After complaints, editor of The New Yorker denies cartoon in magazine was a 'Polish joke'

SignOnSanDiego.com ^ | February 22, 2007 | Verena Dobnik

[lizol]

Click to see the cartoon

[lizol]

Eastern European ping list

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[Shimmer128]

Fine, change it to Muhammed and publish it again. I'm sure others will see the joke.

[Chi-townChief]

The real crime is that it's not funny.

[Revolting cat!]

Or, change it to LaTrina and publish it again!

[Brad from Tennessee]

Poland has contributed troops to Iraq and Afghanistan and they want us to build a missile shield on their territory. That makes anything Polish fair game to the news media sh*tbirds.

[lizol]

magazine never intended to offend anyone when it published a cartoon that joked about a Polish name and drunkenness.

Cool.

I only wonder why those kids in the cartoon are not saying - let's say - “My parents named me Yitzhak because they were drunk.”

That one also seems to be difficult to pronounce

[Eurotwit]

IMHO, just about everyone is made of fragile glass these days.

As my aussie mates would put it:

Suck it up.

[Eurotwit]

Agreed.

[Nam Vet]

There were a lot of guys in the service named 'Ski'. Came from a very large family I guess. /sarc

Nam Vet

[fish hawk]

Websters: a drawing, as in a news paper or magazine, caricaturing or symbolizing, often satirically, some action, situation, or person of topical interest.

I didn't catch where it said it had to be funny.

[lizol]

Or Abdul-Muhaimin, or Azzaam, or Dhul Fiqaar, or something like that.

[Eurotwit]

Are you German? :-)

[llevrok]

Fine, change it to Muhammed and publish it again. I'm sure others will see the joke.

Right on. The magazine would be set on fire by white urban liberals in protest!

[Chi-townChief]

Nor does it do much in the way of "caricaturing or symbolizing, often satirically, some action, situation, or person of topical interest."

[Larry Lucido]

Have at it, guys.

[alloysteel]

Kids might talk that way, in all innocence. But when adults take the words down, verbatim, and publish the depiction as "cute", that is with either malice aforethought, or no thought at all.

Insensitivity for the sake of laughs alone is the cruelest sort of taunting, even more so when there is no particular point to it.

[lizol]

That's the point.

Polish jokes? Ever drunk Poles?

It's so easy.

And so funny, isn't it? /s.

[aculeus]

Remnick decides what cartoons to publish. IMO he's got terrible taste. One in ten is amusing. Most are sophomoric.

[fish hawk]

Just wrote my post right out of the Websters. I see cartoons for kids on sat. mornings on tv and have yet to see a funny one.