A Dozen 1970 New Yorker Cartoons That Would Not Get Published Today
In 1970 the Women’s Lib movement was in full swing. But it was still de rigueur for the media to portray women as sexual objects.
The New Yorker magazine has always been a mirror of society in the drawings it decides to publish.
Looking back through its cartoons that ran in 1970, reveals what once was considered funny, would now be considered politically incorrect. They may be funny as well. It depends upon your sense of humor.
Many cartoons we display below, involve sexual harassment. But back then these cartoons were a reflection of many men’s behavior and attitudes towards women.
In it’s 100 years of publishing, is there a New Yorker cartoon that was offensive or in bad taste for the time it originally ran? I have seen thousands of their cartoons and have not found one.
What I find offensive is cartoons that are not funny. How did that get published?
Here are cartoons from The New Yorker magazine in 1970, that would probably never appear in The New Yorker today.
It feels like what’s funny changes with each generation. You can dig out issues of the National Lampoon from the 70s that today seem racist and/or sexist. Whenever Jerry Seinfeld complains about not being able to play college campuses, he forgets that he’s 71 years old — it’s like Alan King wondering why “kids these days” didn’t go for his wife jokes 50 years ago. Go on YouTube and find Rodney Dangerfield’s appearance on the Oscars in the 1980s — funny at time, cringey now. (Watch for Jane Fonda’s clenched teeth reaction to the jokes.) Gen Z will be stunned when their children complain about mom & dad found funny.