Benjamin Chambers writes:
What with the Democratic Convention going on and all, it was highly serendipitous to find a two-page spread of great cartoons entitled “Political Conventions” by James Stevenson in the August 25, 1968 issue of The New Yorker. I couldn’t find them among “Stevenson’s work “:http://www.cartoonbank.com/search_results_category.asp?sitetype=1&section=all&keyword=james+Stevenson&advanced=0&x=12&y=13featured at the Cartoon Bank, so I’ve uploaded a couple of my favorites below. (For the complete set, I’m afraid you’ll have to reach for the Complete New Yorker.) Stevenson has always been one of my favorite cartoonists; “click here”:http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1693/Stevenson-James-1929.html for a very thorough profile of his artistic career.
While chuckling at Stevenson’s quietly satirical sketches, though, I’ll admit I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance, since after all, they were published during the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Here’s the first (click to make it bigger):

And here’s the second one (click on it for a larger version):

Benjamin Chambers writes:
Might just be me, but I don’t hear people grumble as much as I used to about “truth in advertising.” Maybe it’s because nobody expects it anymore. As with campaign finance reform, we all wish it could happen, but are afraid to admit we could be so childishly naive.
Well, be careful what you wish for there, in the secret spaces of the heart. Here’s a couple of examples from the October 1, 1966 issue of The New Yorker of why honesty might not always be the best policy. First, a mild, “Yeah-we-screw-up,” from Avis (click for full-size):

Then, the major-league, all-our-warts example, from Renault (click to see all the fun):

Had it come in the mail, TNY would’ve classed this ad copy under “Sales Pitches We Never Finished Reading.” Check it out, though: 35 mpg. Where can I get one?

Benjamin Chambers writes:
What did the future look like back in 1964? Here’s a clue: this rather puzzling cartoon by Alan Dunn (click to see it full-size) from the October 3, 1964 issue of The New Yorker.

Judging from the globe in the background, you probably could find phone booths like the one drawn here at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. So far, so good. But what the heck is the kid riding in, and what’s so funny about the cartoon?
As to the first question, the Complete New Yorker index describes the kid as sitting in an “automobile pushcart.” Perhaps these were commonly available at the World’s Fair, perhaps not—but I don’t think it’s supposed to attract our attention. Instead, the kid’s dismayed look tells us what’s funny: the phone booth itself.
No doubt such booths were a radical departure from the full-size, glassed-in phone booths typical of the period, an intimation of the future. (Though those were not as ubiquitous as I thought. According to “this advertisement”:http://www.phonebooth.org/phoneadverts/portrait_of_a_city.html posted by the folks at “The Phonebooth”:http://www.phonebooth.org/index.html, the first outdoor telephone booths weren’t installed in Manhattan until around 1960.) Is it possible that the joke here is simply that the kid can’t see his mother? Your ideas welcome.
[UPDATE: I’ve gotten a lot of useful information from commenters and elsewhere that throws some light on the cartoon, so I’ll collate it here. First, thanks to Marc Francisco of www.phonebooth.org, who sent me this photo from a Bell System press release:

According to him, the copy read, “A pretty World’s Fair visitor makes a call from a Serpentine booth, so called because of its unique serpent-like design. All booths on the Fairgrounds are equipped with the Bell System’s newly developed Touch-Tone service which speeds calling by push buttons instead of a dial.”
(Touch-Tone! Another intimation of the future!) Note that the “pretty visitor” is wearing pumps, like the woman in the cartoon. No kid in a pushcart, though. Perhaps “she’s calling the operator”:http://www.phonebooth.org/phoneadverts/full_of_bees.html to find out where he went.
Then Bill Cotter sent a link to a shot of the booths “in use”:http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/phones.htm at the time of the Fair, as well as a photo “explaining”:http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/hertz.htm the kid’s “pushcart”. Thanks also to Mike for sending another link to photos of the booths at the time of The Fair, and several shots of them in their current state of “tragic disrepair”:http://64nywf65.20m.com/Booth/Booth.htm. He’s got more to say in his comment below …
Finally, for those of you astonished to learn that outdoor phone booths weren’t installed in Manhattan until about 1960—where did Superman change clothes when he was outside?—this ad from 1955 suggests they came late (?!) to Manhattan.]
In the same issue, too, I accidentally ran across an ad for perfume that was so modern, it jumped off the page (click for larger size):

