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

[Jonathan Lighter]

Cf.:

1936 Seattle Daily Times (May 7) 23: Good news and bad has reached the ears
of Otto Sanford, chairman for the four-way ski competition due Saturday and
Sunday at Mount Baker.  The good news is the fact that ....    The bad news
is ....

JL

On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 8:20 AM Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

> > 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.)
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org