Printed 109 years ago today in The Tacoma Times. Image cleaned up, see the original. (Lamentably, that page also has a racist caricature on it.)

Found on the Library of Congress site. Feel free to pick a cartoon and post it yourself!

  • odium
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    23 days ago

    I love the answers by Cynthia grey section of the newspaper. Ig that’s how ppl googled in the early 20th century.

    Does anyone understand the punchline of the racist caricature panel?

    • BougieBirdie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      22 days ago

      Which part are you struggling with?

      If it’s the panel itself, it seems to be a Chinese person with a queue braid operating a telephone switchboard. It seems to be connected to the line below where they provide some fortune-cookie wisdom in broken english about pessimism. I could be wrong, but I think the only funny there is racism.

      If it’s the story below about the couple in the park, I think where it reads “- punch” might be to indicate that was the punchline, the joke is rather dry so it’s telling the reader that “yes, this was a joke.” The joke there is that the man is on a date with a woman, but is more preoccupied with looking like a good citizen to a veteran / recruiter

      • odium
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        22 days ago

        It was the panel itself that I was confused about. Thanks for the explanation.