{"id":2128,"date":"2007-02-22T09:28:32","date_gmt":"2007-02-22T17:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/02\/man_in_foolish_top_hat_adjusts_monocle_shrugs.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T18:58:07","slug":"man_in_foolish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/02\/man_in_foolish.html","title":{"rendered":"Man In Foolish Top Hat Adjusts Monocle, Shrugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good thing they’re all a bunch of illiterate black squirrels<\/a> or more of them would have seen this cartoon in the New Yorker<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The New Yorker magazine is catching flak for publishing a cartoon that angry New Yorkers are calling a Polish joke.<\/p>\n

The drawing by veteran cartoonist Bob Weber appeared in the Feb. 19 issue of the magazine and depicts two kids chatting at a bus stop with the caption, “My parents named me Zbigniew because they were drunk.”<\/p>\n

Zbigniew is a traditional Polish name.<\/p>\n

In the predominantly Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, some residents who had seen the cartoon were shocked.<\/p>\n

“I’m assuming the person who drew this hates Polish people,” said Anna Doda, a music store owner who has been in the U.S. for 20 years.<\/p>\n

“The people from different nations, they drink, they get drugs; so why did they make the joke about Polish people?”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

The New Yorker sent a form response to readers who complained via e-mail, apologizing and claiming “the tacit assumption . . . is that the child is not of Polish origin.” The e-mail said the intended joke was that Zbigniew is an unusual name.<\/p>\n

That was the explanation New Yorker editor David Remnick gave the Daily News.<\/p>\n

“The heart of the joke is the difficulty in saying the name; there’s no ethnic slur,” he said, but when asked if the cartoon would have been published if it had featured an Asian or African name, Remnick responded, “I don’t know.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Remnick should have explained that it was actually a deft jab at national security policy under President Carter<\/a>. And that probably would have made more sense than obfuscating “tacit assumptions” . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good thing they’re all a bunch of illiterate black squirrels or more of them would have seen this cartoon in the New Yorker: The New Yorker magazine is catching flak for publishing a cartoon that angry New Yorkers are calling a Polish joke. The drawing by veteran cartoonist Bob Weber appeared in the Feb. 19 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thats_an_outrage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}