[Ads-l] "What do you mean we, paleface / white man / kemo sabe?"

Bill Mullins amcombill at HOTMAIL.COM
Mon Jun 3 18:18:14 UTC 2019


I'm told by a correspondent on another list that this is possibly/likely a reframing of another joke, in which a jockey brags about his many wins, and his horse says "What do you mean, you?"; and that Arthur Godfrey used the joke on his radio show circa 1939.


>

> ----

>

> > Could Bridwell have written the joke for the LA Times? I think he was

> > still living in Oklahoma at the time, and I have no sense of what he

> > was writing then, and where he was submitting it.

>

> He didn't write it for this particular quote -- it was from a column called "Cityside" written by Gene Sherman.  The column was widely

> syndicated, and it ran in Bridwell's home newspaper, the _Daily Oklahoman_ on 12/12/1956.

>

> It seems far more likely that Bridwell read the joke and rewrote it for Mad.

> We know that Bridwell read this particular Oklahoma paper because he had assorted Letters to the Editor published in it on 8/8/1954,

> 5/15/1955, and 6/30/1964.

>


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