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New Yorker Covering "Swine Flu" Story since the Ford Administration
Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: Richard Leibmann-Smith
Martin Schneider writes:
Credit Twitter users supergork and echidnapi with the catch.
In the May 31, 1976, edition of The New Yorker, there appeared a "casual" (what today would be filed under "Shouts & Murmurs") by Richard Leibmann-Smith satirizing the hullabaloo surrounding awards ceremonies. Leibmann-Smith spent page 31 (subscribers only) musing on the following scenario: what if the "Academy" in "Academy Awards" signified the American Academy of Medicine? What if there were a "Jonas" instead of an "Oscar," with the categories Best Disease, Best Symptoms, Best Virus, and Best Potential Epidemic? Riffing on the most recent Oscar winner, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which had also effected a sweep of all the major categories just two months earlier, Leibmann-Smith chose as his awards juggernaut "Swine flu," as in the piece's title (prepare wince reflex), "Swine Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
On the intersection of Twitter and swine flu, Randall Munroe expresses more amusingly something I had noticed as well.
About us
Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
You'd like to know more about the writers and artists and what our column titles mean? We live to serve!
We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive new contributors. Click here to email us.
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Tell me more
Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
Blogroll highlights
- Box Office Boffo
- World of Pollux
- Jonathan Taylor
- Carolita Johnson
- Songs for blogroll lovers (more links)
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