Compare it to these two ads, one for perfume, and the other for makeup, taken from the same issue, that exemplify the competition (click for larger size):


By comparison, the ad for the Fabergé perfume stands out, doesn’t it? Unlike the other two, it’s selling a feeling, an impression of carnality, rather than features (“the modern way to carry spray,” “glides on easily”). It’s like an ad for, well, the future.
Often, though, the future has been around for longer than we think. Lycra® (generic name: “Spandex”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandex) is a case in point. I always thought that it was a relatively recent invention. Turns out I’m wrong: it was invented in 1959. Didn’t take long to get it to market, either, evidently. Check out this ad featuring it from the February 3, 1962 issue of TNY:

Still, I’ll bet you not one Beatles fan who saw this ad suspected that “hair bands” were already a foregone conclusion…

Benjamin Chambers writes:

Fans of The New Yorker (TNY) “fiction podcast”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction may not have noticed, but when author “Mary Gaitskill”:http://www.newyorker.com/search/query?query=mary+gaitskill&queryType=nonparsed&submitbtn.x=0&submitbtn.y=0&submitbtn=Submit recorded her otherwise-excellent “reading”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/06/09/080609on_audio_gaitskill of Vladimir Nabokov’s story, “Signs and Symbols” (or, as TNY’s first fiction editor, Katharine White, preferred for no very obvious reason, “Symbols and Signs”), Gaitskill mispronounced the word “victuals” by reading it as it’s spelled, rather than the correct way: vittles. I didn’t notice it myself, because I’ve always pronounced “victuals” the way Gaitskill does, thinking that “vittles” was just a hillbilly synonym, but otherwise unrelated. (Thanks to “Languagehat”:http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003174.php for setting me straight. When TNY asks me to read for their fiction podcast, I won’t make that gaffe!)

In a similar fashion, another corner of the blogosphere has been busy weighing the merits of “Jared Diamond’s piece “:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond in the April 21st issue on the comparative value of exacting vengeance vs. the contemporary western justice system. The main post, by Rex (Alex Golub), is excellent, the following (lightly copyedited) segment in particular:

… Diamond fails to think anthropologically even if the people he discusses are stereotypically anthropological subjects. Anthropologists insist that culture is a force which has its own unique power to shape people’s lives and cannot be reduced to an effect of an underlying, deeper cause. So when Diamond remarks that pigs are valuable to highlanders because they (the highlanders) are “protein starved,” an anthropologist is not satisfied. This has probably been true of different places in different times in the highlands … and nutritional needs obviously affect human behavior, but so does culture.

Pigs are always valuable in culturally specific ways. When highlanders in PNG [Papua New Guinea] give pigs, do they exchange live pigs or pork? Who gets the piglets from the live pigs, and who gets the pork when it is eaten? These questions are deeply tied up in issues of nutrition, but they are also culturally structured. Equally, Diamond writes that in Nipa, fighters exhibit “unchecked” aggression, [but] then goes on to describe in detail the culturally specific ways in which they fight: rules regarding engagement (or non-engagement if you have relatives on the other side of the fight) and so forth. So in fact, while the human desire may be universal (and that’s a big ‘may’), so is the fact that it is always shaped and channeled in culturally specific forms. The more you know about people’s lives, the less easy it is to explain them wholly in terms of protein, geography, genetics and what have you.

Nicely put. Wade through the comments, too, if only to watch anthropology wonks in a dust-up. (Hope nobody ended up with a vendetta on their hands!)