The "perfect cartoon"? PLUS: More of "The 25 Least Influential People Alive"

Bob Mankoff says that this offering by
Chon Day is, for him, the perfect cartoon.

by Ken

This is once again ripped straight "From the Desk of Bob Mankoff" -- the New Yorker cartoon editor's always-entertaining weekly newsletter-slash-blogpost. Bob is of course an important New Yorker cartoonist in his own right, and his newsletter is still the best thing that comes into my e-mailbox regularly. (Once again you can sign up for it -- free! -- by going to the magazine's homepage and scrolling down the right side till you come to the box with the tab for "NEWSLETTERS.")

This week's edition, "The Perfect Cartoon," which follows a blogless week, presumably owing to the holiday, finds Bob pursuing a quest I have to say it would probably never have occurred to me to undertake.

Last time [in Bob's November 16 post, "The Best Is the Enemy of the Food," keyed to the magazine's annual Food Issue, November 21 -- Ed.], I made the case that the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of perfection are mutually exclusive. I could use psychological literature to support this point, but, instead, I ask you to imagine a person you know who is a perfectionist. Are they smiling?

Neither am I, because I’ve been searching for the perfect New Yorker cartoon. There are tens of thousands to choose from -- more than enough to find myself in the muddle known as the paradox of choice. Perhaps that’s what’s happened to the woman in this cartoon by Chon Day.

"Or perhaps," Bob says of the woman in this cartoon, which we've already seen at the top of this post, "she's just a perfectionist. She certainly isn't smiling." But he's smiling, because, he says, he's found the perfect cartoon.

First of all, consider the degree of difficulty. Single-panel cartoons without any words are the hardest to come up with. Fewer than five percent of the submissions I see as cartoon editor are captionless, and most of those are more whimsical than outright funny.

Then there’s longevity. This cartoon from 1946 still gets laughs by letting us indulge our aggressive, even violent impulses without any guilt.

"To do this," Bob says, "Day has created his characters with great economy to engage both our empathy and antipathy."

The woman is a cold, imperious, impossible-to-please dowager for whom we have no compassion. The salesman’s back is turned to us, his features obscured and intentionally nondescript so that we can project ourselves on to his suffering.

I think you'll want to read Bob's description of the cartoon's "graphic machinery." (Here's the onsite link again.) He even gives us a version of the cartoon with an arrow drawn in tracing the arc of the viewer's gaze. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't really get it on my own. Hint: Assuming your eye winds up on the object the salesman is drawing out of the shoebox, make sure you identify it. Once Bob pointed it out, I couldn't disagree with his conclusion: "On the level of human dynamics and the psychology of perception, this is a perfect cartoon."

By the way, Bob invites readres to go to the New Yorker's "new, improved Cartoon Bank" to pick out our own perfect cartoon "and tell us why."


NOW FOR A FEW MORE OF THE "LEAST
INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE ALIVE"

In last night's post, I shared some of the "Least Influential People Alive" from GQ's December roster of "The 25 Least Influential People Alive," as compiled by Drew Magary, who explained that this is "that other category of famous people":

the ones who took up more than their fair share of oxygen and offered zero value in return, whose deeds did nothing to change lives of billions worldwide. Their one contribution to society? They make you, Mr. Everyday American, feel indispensable by comparison.

From this year's "particularly rich crop" of "useless bastards" I quickly plucked out No. 1, Tim Pawlenty (voicing my amazement that T-Paw's juggernaut-that-wasn't presidential campaign, which already seems such a distant historical memory, actually happened in this electoral cycle) and No. 5, Team Spider-Man (Bono, the Edge, and Julie Taymor) (hey, as you may recall, I actually saw the show during its uncounted years of previews), but then couldn't choose between Nos. 24 and 25, John Boehner ("a politician who was elected specifically to not give a shit") and President Obama (who, instead of being "the most transformational figure of the century," as "he promised to be," "let everyone in Washington stick a boot in his ass" and wound up "wield[ing] all the power of a substitute teacher at night school"), so I tossed them both in.

It was tough to whittle the remaining 21 honorees down to a group of three more, and I can't not mention: No. 6, Hank Williams Jr. ("Exactly what the fuck did he get "fired" from? . . . Welfare recipients have fifty times the annual workload of this man"); No. 7, "Tiger Mother" Amy Chua ("If anything, I'm gonna be an even lazier parent thanks to you"); No. 11, Family Radio president and now three-time Apocalypse predictor Harold Camping (who merely "provid[es] hipsters with a chance to make ironic jokes about the end of the world on Twitter"); No. 14, Arnold Schwarzenegger ("At least Anthony Weiner had the courtesy to be disgraced while still in power"); No. 15, former HP CEO Léo Apotheker ("the exact opposite of Steve Jobs . . . 2000 years from now, anthropologists will dig up a TouchPad and marvel, 'Jesus, this thing looks like a piece of crap' "); No. 17, Tina Brown (who "spent 2011 transforming Newsweek from a magazine no one reads into a magazine no one reads but everyone despises"); No. 19, Dr. Marcus Bachmann (whose "beard wife" is of course Rep. Michele "Crazy Crazy Crazy" Bachmann).

But here are my next three favorites -- for widely varied reasons, which I hope will be apparent:

2. Princess Beatrice
Wasn't the royal wedding splendid? Was Kate Middleton not utterly radiant in her Sarah Burton gown? In a world of conflict, this joyous occasion proved to be an inspiring and hopeful beacon of... HOLY SHIT, WHO INVITED THE RACCOON WITH THE VAGINA HAT? Take note, Americans: The British have just as many embarrassing hillbilly cousins as we do.

9. Hosni Mubarak
This was the year of inept Middle Eastern dictatorships, and Mubarak became the gold standard by falling after a mere eighteen days of protests. Eighteen days! The Chinese government laughs at your lack of fortitude, Hosni. Egypt's president for the past thirty years went from "I'm not going anywhere" to "Okay, I won't run for reelection" to "Okay, I'm leaving" to "Okay, I might be in a coma" in virtually no time. Kind of awesome, when you think about it.

21. Bobby Bonilla
Bonilla retired in 2001, but in July 2011, the New York Mets began shelling out for a deferred portion of the former slugger's contract that will pay him $1.2 million annually for the next twenty-five years. See, the Mets originally thought this payout was a shrewd move, because it allowed them to take Bonilla's deferred money and potentially outearn its value by investing it in a firm run by, you guessed it, Bernie Madoff. And so Bonilla, who is now 48, will earn $30 million over the next three decades, until he turns 72. For doing absolutely nothing.

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