Bob Mankoff names his 11 favorite "New Yorker" cartoons -- at least as of that particular moment (and we sneak a peek). Plus cartoon UPDATE!

-- Jack Ziegler, July 11, 1988 (click to enlarge)

"You can't go wrong with stupidity," says Mankoff wryly. "When in doubt, make fun of an idiot." He relents: "But this is done in a lovely way; it's a lovely drawing. The guy who's doing this stuff is dumb, but the cartoon is clever."

by Ken

"When in doubt, make fun of an idiot." I love that! It may not be quite a maxim to live by, but it's, well, something.

New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff says in his blogpost this week, "My Favorite Things," that the question he's asked second most frequently (after "Why didn't I win the New Yorker Caption Contest?") is: "What is your favorite New Yorker cartoon?" And now, he says, in conjunction with a TED Talk he gave (poisted as "Bob Mankoff: Anatomy of a New Yorker cartoon" -- it's 21 minutes, and I have kind of a creepy feeling about TED Talks, so it would be a help if someone would watch it and let the rest of us know whether we should brave it), he has picked his 11 favorite cartoons. That's out of the "seventy-seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-five" they've published "to date" (I'm not sure exactly which date, or as of which issue, but wait a week and the number will be for sure out of date). It's on the TED Blog: "Bob Mankoff picks his 11 favorite New Yorker cartoons ever."

And, oh yes, Bob is careful to note: "On another day, and in another mood, I probably would have selected another bunch."

I'm sure you'll want to check out Bob's Eleven. Some of them are cartoons he's written about before, and we've even seen his comments on. Of the others, I've picked three.

-- Charles Barsotti, November 21, 1994 (click to enlarge)

"Cartoons are either in the realm of reality or fantasy. Everything about this can't possibly happen; it defies logic and reality and yet it leads to hilarity," says Mankoff. "'Fusilli' sounds like an Italian piece of pasta, but they're both crazy, because they're pieces of pasta. Is that 'Rigatoni' calling? I don't know, but it'’s one of my all-time favorite cartoons."

-- Eric Lewis, November 13, 2000 (click to enlarge)

"If you read The New Yorker, you must know a little about something," says Mankoff, who submitted his first cartoons to the magazine in 1974. "So you know that's Einstein, you know about the theory of relativity, you know about sexual relations between men and women. And when you know all that, you know it's funny."

UPDATE: BY REQUEST, A CARTOON NOT ON BOB'S LIST

A reader commented that his favorite New Yorker cartoon is the one below, which was found by our friend me. It turns out to be by the great David Sipress -- and here it is! (Click to enlarge.)

#

For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."