How the New Yorker Picks Those Stupid Cartoons

I know we have a lot of New Yorker readers here....quick show of hands, have you ever, EVER, laughed at one of the cartoons, or cut one out to hang on the refrigerator or send to your sister?

Neither have I.

I always figured it's a big inside joke over there, like the emperor has no clothes...publish the most humorless pointless scribbles they can find, and wait to see if they can make people simper at cocktail parties, 'oh, I just loved that one!'

Apparently I was wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/23/AR2006122300893_pf.html

 

Makes me laugh every time...
“If I didn’t know before I sure as hell know who Manolo Blahnik is now.”

One dog on a couch speaking to psychiatrist, who is also a dog

 

I think you just made my point for me.

 

Perhaps, but I have also eaten fruitcake. And, I liked it.

 

Thanks for posting that, 21.

Fascinating read. I can't imagine dealing with that level of rejection for such a personally creative enterprise.

 

"How about never? Is never good for you?"

 

Okay, how about this:

Two guys in a bar: 'Yeah, I once ate a fruitcake...married her, too.'



I'm going to send that one to the New Yorker...

 

I tacked one behind my desk. Little people at the foot of a mountain. Shouting up through the clouds to Zeus: "We're tired of your Olympian views."

Every columnist should frame that one.

 

Huh. Did Zeus look like Mitch Albom? I would have laughed at that one.

 

He says your wife is a pig.

 

I have laughed, out loud, to many of the New Yorker cartoons.

A fave: young man, looking early 20s maybe, sits on NYC stoop, ogling pretty girl walking by but plainly content to just sit and smile. Older woman, presumably the boy's mother, stands at top of stoop: "Whistle, you dumb bastard!"

I read an anthology of New Yorker cartoons that spanned 1925 through 2000. "Funny" aside -- and many of them are hilarious -- they are an interesting study of America. The Depression; the war years, the civil rights movement, etc. -- it's all reflected in the cartoons.

 

MR. ELINOFF: It's a slice of life.

ELAINE: No it isn't.

MR. ELINOFF: Pun?

ELAINE: I don't think so.

MR. ELINOFF: Vorshtein?

ELAINE: That's not a word.....You have no idea what this means do you?

MR. ELINOFF: No.

ELAINE: Then why did you print it.

MR. ELINOFF: I liked the kitty.