Definitely an insensitive/ignorant "joke."

should have been funnier, isn't that the real crime here?

actually this reminds me the REAL crime is that i didn't get my issue in the mail AGAIN this week! i think my mailman is stealing it.

Am I the only person who can't get beyond the cover the the New Yorker because of its snob appeal?

That's right, Supergirl, judge a book, er, magazine, by its cover. Try reading it. It's one of the best magazines in the country.

But we literally do judge books (and mags) by their covers. And the cover to NY advertises "Snobs Only".

You mean New Yorker cartoons are supposed to be funny? I was never aware of this.

I can't believe we would ridicule our friends in Poland, one of the only other members of the "Coalition of the Willing" whose army isn't funded by the US, although I think it's an overreaction.

At least it's not as bad as that Dame Edna column in Vanity Fair where s/he suggested speaking Spanish would only be good for talking to "the help" or the "leaf blower"?

And we can be thankful it's not a likeness of the Prophet Mohommad.

Well, let's see: My last name is Anziulewicz, my AOL handle is "PolishBear," and my dad's side of the family is Polish ... so maybe I have a perspective.

I don't see what the big deal is. I'm trying to imagine two parents-to-be, both drunk, laughing and imagining different names for the new baby. I'm sure they probably thought naming the baby "Zbigniew" would be pretty funny, and they probably laughed uproariously at the time. In that context I don't think the joke is offensive at all.

And NO, it's definitely not a Polish joke.

Behead the Enemies of Poland!

I thought it was hilarious. Doesn't any name you say sound just like "Zibigniew" if you are drunk enough?

Nah, its NOT racist.

I concur with W Smith: as our Muslim brothers have shown, the only way to avoid this sort of thing is to start whacking off heads. Anyone got a Ginsu?

I have never laughed at a cartoon in the New Yorker.

Not racist, but not funny either. Next!

The joke actually IS funny, but in a racist and hurtful way. I interpret the listener in the joke as thinking "wow, your parents must have been drunk while they gave you that (funny) name," while the speaker was thinking "my parents gave me a Polish name because they are Polish (ergo drunkards)."

Jimmy Legs:

I symapthize with your instinctive reaction against the New Yorker. I sometimes have felt the same way. But, it's worth getting over it because it is a genuinely great read almost every month. I am not really sure how I ended up with a subscription, but now I have I could never give it up.

The Polish guy who owns the best liquor store in Greenpoint (not the guy who's always drunk... the nice guys who have a great wine selection next door to Chopin)... I bet he would laugh at this joke.

He cracks jokes about the Thirst Of The Poles all the time. I don't know how else to say it. If you want to think in such low resolution terms, Poles do drink. Not every Pole, and not in a falling-down-drunk-at-2pm-in-front-of-the-Greenpoint Avenue-Subway-Stop way. But it's a facet of Polishness that most of the Poles I share my streets with will gladly laugh about first. Why not a small laugh? Who does it hurt?

I wonder about what all this extra sensitivity is doing to us.

(oh, and if it's not ethnic, it's not at all funny.)

First we have slav bashing with the "Jagshemash" spouting Borat creature and now this.

Racist AND unfunny.

But the left never appreciated the enemies of the Kremlin

The joke is offensive . . . if your name is Zbigniew.

I don't think I would care if the joke was mocking Polish names if it was at least slightly amusing (the inference that Poles are all drunks however is another matter since it is rather mean spirited).

That cartoon isn't clever, witty or original in any way at all; they would have been better off simply replacing the joke with "insert punchline here".

deliberate and mean spirited
Much worse than Allen's unintended macca

Tallying the votes so far, it looks like:

          | Funny |    Not   | dunno |
-----+-----+-----+------|
Racist |     2    |      2    |     1     |
-----+-----+-----+------|
Not     |     2    |      3    |     1     |
-----+-----+-----+------|
dunno |           |      1    |            |
-----+-----+-----+------|

For totals of:
-----+-----|
Racist |     5    |
-----+-----|
Not     |     6    |
-----+-----|

| Funny  |  Not |
+-----+----+
 |    4     |    6   |
+-----+----+
This could still go either way!

Ack, the Preview is not the same font as the post itself. Oh well.

Admittedly, it's not the funniest cartoon the NYer has ever published, but it's hardly "racist." Geez. Anyone who makes accusations like that has either:

1) absolutely no sense of humor
2) far too much time on their hands
3) clearly not spent much time in Greenpoint

The pig should say "My wife is a slut."

"Polish" is not a race.

Polish jokes may be rude, are almost certainly bigoted, but are NOT racist.

Words mean things. Please use them properly.

These kind of jokes are dangerous. My brother once said something like that, and the next day he was bayonetted to death by a Polish conscientious objector.

NYer is genius and the cartoons are funny when you've lived a bit. they're bittersweet more often than not and make us wince about ourselves and the rest of the human race. it's better to laugh than rant. also has great articles that get you into things you never thought you'd care about.

"NYer is genius and the cartoons are funny when you've lived a bit."

The cartoon is juvenile, it doesn't take life experience to get it. "My parents were drunk so they gave me an odd name" actually gets less funny the longer you've been around.

LOL, Kramer!

Clearly all of you were not alive (or perhaps just children) between 1976 and 1980. Zbigniew Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. To this 50+ guy the cartoon is very funny. You'd have to be drunk to name a kid after ANYONE in the Carter administration.

"Zbigniew Brzezinski was Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser."

That's an interesting bit of trivia but the editor of the magazine explained the joke and it had nothing to do with the Carter administration.

Don't make war from joke. Thank you, Kazimierz Pułaski pronounced: ( Ka-zhi-myezh_Poo-wa'-skee )
IMMIGRATION: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxXgKjoDDxE

Since when is Polish a race? It is a nationality. The Economist calls Polish people Poles, and refers to it as a Eastern European country. Try saying it to a Polish person in Poland! I live in Wroclaw, Poland and I am an American. I have to defend myself from anti-American sentiment on a daily basis. I have a friend named Zbigniew, we call him Ziggy. I showed him the cartoon, and he found it not funny. I agree, but I love the New Yorker. Fantastic articles on just about everything. Focus people!

i concur the joke is not funny.

the joke does infer that the kid's parents were polish. to state that the boy's parent's polish is a 'tacit assumption' doesn't read here.

personally, i don't consider this to be a obvious discriminatory comment. if i had just seen it in the magazine i wouldn't think much besides its lack of humor.

however, as the editor himself could not state he would definitely use other ethnic names suggests that certain groups are more acceptable to single out while avoiding others. so, in that case i would consider it to be slightly discriminatory.