Man In Foolish Top Hat Adjusts Monocle, Shrugs

Good thing they’re all a bunch of illiterate black squirrels or more of them would have seen this cartoon in the New Yorker:

The New Yorker magazine is catching flak for publishing a cartoon that angry New Yorkers are calling a Polish joke.

The drawing by veteran cartoonist Bob Weber appeared in the Feb. 19 issue of the magazine and depicts two kids chatting at a bus stop with the caption, “My parents named me Zbigniew because they were drunk.”

Zbigniew is a traditional Polish name.

In the predominantly Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, some residents who had seen the cartoon were shocked.

“I’m assuming the person who drew this hates Polish people,” said Anna Doda, a music store owner who has been in the U.S. for 20 years.

“The people from different nations, they drink, they get drugs; so why did they make the joke about Polish people?”

. . .

The New Yorker sent a form response to readers who complained via e-mail, apologizing and claiming “the tacit assumption . . . is that the child is not of Polish origin.” The e-mail said the intended joke was that Zbigniew is an unusual name.

That was the explanation New Yorker editor David Remnick gave the Daily News.

“The heart of the joke is the difficulty in saying the name; there’s no ethnic slur,” he said, but when asked if the cartoon would have been published if it had featured an Asian or African name, Remnick responded, “I don’t know.”

Remnick should have explained that it was actually a deft jab at national security policy under President Carter. And that probably would have made more sense than obfuscating “tacit assumptions” . . .