New Yorker

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 2/14/07, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue 02/13/07 at the whiching hour of 12:06 AM Alice Faber
> <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU> quoted:
>
> "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
>
> I cannot figure out how this quote is relevant to the question I posed, namely
> whether The New Yorker magazine provides enough circulation for a phrase
> to make it part of everyday English.

http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sitetype=1&did=4&sid=22230

There's no question the caption to Peter Steiner's cartoon of July 5,
1993 has become a well-circulated quote -- so well-circulated that it
even generates snowclones, with the pattern "On the Internet, nobody
knows you're an X."

I suppose in earlier generations New Yorker cartoons had more of a
cultural impact, proportionally speaking, so the captions would have
been more likely to become well-known sayings. One early example that
comes to mind is "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it"
(E.B. White's caption for a cartoon by Carl Rose, Dec. 8, 1928).


--Ben Zimmer

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