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

[Jonathan Lighter]

Neat.

JL

On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 11:06 AM Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:

> 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.)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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