazi jokes. The other "ladies" who had had enough of Herr Frau laughed and applauded. Properly chastised, she watched her mouth after that.

People like her, and they are legion, place Poles even below Italians and only slightly above Slavs.

Posted by: erp at February 24, 2007 11:20 AM

This thin-skinned lack of humor is a bad habit people are picking up from the Chardni.

Could someone explain what this means?

Posted by: Confused By Obscure References at February 24, 2007 2:04 PM

People who drink chardonnay and/or eat chard?

Posted by: erp at February 24, 2007 2:16 PM
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