[Ads-l] the Good News Bad News joke routine

[Stephen Goranson]

Good or bad, there's:

A Colloquy.
Shortly after it became known that Hon. Thomas W. Conway...was attacked with yellow fever, one prominent citizen said to another whom he met:
"I have some good news to tell you."
"What is it?"....
"It is that Conway...is very sick with yellow fever."
The second party then said in rejoinder:
"I have some bad news to tell you."
"What is that?"
"It is that Dr. Holcombe is attending Conway, and he is going to get him well."

New-Orleans-Republic, Nov. 3, 1871, 1/5. [Am. Hist. N.]

S. Goranson

________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <> on behalf of Arnold M. Zwicky <>
Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2019 8:20 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [ADS-L] the Good News Bad News joke routine

> On Jun 27, 2019, at 11:48 PM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> From the Cincinnati Enquirer, October 11, 1942, section 3, page 7, Syd Skolsky's Hollywood, crediting a cartoon in the Mexican magazine, Rumbo.
> "What's new?"
> "I have some good news and some bad news."
> "What's the good news?"
> "Hitler has been murdered."
> "And what's the bad news?"
> "The news that Hitler was murdered is not true."
>

thanks to Peter for this cite, which is currently the earliest occurrence of the joke formula attested (though it feels like it's already an established routine). i'll add this to my blog posting.

arnold

(others found much more recent occurrences on the net, or antecedents to the joke formula in various expressions of the idea that the news is mixed, there's a good side and a bad side to much of it, etc., which i was aware of and was specifically not asking about.)

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