Someone's Been Replacing all New Yorker Cartoon Captions with 'Jeffrey Toobin Took His Dick Out on a Zoom Call' and it's Magnificent
When Jeffrey Toobin, analyst for both CNN and the New Yorker whipped his dong out in the middle of Zooming with his co-workers, we all made certain immediate assumptions. Because by now every sentient being knows how these sorts of scandals involving public figures go.
First, like Chaps said yesterday, every man in America would be glad it wasn't him, because this is the ultimate "there but for the grace" situations.
Second, his colleagues would circle the wagons. The extremely non-objective, non-journalistic word "inadvertently" would be injected into every report. Then he'd be suspended in order to work out ... personal issues.
Next we'd get the obligatory OJ Simpson reaction. Complete with exactly the kind of lazy, obvious joke that was considered edgy and topical at the time OJ went to jail and all his pop culture references were frozen for good.
But once those were out of the way, you knew to an absolute certainty that social media was going to rise to the occasion. Moments like this are the reason the art form exists. The internet was not about to squander this opportunity. And the lead that the best of the alchemists decided to turn into gold was The New Yorker itself. Specifically, the New Yorker cartoons that are a sacred institution somehow. Even though no one has actually laughed at one ever. Or even really got where the humor was supposed to be in these staid, bone dry, social relics of a distant past where they were considered witty to the swells in Manhattan polite society.
Credit where it's due to this account. This is how we all need to Twitter in these dark times.
Of course this story is front and center of the memeverse as well right now. And I was going to throw in a few, but we can do those any time. For now, I just want to appreciate the simple, subtle brilliance of this running gag until it plays itself out. Or until some other famous person humiliates his/herself. Which should be any minute now.
Thank you, social media. There's still a lot of awfulness to answer for. But this is how you redeem yourself.