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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.
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Hello! We are media enthusiasts and culture addicts—not to mention classically trained (as we like to say) professional journalists. This is our collection of generally civilized conversations about magazines, movies, politics, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: 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)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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