New Yorker

[Alice Faber]

James A. Landau wrote:
> Fred Shapiro has posted antedatings of "back to the drawing board" and
> "take me to your leader [or President]", both of them from New Yorker
> cartoons.  In doing so he poses the implicit question of whether the New
> Yorker is the terminus a quo for the two expressions.
>
> I happen to remember the "back to the drawing board" cartoon.  It would
> have been considerably funnier if "back to the drawing board" were a
> well-known cliche at the time the cartoon appeared, but that does not
> mean it was.
>
> In order for a word or expression to become a part of the language, it
> must be 1) coined and 2) distributed.  Sometimes part 2) is obvious:
> a quote from a well-known person, a speech on TV (my favorite example is
> how Krushchev managed to introduce "troika" meaning "triumvirate",
> probably an old Russian metaphor, into English).  Other times the new
> word or expression has to emerge gradually via word or mouth or
> something---consider the possiblities as to how "whole nine yards"
> became so widely used.
>
> Now the question becomes:  does an appearance in a cartoon caption in
> "The New Yorker" magazine provide enough distribution to make a phrase
> part of English?  I tend to doubt it.  Now the intended audience of "The
> New Yorker" appears to be intellectuals living in New York City and
> environs, rather than engineers (drawing boards) or science fiction fans
> (take me to your leader).
>
> Does anyone have a strong opinion on this question?

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

OK, so it's an existence proof. But, surely that's worth *something*.
>
> OT: The "Take me to your President" AS DESCRIBED is not funny.  Are we
> missing some context?

Probably. For one, I think it's funnier if the phrase "take me to your
leader" was already out there.


--
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Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
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