For my sins, I have spent most of this weekend day going through a huge volume of cartoons published by The New Yorker from 1925 till 2004.[1] Together with the two accompanying compact disks, it contains almost seventy-thousand cartoons. As I am going through page after page, and there are more than six-hundred pages to go through, I am ever more amazed by the frankness with which the American society is depicted. Nothing is hidden from view, all the warts included. In pictures, too, which are supposed to go well beyond the descriptive power of words. At some point it crosses my mind that this critique, for this is what it actually is, could be useful to the enemies of the greatest empire of our age. But then I realize that it takes a thoughtful American, or at least an even more thoughtful American pupil, such as myself, to appreciate the poignant critique in all of its subtlety. Humor has many a hidden potential, no doubt, but its revolutionary potential is close to nil. Alas!

Footnote

1. Mankoff, Robert, editor, The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2004.